yoeddynz

yeah just an oil pump. Previously there was a smaller chain that ran two oil pumps plus a water pump! So as far as torque loadings go the chain I have selected is pretty burly and compared to the torque a strong rider can put through a chain its nothing. Wear over a long time is the issue but yeah- oil bath. Certainly going to find out over time how long it lasts. Treat me and my engine as an interesting experiment in the testing of bicycles chains.

Feel free to explain to me what's so scary about it? Its not finished yet. What you've seen so far is a mock up. @tortron yeah i considered using an 8 speed cassette and having a variable oil pump speed. Campag for max italian street cred. Or shimano because it works better....

" Shimano? " you say... Well its not really that exciting. Please don't expect a Heath Robinson like contraption using XTR derailleurs, in the lovely pewter colour that the 965 series came in. Or better yet - some mint deore XT thumbshifters used as tensioners. Oh yes- the bike geek is strong in this one! But I'm jumping ahead again. First off - I needed a way to take drive from the crank while at the same time beef up a problem area. Now have a look at this next photo... See that big splined shaft sticking out. That was the main drive to the original clutch setup that resided in the removed rear casing. It had to go. So I chopped it off. I did have a photo that Hannah took of me chopping it off with a cutting disc (there was no way our bandsaw would have touched it) but I cant find the photo. However- here is a photo of that bit removed and now residing on our shelf of random bits.. Now luckily there is actually a flange on the crank. This was one item I had been trying to check before committing to buy an engine ages ago. I didn't know how think it was though, nor had I confirmed what the size of the six bolts were although I was fairly sure they were 8mm (but really hoping for 10mm). I was not going to be happy taking power off the crank, albeit its only 100 bhp propelling a little Imp and so I had a little think about it. I needed three things here. 1: a decent flange with 10mm bolts for the flywheel 2: a surface to run a main crank seal against because my engine design was going to have a sealed up oil bath for the oil pump drive 3: a larger flange to put a sprocket on. The design I came up with was an adaptor hub to bolt onto the existing flange using the six m8 bolts. But instead of just relying on the bolts to hold it I would machine it to a shrink fit and really make sure it wasn't going to move. Probably a bit overkill but why not. So I machined up this out of a rather large lump of steel (so filling my steel bin with a lot of swarf) It has two axial surfaces to shrink onto the crank- the flange outer and the stub I left over from the original splined sticky outy bit and clamped in place while it cools with nice new stront cap screws. Here I am tapping the threads for the flywheel hub.. Here's a small benchtop oven making things grow in size with heat and in the back ground is a crank just having recieved its new hub... In place and cooling down. Would be a bugger to remove now.. You can see the larger flange to which a sprocket will attach to. Now I needed to sort out a nice flat, removable surface to mount a potential idler sprocket and tensioners on plus an square surface to mount the oil pump driveshaft support on. I cut a piece of 6mm alloy plate in the faithful ( and noisy) tablesaw. I had several useful threaded bolt holes left over from a variety of the original transmission bearing holders, shafts gubbins and shifter wotsits. I machined up a little pointy bit of steel with an offset slot. Then I was able to screw it into a hole leaving the pointy end just proud. With my plate lined up where I needed it I gave the plate a smack with a hammer just over the pointy thing below, thus leaving an indent I could drill through. Repeat for the others and I had perfectly lined up holes... Cool. I could now support the oil pump shaft. I machined the end of it and tapped a new hole. Then machined up a bearing holder like so... Next little thing was to join the cranks rotating motion to the oil pump and make that rotate.... Hmmmm. I had to really think about this one. There was not a lot of room for industrial chains and sprockets. I thought about using a toothed belt that can run in oil like some of the later cars. But apart from the prices (!) they are not available in many sizes and are apparently prone to throwing their toys from the cot. I couldn't run a dry belt due to the bottom half of this area being part of my new allocated sump capacity, not to mention sealing it would be very tricky. So really- chains and sprockets were the best choice. Why 'chains' and sprockets? Not just one chain?... Because I wanted to drive the Honda pump at or as close to the original speed- which is slightly under driven. This way I would be sure that the pressure and volume would be about right. No ifs or buts. I didn't mind going slightly faster because the stock goldwing has a low oil pressure at an idle of 11 psi at 800-900 rpm. I'd be happier if that was a bit higher. With this in mind I had already worked out roughly what gearing I would need to be in a certain range. I had worked out the original gear ratios and then used a gear calculator to play around with ideas... But what chain and sprockets to use? I enquired with so many places and had done loads of internet searches but the answer came to me when I lifted one of my bikes down from the wall before going for a ride. Of course! Bike chain, chain rings and sprockets! At first I worried about the strength and durability but thought about the abuse my chains go through, especially on my singlespeed MTB. I have only broken one chain and it was after it had been jammed. Over about 15 years of being a bike mechanic in several different shops almost all chain failures I had seen were due to something else cause them- unless they were a cheap unsuitable chain. So I went through my varied collection of chainrings and cassettes (I have many) and selected out the ones with a tooth count that would work and fit. I machined up a spare shimano freehub to take bearings like this... Machined out a Shimano mtb chainring and cobbled together a mock up to see if it might just work... It looked good but I was not happy with the 3/32 width ring and sprockets. Even though they will be in a oil bath there was still not a lot of thickness to the teeth. I was not expecting this engine build to do Lexus levels of mileage but I wanted it to last long enough to do some good hoons for a few years at least. I had enough room to go up to 1/8th width chain but no more. I looked into BMX chainrings but very hard to get the toothcount I needed and sprockets were much the same- plus bloody expensive when going odd sizes. So a mate at a local engineering suppliers priced up some american sprockets that I could grind/machine down. Wow- cheaper then shimano stuff and tough as. I bought a set of four and set to turning them down. Not easy- in fact it took ages as they are induction hardened teeth. But I finally took them down from 5mm to 3.3 and they fitted a spare bmx chain I had perfectly. Much more sturdy... I have now got a very durable bmx/e bike chain that has flat straight outer edges on its plates- this will suit my tensioners. I have a couple of tensioner ideas to try and think I have nailed how to make them easy to fit and effective. Remember- I want all of this lots to be super easy to unbolt and swap out. Its all a totally unknown design with regards to longevity so it needs to be easily serviceable. More soon ...... Alex

