PD: Primary Drive Three-gear primary drive (Irving Vincent)

Vince Farrell

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Years ago I visited the Horner workshop with Neal Videan. During the tour Ken showed us an HRD crankcase that came from an old speedway outfit. It had a gear driven primary drive with the middle gear mounted on an offset boss fitted into the hole originally used for the left-hand gear change conversion. I just hope my memory of this is correct and I haven’t imagined it.

Vince Farrell
 

Nigel Spaxman

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Greg, yes very non-standard. This picture showing how the shaft for the middle gear is fitted in the crank case.
Apparently Phil Vincent-Day, PVC's grandson in the background.

View attachment 33085
From this picture you can see how special the heads are. It looks as though the angle between the valves is a lot less than standard.. I knew they had 4 valve heads, I didn't know about these ones.
 

Monkeypants

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I wonder which method of primary drive power transmission has the greatest efficiency, belt drive, triplex chain in oil bath or gears in oil bath?
Some claim the belt is best, others the chain. I've gone looking for hard data on this but found nothing substantial.
 
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vinhrd998

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Vince, an offset shaft is on my list! Been thinking of doing that. Someting like this:
offset shaft.jpg

Glen, for me width is the issue. Belts need to be too wide with 1300+cc (as you know) while keeping standard appearance. Chain will always work, but some how I like the idea with gears.
Black Flash, sounds from the gears would probably not drown the roar of the twin anyway, would it?
 

Bill Cannon

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And have an oilpump in the magneto position with a piggyback generator
I've thought about this in the past but feel that driving at half engine speed would make things difficult.
My Kubota is driving at close to twice engine speed.
Cheers Bill
 

timetraveller

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I agree with Bill re. the slow revs at the magneto position being used to drive an alternator. If one has got rid of the ESA and is using a gear drive rather than chain then there is plenty of depth there to position an alternator. This could either be mounted on the main shaft or, with the aid of a hollow gear, driven at double engine speed. That is the speed at which the Walkernators are driven on twins. A variety of alternators are available from modern bikes, which generally use higher revs than a Vin. Hence the possible need for the hollow gear and increasing the speed of rotation of the alternator. New, or modified, primary drive covers would be needed. John Emmanuel's bike has the alternator from a Guzzi 'V' twin in that position and it is hard to notice it.
Modern car oil pumps have enormous flow rates, particularly for the 8 cylinder engines and one of those working at half engine speed would be more that enough to feed either a standard Vincent lower end or a plain bearing system including mains and big ends.
And a note to vinhrd998; if the helical teeth were ground off the clutch parts shown earlier then a steel gear could be shrunk on over that and then the rest of the clutch used. Note that on the Suzuki that originally used that clutch there was a large gear ratio reduction between the main shaft and the clutch gear. That could not be done on a Vin and so stronger shock absorber springs would be needed to cope with the extra torque.
Nice to see people still trying to improve our bikes.
One other thing to notice on the engine shown in #8 above is the extra depth of the part or the cylinder head housing the valves. I imagine that their valve lift is about double that of a standard Vin.
 
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