OP: Oil Pump A nice Ulimate Engine

[Little Honda]

I have heard that Triumph did that also at some point, but the airflow arround the cams cleared out the oilbath.....

what i do do nowadays is: I align the holes in the megacycle cams with the holes in the spindles, giving a yet of oil just as the folower enters the cam ramp. The yet is nearly nothing now..... with pelgrim pump, even a twin start. At this point the bronze bushes, starve from oil, but thats a moment.
I wonder how it holds when there is 2 bar yet of oil,
I will make up a timing side cover with glass in them, there are plenty Plain ones arround.

Read PEI´s comments on lubrication in "40 years on", for example. They had inspection windows in the timing cover at the works, too. PEI has seen sparks
in running engines.

 

[rapide049]

Just as a point of interest, when I spoke to Ken Horner about the nozzles he installed between the pushrod tubes to supply oil to the cams/followers, he said that they did it from the oil return line rather than from the oil pressure side. It is hard to say, but I would have thought the pressure side more logical and also a quicker supply verses the scavenge side of the system. I think the position and the direction of these oil jets is very important as to whether it actually works well or not.

Oil Return Line ,

 

[david bowen]

A vincent scavengers twice as fast as it feeds,

 

[Len Matthews]

And use the gearbox as the oil tank as, I believe, Clem Johnson did on "Barn Job". Cheers, Stu.

As did Neville Higgins with "Jindivik" I believe.

 

[stu spalding]

As did Neville Higgins with "Jindivik" I believe.

Ta, Len. I suppose you could get really trick and connect the return to the inlet and play with the cutouts on the plunger so the return was filling the inlet and doing a bit of oiling as well on the downstroke, but then you'd have to worry about aeration of the oil. Oh well, just a thought. Cheers Stu.

 

[johncrispin]

Hi there, anybody got ideas about the oilsystem in the engine?? (i know Herve Harmon ones)
I am recovering a well worn set of cases, (Most welding is done now, new Main bearing housing) and am trying to make it into an ultimate engine.
ONE: with a bendix starter under the big primary sprocket with a Z=74 gearwheel to be driven by starter, i needed to make me a flat gearbox cover G2 (layshaft bearing moved inwards, done with roller bearing, one side axial trust), thats the easy job done.
TWO: a better oil system with a wet sump under the engine, to contain about 4 l oil, oil drain connected from the scavenge chamber, by an 1" hole. (it wont be THAT visible)
Now I was thinking putting in a Japanese oilpump to drive from the large idler, but have no idea which??
I can weld up a oil pump housing in the timing chest, with a suction pipe down; either outside or inside through the big hole. Through a modified timing cover one can make the feeds and even retain the original oilfilter (agian bit of welding etc.) and also from the top of the oil yet OP39 a pipe to the rockers, so no more unfilterd oil. and have a two bar yet of oil on those terrible cam folowers (DLC coating) and bronze bushes.I align the holes in the megacycle cams with the spindles (they need new bushes than) Spindles Et.All made from Boehler K340 and nitrided.
The whole excersise is making it OK for even a 200.000 Miles life, with oil changes like my car (about none)
Its all to go into a egli style frame set for touring. 5 speed close ratio, surtees, TPV 90 mm (or is it 92) set on 8,5~9:1, 38 mm Ceriani, double API Lockheeds brake, own rear hub.
it will take a while but it can be done.
Vincent S

any ideas about that oil system? or about the rest. (apart from I am mad, thats no news)View attachment 17360 View attachment 17361

Vincent,
Just a thought, I saw that Marcus Bowden had rigged up a supplementary oil feed for camshafts with a Honda oil pump driven off the idler inside the standard timing case on his twin headlight series B twin. I am sure he could provide you with details, fabulous project hats off etc .. best J

 

[stumpy lord]

Vincent,
Just a thought, I saw that Marcus Bowden had rigged up a supplementary oil feed for camshafts with a Honda oil pump driven off the idler inside the standard timing case on his twin headlight series B twin. I am sure he could provide you with details, fabulous project hats off etc .. best J

Hi,
see mph 416 for more details of the French mod

 

[Tubby]

The Honda oil pump mod is also detailed in "40 years on" page 120.

 

[timetraveller]

A few thoughts about Vincent’s interesting ideas about a modified engine; let us start with the oil pump. It seems to me that if one is going to seriously modify the oil pump etc. then rather than messing about with odd small oil pumps to feed the cams and followers one might as well do a complete job and fit a modern high output, high pressure pump. Vincent clearly has the welding and machining skills to do this properly and I think that replacing the original oil pump worm and driving a modern gear pump, below the position of the original pump would be the way to go. The original oil pump worm would be replaced by a spur gear which would drive the gear oil pump placed below it. Given enough oil then one could go for plain main bearings at each side as well as plain big ends. Perhaps the outer timing side bearing would have to remain a roller bearing. On the drive side main bearing one could increase the diameter of the main shaft from the original one inch, or one and an eighth as on Picadors and some racing engines, or 32 mm ?Godet, to a substantial 2” or 50 mm or even bigger. The inner part of the large plain bearing would have a flange which would locate the side of the flywheel and a lipped oil seal would be fitted behind the primary drive sprocket or toothed belt wheel. The oil would be fed through the crankshaft assembly from the usual place and go to the drive side via the timing side inner, big ends and then to the drive side main. A good oil flow has to be maintained as experience with sidecar racing Enfield twins has shown that the drive side big end can fail if too much oil is allowed to leak out via the primary side big end. Personally I would always find a way to incorporated a modern, screw on, oil filter into the system. I did 107,000 miles in a Renault Espace diesel and at the end of that time it was still possible to see the colour coding on the valve springs. Modern detergent oils and a decent filter work.

Personally I would go for either a one piece crank shaft assembly or, as a minimum, a pressed up assembly with no crankpin nuts etc. The flywheels can have parallel sides and the balancing is achieved by making the flywheels ‘triangular’ in shape. The flywheels have to be hardened with this mod as it has been found that if a hardened crankpin is pressed into a soft flywheel the interference fit is lost after one iteration. Hardening the flywheels also gets round having to fit a hardened washer at each side of the crankpin.

The October MPH contains a very good article about Patrick Godet’s engine in which he tells us that he has found it beneficial to force feed oil to the exhaust valves and springs to aid cooling. Years ago I helped a chum who raced a twin Norton and the man who provided the flywheel assembly had fastened two small diameter tubes from the big ends, up the con rods, via the big end eyes to squirt oil directly under the piston heads to help with the cooling. The pistons never gave trouble. If Vincent really can find a large flow oil pump and interface it to a Vin engine then several of these ideas could be incorporated.

If one really wants to get bold then replacing the cams and followers with a different design could save weight and wear. Rather than having relatively small cams with flat followers one could fit a bronze ‘skull’ into the top of the timing side over where the cams are now. These bronze skulls would take light weight hollow cam followers into which the bottom of the pushrods would fit. The base of each follower would be curved and their cross section would be rectangular to resist rotation etc. The outside appearance of the engine would remain the same.

Good luck to Vincent with this interesting project. It is so nice to see someone who has the imagination and the skills to undertake such a project.

 

[greg brillus]

Of course I don't wish to discount any work Vincent is going to try, but the Horner brothers have done all of this and way more for several years now. They have basically reached the limit of power verses heat on this engine design, resorting to sodium filled valves and using the traditional "Skull" head design to stop valve seat trouble. Some form of liquid cooling would be next, but as I discussed with Ken Horner, it starts to deviate away from the original Vincent design too much.