More great updates. I like seeing cars get taken apart revealing previous beautiful repairs like that... Hey- what's that fibreglass sports car shell at your mates place? Lotus europa?

Took the Imp for a hoon on Saturday. Went to visit a mechanic who works from home up a valley not far from us because he has fields of cars and I had spotted some Subaru Leones. Sadly he doesn't have an front wheel drive models because I wanted to nab any gear boxes that I can just as spares in case my decides to detonate. Top bloke though- he knows his scooby stuff having been a mechanic for Subaru NZ. He's given me a contact to try for boxes. So since it was a very lourverly sunny spring day indeed we thought we'd continue our drive further up the valley and check out a load of nice roads we normally cycle on. It was so much fun. I didn't drive super quick. Just enjoyed the nice handling and it feels quick anyway when you sit so low. I took this pic along the way. (some fellow oldschoolers might know the area because it was part of a circuit I lead folks on for a friday cruise on the weekend of the oldschool nats, Marahau 2014. We went to Mapua for lunch and hung out with all the posh people there. Then home via the supermarket to end a nice day out in the Imp. The day before I had picked up some carpet that local lady who makes funky cushions had sorted me out with for cheaps. Proper auto carpet, same as what I had used in my Viva... The workshop is finally a fair bit emptier having smashed out a few other jobs and got them picked up/delivered. One job we just did was build some hefty steel art deco styled gates and a large set of doors for under an outdoor cooking area for a customer in Nelson. We reckon the gates look really neat so I have to share ... Now going back in time to where I had finished off in the last post. The oil pump was now mounted and I had a oil filter mount in place. I had forgotten to take a photo of the inlet/outlet off the mount but picture two tubes coming out of its base and going through the wall of the engine block. I now had to link those two pipes with things. One had to make it way to the oil pump and the other had to work its way to the back of the engine (as positioned in the Imp) and link up to the main oil gallery into the block. I had to have a good think about this. Whatever I do to make it work has to be easy to assemble, through the bottom of the engine with the sump cover removed. Once the engines two clamshells are placed together I don't want to ever separate them again for two main reasons... 1 : Because that involves removing the heads so new gaskets required and that costs money and I dont like spending money. 2 : It also involves a tricky little system to fit three pistons into the bores, from the bottom of the bores, using removable piston ring compressors through a gap of about an inch inside. You'll see more on that later. I am NOT looking forward to that bit. Originally the Honda oil feed system used pipes and sealed everything with O rings. It works well and makes sense. I could work with that. I did entertain using lots of AN fittings and hose etc. However there was a few reasons why not. They are a bit pricey. They were not easily available locally, especially during lockdown. It is not at all easy to swing spanners inside this engine block. Did I mention they are pricey ? Ultimately if money was not really an issue for me I would dry sump the engine and run a external pump. But ugly, expensive, external oil tank in the way somewhere, driving the pump off a currently non existent belt drive pulley (not even got to that point yet for an alternator but I have an idea) So keep it simple with stuff I have to hand! With that I rummaged through the pile of alloy stock I had and found a few bits that would work... But O rings were going to be a bit trickier. The size used by Honda didn't match anything I had nor anything I could find on my suppliers website. They were odd. I looked through a Honda parts diagram online and found the Honda part number along with the exact size of the O