Twice at lunchtime today I tried to get this post written up, but both times I failed miserably, purely because I wasn't feeling up to it.
So now here is the belated post.
I need to carry out a few little mods to get this engine up and running, so this post concentrates on two of them, mainly how to make gaskets, which I will be showing in full, so that maybe a few people can pick up a tip or two.
I am making this head gasket for three reasons, the first is to seal the cylinder from the outside world, second is to attempt to stop a lot of heat transfer to the cylinder and water jacket and thirdly, to make the studs shorter so that they don't interfere with the valve operation.
I swear by different thicknesses of PTFE for making gaskets, it seems to have no bad faults at all, only good, when used in this context.
So getting a piece of 0.015" thick of about the correct size, the OD of the head was marked on it and the centre found.
Take note of the real el cheapo compass cutter that was bought for a couple of squid a few years ago off a market stall, for cutting these circular gaskets, I just couldn't live without it.
I used to really struggled trying to cut circles with this cutter until I found this method.
I stick both the centre pin and blade thru the material and into the wood underneath (not too deep) and holding onto the top of the compass to keep it steady, I rotate the gasket material against the cutter blade, rather than trying to use the compass like you would normally use it.
If you get your blade to pin measurement to size, and cut it how I have shown, you should end up with a perfectly fitting gasket.
The next trick is using another indispensable bit of kit for use in the workshop, transfer punches. I have duplicate sets of these in Imperial, metric, number and letter sizes. I use them not only in their guise as transfer punches, but also used instead of drill blanks, which are very expensive indeed. In fact, all my sets of my transfer punches added together only came to the price of one set of good quality drill blanks. How accurate do you really need to be in the home shop, these are well within 0.001" of drill blanks, if not even closer.
The gasket material is slightly transparent, so it was easy to align the top and bottom holes up, then it was just a matter of pushing the correct size pointed transfer punch down the hole until it marked the gasket.
I didn't push hard at all, but all holes are well marked up, and in an accurate position.
The holes were easily punched out with a tube punch, and the finished punched holes fitted perfectly onto the water jacket studs.
Using a couple of general screws and nuts, the gasket was trapped between the cylinder and it's head. The material around the outside was carefully cut away, very close to the metal.
Resulting in a perfect and long lasting gasket.
Once all assembled up, you can now see that the threads don't protrude as much thru the nuts, so that is one problem cured.
It looked like a long process, but in fact took well less than half an hour.
This fix is nowhere near as complicated.
The plans call for either a taper or roll pin to lock the brass part onto the rod. I hate using pins, purely because they can sometimes be very difficult to get apart once in position, this would be just the case here.
All I did was to accurately drill right through the brass bush and steel rod, then tapped it out 2mm. A recess was put in to take the cap head. Now I can take it apart very easily whenever I want, but stll have very secure fixing. The original grub screw hole (hiding around the corner) will be filled with a bit of brass threaded rod, and by the time I have finished blinging, will never be seen again.
I'm sorry I didn't make any more progress to show you, but I have to take each day as it comes.
Bogs
