That didn't work

Moving the breather back to stock marks seems to be an epic fail.


EPIC.FAIL.

Cam seal replacement with Jim's Tool 2243

I needed to go ahead and change the cam seal that was leaking while I was adjusting the breather timing.  JamesD was kind enough to give me some seals and lend me his Jim's Tool 2243 to swap it with. It's really a handy tool.

This is specific to using the Jim's tool, but it's a cheat sheet I made a long time ago. The bolts are different lengths in different spots and this is very helpful.


All the bits and pieces.


This cross bar goes across the ignition plate screw holes.


The middle spins down to bottom out on the cam seal. You need to put the holes in the cup at 6 and 12 o'clock.


Wood screws go in these holes and into the old seal.


The instructions act like you can start the screws by hand, but it wasn't that easy. Leaning hard on the impact driver made quick work of it.


Back out the middle screw and the seal comes straight out.


There's the old seal.


Grease the new seal and get it started.


Put the tool back in, less the wood screws, and old seal of course.


Screw the middle screw in until it bottoms out on the cam cover.


New seal is set.


This tool also lets you pull stuck cam covers without hitting anything with a hammer and minimal swear words. Just put the smaller cup inside the larger cup and run it down inside the cover. The small cup will push on the end of the cam and off pops the cover. (Take all the cam cover bolts out first though.)

Back to stock breather timing

So this engine is still hemorrhaging oil out the crank, cam seal, rear rocker box, and push rod tubes, or maybe some from the case split. Way back when, it was blowing oil out the breather. So I timed the breather gear with a degree wheel. The degree wheel lead me to belief that the gear needed to be one tooth off. The real problem was the wrong cam cover gasket. I fixed the gasket, but oil is seeping out heavily everywhere else. I just put the breather timing back to the marks yesterday and replaced the cam seal(see upcoming post). I will clean everything and see if that fixes it.

The left picture is the one with the marks aligned, the right picture is the alignment that I thought I needed.

On the hunt for a Springer Wheel

So here I am needing a wheel and rotor for this Crossbones front end.


The guy that sold it to me wouldn't sell me the wheel to go with it. He said he was going with a hydraulic frontend on his build and wanted to keep the wheel to use it. He did leave me the spacers so I need to wheel to work with what I have. I was skeptical, because it didn't seem like enough spacers.




In the past I have made assumption about "parts is parts" and I have been very wrong. I figured that the wheel was very specific for a Springer. I also was lucky enough to run across a 97 Heritage Springer and Crossbones to take pictures of. I assumed that the little spacer on the 97 and the fender support on the Crossbones were similar. NOPE. Daniel Martin from Longbow Customs helped explained the situation to me.
 

Everything before 2000 was a Timken bearings and needed different spacers and such.This is the pre-2000 Heritage spacer for a Tinken bearing. It's what you can't see that matters.


Anywho, Daniel went on to explain that most any hub for 2000-up 16 incher for Springer or Hydro Softail will work. Here's a little more specific info.

Finding my 4 speed leaks

I have been having such a difficult time with the primary and figuring out which end was leaking. So I pulled the transmission and decided to see if there were any major or weird leaks. I put this together to leak check it. I tried to set the regulator as low as possible, about 6 to 10 psi. I then put the rubber tip to the vent screw hole on the transmission top. Then I start spraying it down with soapy water and looked for bubbles.


I found the bubbles at my drain plug even with my new proper seal. So I pulled the plug to take a look. Here's the problem, the last little bit of the threads and sealing surface aren't there.


Silicon to the rescue. I put the plug mostly in and just coated the last couple threads. The instructions on this copper silicon says go finger tight, wait an hour, torque, and wait 24 hours. That seemed to work. No more bubbles there. Don't use silicon on engine parts, but on a transmission, you should be fine since there aren't any oil passages to clog.


The next bubbles I found were clear up here. That's really odd, because it has to be a porosity issue and it should technically be "above the water line", but I might as well fix it.


Black silicon here so it doesn't scream like the orange stuff.


I filled the transmission with Bell Ray Big Twin oil, so if it leaks, I can find the red trail.

I did this work weeks ago and I haven't gotten around to blogging about it. The drain plug seems to be holding.

South Central Shovelfest 2016 - Sunday Wrap-up

I was just about home and I got a call from Mike(Speedjunkie). His regulator had quit in Snyder. Mike only had my number because KenK had it and happened by where he was broke. We called Hippy in Lawton and he couldn't help. His truck was broken from the 8 inches of rain in Lawton that day. Then Rob got home and called his Indy shop owner a Sunday, but he didn't have the right one. So Mike charged his battery and Rob took his battery and they got Mike's bike to Rob's house in Lawton. I came back to Lawton with my trailer and drug his bike to my house in OKC for the night.



We had a good regulator, but it was on my bike. So we robbed my bike and Mike went back to Kansas in the morning.


JamesD brought me a NOS regulator from his stash later in the week.
 

South Central Fest was great. Thanks to Don and Barb for setting it up and thanks to everyone that made it great.

South Central Shovelfest 2016 - Sunday Part 1

About three o-clock Sunday morning a heck of storm blew in. Don says Noland was packed and on his bike before the second raindrop hit. That shovelhead was heard for miles burning out of valley in the middle of the night. One lightning strike hit so close to camp that we thought we were dead or tree was going to fall on us.

I had already loaded my bike onto the trailer and me and my family burned home. We caught Wyatt, Shane, and Kye going around Abilene.



My wife took some pictures with the Creative Shot mood on accident, but they turned out pretty cool.