rings. Nice of Honda to do that! Looked up sizes online and it turns out that they are a JIS standard Oring. I never knew of such things. Actually very common among many Japanese cars. Even better - when I searched through my suppliers website they actually had them! But wait - there's more!!! They were cheaper than all the other O rings close in size. Yay! But the shop was shut to public and I couldn't visit it anyway. Boo! Thanks Covid However- the shop was open for supplying engineering places that were considered essential services. It happened that one of the employees lived not far from me. He delivered some and left them in my mail box. Yay! So now I could start what Hannah refers to as the London underground of oil tubes. I worked my way from the oil filter and made various blocks with holes and tubes with grooves. All very carefully measured to fit just right and tight but constructed in a way that it could be taken apart from the sump opening. I was lucky that I happened to have a large drill bit that was spot on for the final pass on the bores to suit the pipes and O rings for exactly the same amount of 'squish' that the Honda factory pipes and fittings have. I made sure that all the bores were as big if not bigger than the Honda setup so not to increase restriction on the oil paths. You'll see later that I will be over driving the pump in speed by a notch but that's another story. I must add that the job of planning, measuring and machining up all these little bits was a super fun way of spending time during lockdown (in between going for heaps of bike rides on super quiet roads!) Here's some pics of my subway tube network. These are the two blocks that seal onto the in and out pipes for the oil filter... The closest hole will feed a pipe heading back to link to the oil gallery. The further most block has a hole that takes a connecting pipe from the pump. Here's a view from the side... Lets zoom out a bit so you can see where they are in relation to the pump... You can also see how the pump is bolted to an adaptor plate which is bolted to the inside of the block. My connecting pipe that goes between pump station and filter station is in two parts so it can be fitted easily from below... Together its like this (lighter for scale... because all the cool kids measure the dish of their hand machined oil pump pipes with lighters like this)... Then fitted in place... Connections man! So I had the pump to filter sorted. The filter to main gallery looks like this... That pipe sticks out through a hole that was originally for the shifter mechanism ( I think. But whatever... thanks Honda for your convenient hole) You can see the oil gallery below. I will make a bolt on block with oil ways to connect them. I will also design it so I have the potential to take off from there and add an oil cooler. I would rather run the engine without one. It never had one as a bike but the engine did have more air flow over the engine though. But my engine will have a well finned sump cover to pull off heat plus be free to radiate heat better than on the bike. I shall run it and see. Its not a race car so I suspect that with really good synthetic oil I'll be fine. Its a pretty understressed engine anyway. Maybe I can add an oil temp sender to my filter block and run that through the ECU so I can have it show up on Tunerstudio for evaluation? Hmmmm - I like little things like that. But either way- keeping it as an option is good. I have yet to make the cover plate (some alloy plate is under my bench for it) that will go over that end. All simple stuff that. Once that's in place I can make a union block to suit the pipes. That cover plate will also have the oil filler and possibly a centre engine mount to suit a cross member but I have not yet decided on that. Moving around to the flywheel end of the engine you can see where the oil pump drive shaft hangs out, waving about like an unsupported shaft with no attachments... That shaft needs some motorvation and that is going to be part of the next exciting instalment. It involves Shimano....

