E: Engine D T I Holder
- Thread starter powella
- Start date
Not unexpectedly I did it with my available Sony encoders and DRO for finding equal lift of Andrews cams. But main point is to mark your cam gears and do chisel marks on engine case at some places closest to gears for refinding equal lift next time. This will be handy as long as you don´t change cams or gears certainly. So then you don´t do the puzzle games with old marks on half time, idler and cam gears at one position. Due to hunting tooth design all marks are useless once you turn the crank. With my marks on gears and case you can see alignment all the time for checking. Just after marking cam gears you set crank to TDC - or 4 degrees before as in Vincents - no half time gear on yet - set rear cam to marks - idler can be put in of course, then find one position of half time gear plus its slots and crank slot for key to align with the idler and rest.
Then advance the crank for one turn plus 50 - 4 degrees for front TDC and put in the front cam at marked position. The front gear should be allright when marks align. You´d have to press out the cam and try with corrected position if it is too much off.
But then, I am writing from memory, so better check everything yourself. My main point is to have marks on cam gears PLUS case for handy checks.
Erk, what is that extension on the magneto gear, for some engine breathing ?
Vic
Then advance the crank for one turn plus 50 - 4 degrees for front TDC and put in the front cam at marked position. The front gear should be allright when marks align. You´d have to press out the cam and try with corrected position if it is too much off.
But then, I am writing from memory, so better check everything yourself. My main point is to have marks on cam gears PLUS case for handy checks.
Erk, what is that extension on the magneto gear, for some engine breathing ?
Vic
Workshop-made special tools are essential for anything beyond routine maintenance but, not to dwell on the morbid, what is to become of them when we're gone? "Everyone" can recognize common hand tools, so our heirs would have no problem disposing of them at a yard sale. But, a valve lifter holder (minus the DTI) for a Vincent? Certainly, to most Vincent owners who don't already have one it would be more valuable than yet another 6 mm spanner. But, but what are the odds our heirs would recognize a DTI holder for what it is in order to label it, let alone the odds a Vincent owner would be at that yard sale?
A few years ago I bought a large collection of shop-made BSA tools from someone in town who got them from an estate of a machinist, so he was unaware of anything beyond them being for BSAs. I could recognize the function of enough of them to make the purchase worthwhile (e.g. a jig for holding DBD Gold Star heads at an angle in a mill), but most still sit unidentified in boxes. Because I discovered that even I didn't recognize the function of some of the tools I made myself years ago, I adopted the practice of using a paint pen to write identifying information on them. Still, even if a tool labeled "Vincent half-time pinion puller" were at a yard sale, what are the odds a Vincent owner would be at that sale?
Special tools are valuable to the small number of people who would need them but, when the time comes, our heirs wouldn't know what those tools are, and the right people wouldn't know they were available. That's the problem; what's the solution?
Put that stuff on Ebay, a chance somebody might know, from a suitable description so as to find it in a search routine. Don´t waste your time for autojumbles, could take decades. And anyway, we are not important to the following generations, the tools and bikes even less. Hundreds of thousands of them went into smelters a few decades ago - and will some day no doubt. Museums got lots of that stuff already, so your guess what will be done in not too distant future . . .
Vic
Vic
Surely you're not saying one shouldn't make the tools in the first place. They're needed at the moment to solve a current problem. That should be enough reason to make them, besides the pleasure in doing so. If they ultimately find a second life, so much the better.
Ebay listings:
"Unknown homemade tool #1"
"Unknown homemade tool #2"
etc.
Not only isn't Ebay a solution, it would be a waste of time.
Not at all. Special tools are essential, but not everyone who wants them is in a position to fabricate them.