Rebuilding a '73

[Joe the Harley guy]

Productive day today. The used crankshaft had a few imperfections where the bearings sit. I worked them with a stone and 400 grit paper. Blue marker substitutes well for dykem to show the high spots.



The original crankshaft needed four 0.003 shims under the ball bearing, but this one only needed one to give end play in spec: 0.003.



The crankcase seal goes in 'backwards' and is the same as the outer seal on the clutch side.



The book says to let the loctite on ball bearing races set for 24 hours, so I'm done until tomorrow.

[Joe the Harley guy]

More progress - installed the other half of the crankcase with gaskets and Yamabond 4, and torqued the screws.




Installing the reed valve, carburetor and air cleaner elbow as well as the flywheel, fan and points in the housing was pretty straight forward, following the factory manual and the pictures I took years ago. Those pictures are invaluable, because I would never remember what goes where when the manual says 'assemble..." with no figure referenced.






I'm waiting for Amazon to deliver a cylinder hone, then I'll assemble the piston, cylinder and head.

[Capt. Lenny]

You’re getting there Joe, keep up the good work!

[Joe the Harley guy]

I've done all I can do here, the rest I'll finish with the motor in the chassis.

I cleaned up the piston, and installed it and the rings.



Next up, hone the cylinder and debur the ports. I use my fingers to fit the rings into the bottom of the cylinder. I did draw blood with the last one. The hone job isn't the best, but it'll do. Lack of a new piston kept me from going up one size.



The rest of it was easy. Here are a couple of glamour shots. I'll clean up the points cover at home.

[Leon willis]

Looking good, also I want what ever the designers were smoking or in this case snorting I mean look at that weird thing it’s like they had NO and I mean NO cares about space conservation or the ability to work on you have pull the str/gen just to a carb job unless your a wizard and fish it out , you have take the motor loses to change a drive belt, they put the muffler right in front of the air intake for the cooling system so it’s just sucking in hot air, the cooling system just dumps all the air in one spot and then just goes out the holes in the head leaving the back of the cylinder to cook like a turkey on thanksgiving the list goes on and may I rinse you this engine was used until 91 on par cars it did see some changes but for the most part in charge and it was designed in the mid 60’s so I guess it’s no to bad but still either the designers were absolutely knee deep in booger sauger or they a bunch of kindergarteners design it beets me

[Leon willis]

Looking good, also I want what ever the designers were smoking or in this case snorting I mean look at that weird thing it’s like they had NO and I mean NO cares about space conservation or the ability to work on it in mind you have pull the str/gen just to a carb job unless your a wizard and fish it out , you have take the motor loses to change a drive belt, they put the muffler right in front of the air intake for the cooling system so it’s just sucking in hot air, the cooling system just dumps all the air in one spot and then just goes out the holes in the head leaving the back of the cylinder to cook like a turkey on thanksgiving the list goes on and may I rinse you this engine was used until 91 on par cars it did see some changes but for the most part in charge and it was designed in the mid 60’s so I guess it’s no to bad but still either the designers were absolutely knee deep in booger sauger or they a bunch of kindergarteners design it