I knew that those indoor fountain things houses have would be useful for something!

Tell me more about that hino. What's its wheelbase and over all max weight? We have pretty much sold ours (awaiting contract to be done)

This had me laughing!....

FUCK YEAH! Go hard, go early and drill port it. Please don't forget the Ramflo filter for that extra 10% Ooooooohhhhh this is gonna be fun. I cant wait to see the looks on the Barries faces next time the bonnets open at the southland A&P and classic car show etc

Ohhhhh shucks Glad I am entertaining ya.

Is a suitably good enough reason to post up threads for me too. Otherwise we'll be there in our retirement homes wondering why the fuck we aint retired in the Maldives on a yacht like those other lucky fuckers. Because we fucked with old car holes for money is why.... But it is fun.

Here I go, late Saturday night and another installment. Because that's how I party... I thought I'd post up a pic of all the other bits safely tucked away on my beautifully arranged 'Honda Goldwing cylinder head apartment storage facilities. At the right height to peer at when needed (maybe for a mojo boost one day - "oh yeah.. that's what the rest of the engine looked like before I pulled it apart, chopped it up and started a whole can of worms type project from it") Here's a piston storage rack that would make Maclarens factory effort look like something from scrapheap challenge.. Carefully laid out heads- these engines have identical heads, cam carriers, cams etc for each side. Don't mix them up!.. All covered up by a lovely sheet so not to get covered in dust. (It makes it like a secret stash of engine goodness).. Now back to the block/engine casings. I'll call it a block from now on, ignoring the fact its two halves. So I have now got to re-mount the oil pump on the opposite side, higher up and turned 180 degrees from where it was originally mounted. It has to go about here... I also had to work out a new way of getting the oil from this new position to the oil filter and then onwards to the starting point of the main oil gallery. Here's a lovely picture you can ponder over. Best pondered with some strong coffee... The standard oil filter location. This is on what was the front of the engine but is now the back and right where I wanted to put a cross member to hold the engine up. Not to mention a big chunk of that lower half of the casing has disappeared after I chopped it off, right through the original oil filter centre line... So that had to go. I looked over the engine and eventually worked out a spot that would suit a new filter pedestal to be mounted so allowing easy access for filter removal. It also had potential to allow for a Mazda style oil cooler or a take off plate to suit a normal oil cooler. It was going to mount roughly about here... It was going to require a big hefty lump of alloy to start with. But I was on lockdown along with most of NZ. Luckily the local engineering workshop that I go to for many bits of random steel stock was doing 'essential' jobs for some industries still running. The workshop foreman left me a lump of alloy in his letterbox that happened to be on the way home from the supermarket shop. This was a lucky thing! Here's the lump of alloy after a lot of it was turned into many many little tiny shards of alloy... I'll get back to that lump later. Next thing was make some flat areas that I could mount things on and line stuff up with. The block was split in two luckily I was able to clamp it to the bed of the mill. I machined the inside so... I had to do this on both sides in different areas. One side had to be machined to suit a new location for the oil pump. On the other casing i machined out pockets to take machine bits that would locate new oil pump feed and return pipes. I was going to do oil the pipe work in alloy using the same size pipes and o-rings as previously used by Honda for the original setup. But now I'm getting ahead of myself and even forgetting where I'm at in writing this. In fact - many times as I looked over the oil line layout I was scheming I would get a bit confused. I felt like this bloke who had just turned up at this new city for a job interview and discovered his phone was dead, his map was 40 years out of date and he didn't speak the local language... So where was I?... Machining things and making a mess of the floor, trailing alloy swarf everywhere inc into the housetruck. Not making friends with Hannah or the cat. Anyway. That oil filter pedestal/mount? needed a flat pocket to mount to. I machined away the casing so creating such an area... On the other side of that I machined out a matching pocket. It began sort of like this... ..and continued like ... Because it was so fun I took away more alloy... Now I had a nice location for the mount. This would be pulled into the outside pocket with a custom gasket sealing it, via bolts from the inside going through another bit of alloy that would be machined to help locate the pipes in and out. From the outside it would sit like this... I drilled the mount and then set about to tap the M18 thread. But I didn't have a M18 tap. Its lockdown so borrowing one from someone was out of the question. But I did have a few spare old Mazda V6 oil filter mounts so I nicked the threaded pipe from one of them and made a tap... It worked fine (phew! ) .... I then turned out the oil groove to suit the Honda filter. I didn't take a photo of this but you'll see it here as I was drilling the oil ways through... Drilled and tapped some mounting holes... Now I had a lovely oil filter mount... Annoyingly I didn't take any pics of the oil pump mount but I can describe it. The oil pump bolt via three bolts to a alloy plate. This plate is bolted to the inside of the casing via bolts that come from outside through spot faced locations... The oil pump shaft runs backwards towards what will be the flywheel area where it will be driven by a series of two chains off the crank adaptor - sort of like the original. But backwards and on the other side. That you will see soon along with a network of machined pipes and fittings that almost need a subway map to follow. More soon....

