A65 teardown

Things are coming along, encountered a strange issue where tightening the worm gear to the crank pinion was causing the crank to tighten up on the bearing, went back and forth with EdV on this and eliminated other possible causes like the oil pump binding, and lack of clearaance on the drive side. Turns out that the TS inner race was tightening up on the ball bearings, confirmed with some plastigauge, ended up making a .002 shim to go between the inner races and that solved the problem. The TS worm and jam nut are left hand thread, so self tightening in use, Ed suggested dropping the torque on these as well.

Timing side assembled



Barrels back from machining, .004 skirt clearance



Reground followers



Barrels installed, went to time this new cam of unknown make sourced from Walridge, the keyway is miscut so the stock pinion marks throw the timing way off, ended up advancing 1 tooth on the cam to get it to match book specs.

It’s careful ‘feel as you go’ and attention to detail, especially of things that don’t feel quite right, that make all the difference.

Looking good

Cylinder head installed and primary assembled, Hayward belt kit went on without fuss, but even with the SRM bearing pressure plate the clutch is far heavier than the 3 spring unit in my Triumph, found a proper 7/8" centre lever, pushrod is cut to correct length, and I've got the plat springs backed out quite a ways. Will try to source some lighter weight springs



As with the Triumph I made up these washers that hold 012 orings on the bottom side to seal up the bolts in the head

Sorting through some OPRVs I had in a box, on the left is a SRM stainless piston/body unit, and the right is one of unknown origin with a stainless piston and zinc body. The SRM's piston is very obviously galled, but not the piston from the Zinc bodied unit. Also note significant differences in spring length and shimming, I'll be reusing the zinc bodied unit, but with the shimmed SRM spring and stainless cap. Both were run in my triumph for a season with filtered oil

there's been much talk of stainless bodied OPRVs evidencing this problem... et voila!

Siamese headers finally arrived, some fettling to get everything lined up, but I did machine the exhaust ports on the head with inserts to bring them back to concentric. That's the final piece of the puzzle, just need to wait for some free time to take her out for a break in run

Sweet lookin’ Beeza dude

just starting on an a65 engine project after setting up the chassis this last year. Thank you for detailing your bearing conversion.