Cylinder Head Stripdown

Gotta love the simplicity of the Guzzi design. Stripping down the top end is very easy. On one side, the bolts were well torqued, and just needed a little persuasion in a few cases. On the other, the bolts had clearly not been torqued properly, and virtually fell off. Oh well.

Start by just removing the rocker covers:

There are five bolts that hold the cylinder in place. Four are obvious:

and one is below the cutout for the breather pipe:

The bolts are broken in diagonal sequence, and then the first things to come off are the two bolts that hold the valve rocker assemby:

There's a D-shaped spacer under each nut:

and then the rocker assembly comes off:

There are two other D-shaped spacers under the rocker assembly:

A sharp tap with a rubber mallet released the grip of the gaskets:

and off she comes:

Say hello to Mr. Piston:

Here's the barrel. The water droplets are from the recent pressure washing:

Here are the valves:

A Ziplock bag over the pistons protects them from the casings:

Here is is with both sides removed:

Engine Cleaning

First order of business with the engine mounted in its stand was to clean it up a bit. I used Gunk Engine cleaner, and the equivalent product from 3-in-1. I then cleaned it off with a pressure washer.

Not bad! The flash makes it look cleaner than it does in real life:

Seat

Just a few photos of the original seat. Not yet sure what I'll do with this.

This is the factory seat:

and with the red plastic bit removed:

Not very exciting now, was it?

Engine Stand Mounting Thingamijig

I bought a Harbor Freight engine stand, for the princely sum of $39.99 with a coupon or two ;-) Just the thing to hold the engine during its rebuild! The only problem is what to hold the engine by. In the end, I used the engine-gearbox mounting bolts, like so:

It would be ideal to have the center of the mounting post along the center of rotation of the engine, but the philosopher Jagger tells us that 'you can't always get what you want'. So, slightly offset it is:

M8 studding is inserted into the engine/gearbox holes, and is supported by multiple nuts and a bearing shell that bulks the M8 stud up to the inner diameter of the mounting stems. Only three mounting stems are rigidly connected, the fourth rests in a slot so as not to stress the engine castings too much.  

It floats!

It seems to work just fine, but in case you're thinking of doing something similar, I suggest you remove the engine from the stand when you're not working on it, so that the castings are not under continual load. Also, I intend to support the engine when its in the stand so that not all the weight is being taken by the casting threads. That's fine while you're moving the engine around in the stand, but you want to minimize the load on the casings as much as possible.

Fuel Tank Shenanigans

Dave Ashenbrener at Legendary Motorcycles send me the base of one of his "Continental" tanks to see how it would fit the V50's frame. Warning: some of the most intimate photographs of the underside of a gas tank mating with a Guzzi frame you have ever seen follow...

The tank has a range of position is can come to rest in. Here's the furthest back:

and the furthest forward:

Here's the original tank, and Dave's base, side by side 

Remember this is just the base piece of Dave's tank!

The original tank sits much lower, which is A Good Thing...

Upskirt shot of the original tank