Oh yeah that car- it pisses over everything at the start grid. Such good acceleration! Dude looks to be a good driver too. It used to have a Datsun A12 in it before he fitted the boxer. Must be a thing....

Its just the irony of a big staunch 4wd being called a cutesy name. Like fluffy.

How about the.... 'Poppit 2000'

Just found this thread after the guy had offered advice on my thread. Holy shit. Ive yet to look all the way through it but he seems a bloody talented fella whos bean mucking about with DIY EFI for a long time on top of building some cool cars... https://www.rodsnsods.co.uk/forum/garage/medusa-206057

Oh Yep they've been suggested by others. But too big in bore size and too tall. Edit- the 675 ones.. Not the above e throttle. Caught out posting as ben was. The gw heads have puny 26mm inlet tracts. The k75 are 32mm. Those speed triple items are something like 41mm and oval. I don't have the room to make a suitable adaptor to go down from that to 26mm.

Sweet. Will do. Im hoping I can do a simple enough flange that i can just mill my own. Although our little drill mill can only take so much side load so cuts are shallow and slow making for a dull day indeed when attempting something grand...

No injectors on this puppy. Its got crabs. So my plan was to make some flanges to suit the carbs, with injector added seats to suit. Might even ask of a friend who has one of those high tech workshop tools that cuts things out of solid stock by magic. Complete numpty control?

Yeah I was thinking I could get them sent to my brother and see if he can do the old wink and nudge with karen down at the postshop and get a much cheaper postage rate than the ebay sellers seem to offer.

Hey Hogan- cheers. Yeah I have seen a few snippets of his channel and I must watch more but I always end up drifting off to watch old episodes of the peep show or 8 out of ten cats etc etc. I really must sort my shit out and learn stuff from channels like his on the internets. Funny enough was that over on the uk retrorides forum someone suggested I check out Allans channel too. Whilst I'm here- you're into bikes along with half of the chch crew. Its been suggested on retrorides that the itbs from a BMW k75 would be a really good match for my heads. If anyone knows where in NZ I can try to locate such things that would be sweet. They are available bloody cheap on Ebay uk but postage is a killer. Unless again someone has a good idea on cheaper ways to ship from the UK. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1986-BMW-K75-Throttle-Body-Bodies-13541461113-FREE-UK-SHIPPING-131/264476173551

YES! Yes you should

OK so I had the engine sitting there in pretty much the spot I wanted it. I had taken loads of measurements and pondered many aspects in an attempt to really look into the future and pick up on any potential problems that could arise. It was pretty obvious that the bodyshell was going to need a fair bit of chopping about in the tunnel region (ooooooohhhhh I can see the originality preachers trembling already..) and that the engine was too low in its nether regions. You can see it here. Its not stupidly low and I have seen worse but for a car that has to navigate our driveway with its rocky surface it needed to be better... It had a nice burly bottom but my intentions were to raise that and make a removable sump plate. Still with fins though to help keep the oil cool. Here's what the underside currently looks like... I pulled the engine out and sat it on the bench. The Imp then got its little Datsun heart bolted back in place and reassembled to working order (yay for no more leaks I thought..but it still leaks because British) I poured myself a whiskey. It might have been a few. I studied the crankcase and sump carefully... I then went over my plan of attack. My main issue was the oil pump. It was going to have to move further up in the block so I had to find a suitable place to mount it. I also had to work out how I would drive it. Originally it there was a larger spur gear running off the crank, driving another spur gear. Off the centre of the spur gear was a sprocket which ran a chain down to a sprocket on the oil pump shaft. The oil pump shaft ran not one but two oil pumps. The main pump in the sump area and a smaller scavenging pump in the clutch housing area which squirted oil up over all the gears. The shaft also ran through the main pump to the front of the engine (what is now going to be the back) and powered a water pump. A bit tricky to picture? Well here is a stunning bit of pencil art I did just now ... Plus a photo of the all those gubbins on view at the back. The driven spur gear is missing in this pic but you can see the splined hub it slides onto with the driver sprocket on inner end... Honda had made it all very neat but also all very complicated for what I required. I just need one main oil pump to feed the bearings. So I move the oil pump up. Fine. I'll mill a flat area and make new mounting blocks to suit. But because I have removed the spur gear arrangement (no room for that lot with a custom flywheel planned for the crank) I'll have to chain drive the pump with sprockets (at the correct speed too). OK. That should be easy enough. But no spur gear means the pump will be running backwards. Oh bother. So how about I mount the pump on the opposite side of the sump casing and so turn it around. The shaft is long enough because it goes right through the pump each way. I took the pump apart and checked if this was feasible. It was. Yes! Now why not just run an external oil pump and dry sump it etc ? Well mainly because I am not Mr Money and hence prefer (have) to do it as cheaply as I can with what's at hand (more of a challenge this way and more satisfying too) Also- if I use the Honda pump and keep the required oil routing sensible then it sort of remains factory. I am also going to do my very best at keeping the external look of the engine as clean as possible with a nice uncluttered engine bay. That's just the style I like. Plus we were only just into lockdown here and I wanted to crack on, get as much fabrication as I could done while on my ' holiday in the shed '... So now I had a plan to follow and could start chopping things up. I chopped it just below the engine mounts I intend to use. There is a myriad of long bolts running through the cases clamping them together. The main larger ones are all up around the crank area. Then another two lines of smaller ones below (which hold the cases together under the against the loading of the transmission shafts- now gone) Plenty enough bolts so the lowest are now gone. This lot will be stronger when I have finished with my idea. I kept chopping it up. Took a bit more off because it was fun. Lovely alloy too I might add. Very clean castings. Ended up with an engine a fair bit shorter in height... I got the cuts pretty square and straight. Made easy by the fact that Honda had nicely added reference lines for the purpose- just like on a pack of butter... Now I had to mill it flat. It would take decent sized knee mill to clean up something this size and awkward. Or how about a little drill mill, a steel bench and a big plate of steel I had rescued from a Japanese dentist chair I stripped for bits... I had to position it just right and use the swing on the radial drill mill to run over the cut edges. It looked a bit suspect but it worked fine with light cuts. After the bottom of the sump case was flat and square I then milled a flat area on the face below the crank flange. This would leave a good flat surface, perpendicular to the crank centre line, to mount a plate with an idler sprocket on it for the oil pump drive I had sort of nutted out in my head (but really had not gone any further then just that and it could well have been just nutty) That area ended up like this... The pump would fit somewhere in here like this... Then I threw the lot on the fire... and swept up all the alloy chips that seem to have gone everywhere! When it was nice and warm I welded some new flanges on. Very carefully and slowly I tacked them, taking my time to make sure they stayed true and square and keeping it warm in between tacks. They did. Yay I welded as much as I could reach with my torch along the tricky edge leaving just a few spots that I'll seal at build time with JB weld. It turned out so good that I barely needed to give it a tickle with a larger file, more just a clean up and sits square on my bench. Straight edge reveals my bench is indeed flat too- I had to check! I was so happy at this point because it was one bit of the conversion I feared could go wrong - however I think the warming up and that fact the block is a complex very rigid shape helped keep it all straight. I sat back with a cup of tea and admired my nice burly flanges that I will bolt a plate to...

It would be 22 hours of sleep, an hour of eating etc , half hour of cleaning and half hour of general 'fuck you' cat stuff...

Plus I'm a fucking good looking bloke with with a full head of dashing (greyish) hair and a chiselled manly jawline. I'm also incredibly modest. But I've no time for doing youtube stuff. I entertained the idea and then looked into how much time might have to go into making something decent enough. I feel awkward in front of a camera and don't know that I have that sparkle. But mainly its a time thing.