Vincent 1360

Cj-I guess at 98 things have to be quite desperate before one exits the bed!
Fortunately my 67 year old Vincent is still quite perky, even seems to think it is a hotrod at times.

Lctgr- yes I am very happy with the quality of the items. Many of the items are well beyond the quality of the original stuff, which was very good for the times.
For example, Terry's cams tested at Rockwell 66 , well beyond even Stellite hardness.

The valve timing was interesting because the camwheels and idler Terry provided me with have no marks. Standard cams and idlers as provided by the Spares Co. and others all are marked for timing. Those cams come with the wheels pressed on in the correct position. A jig is used for this.
These cams came with wheels separate , a cam graph showing the valve crossover point and Terry's instructions to "play" with the timing until correct. This was one job that went more easily than expected.
The rear cylinder is considered the no. 1 cylinder. The graph showed the crossover or point of equal lift, intake opening+ exhaust closing at about 3 to 4 degrees btdc and the height at. 170" to. 176"

Since the cams are a 3 thou interference fit in the wheels, the rear cam went in the freezer, the wheel in the bbq. After the wheel was heated to 350 degrees f ( temp crayon) the can dropped into the wheel without interference. I just dropped the cam in without worrying about it's orientation to the gear teeth.
The halftime pinion on the Vincent has 5 keyways, this allows for good adjustment. I won't bore people with the math, but it works out that the greatest remaining deviation from any desired setting is only1.5 degrees, once the closest key way is chosen.

With the cam positioned for compression ( both pushrods on the base circle, valves closed position) valves are set up with pushrods past tight and lifted a little. It doesn't matter if one valve if lifted 20 thou and the other is lifted Fifty thou off the base circle as you are only measuring can profile with this method. I should add that TDC was found earlier using a piston stop, the degree wheel was thenpositioned correctly and locked to the crank.

The engine is then rolled thru until the 4 degree BTDC intake opening exhaust closing point is found. If the valve lift as measured with dial gauge, is not equal, the can is either advanced or retarded until it is equal. Coarse amounts of advance or retard are done by rotating the cam relative to the engine, idler or halftime pinion removed, then replacing the gear in a new tooth position. Fine adjustment is done by choosing the best halftime pinion keyway position.
I was lucky in that one of the keyways gave the exact timing desired, equal lift at 4 degrees BTDC. This 4 degree BTDC is not particular to the Vincent, it will work for pretty much any engine. In this case equal lift came out at. .167" lift, so the can grind must be ever so slightly different than the came detailed in the graph.

This all sounds more difficult in explanation than it is in practice. The whole operation of setting the rear cam at equal lift took perhaps 15 minutes. The front cam took a little longer, maybe 30 minutes or so because the halftime key way has now been chosen for perfect timing at the rear cam and cannot be changed to suit the front can, that would throw the rear cam off.
To do the front cam, the crank was rotated forward 410 degrees to the same position for the front cylinder, 4 degrees BTDC on the exhaust stroke, intake opening.
To get the timing for this cam I tapped the wheel onto the cam about 1/8" and made sure that it was sitting squarely, not cocked to one side.
I then put the cam in place as near to equal lift as the teeth would allow. Once in place becomes very clear as to whether the can needs to rotate forward ( advance) or rearward ( retard) to achieve equal lift at this 4 degree BTDC position.
Holding the can in the soft jaws of the vice and placing a couple of rods thru the lightening holes in the can wheel, a 2 foot long pipe worked as a lever on the rods to rotate the wheel a degree or so at a time until the desired timing was found.
After that, the camwheel was pressed all the way home on the cam and timing rechecked.
The final operation was to make timing marks on all the gears as well as lineup marks between camwheels and cams, just to indicate if the cams have ever slipped in their wheels.
Glen

The cam graph showing lift at the valves. The only thing I was interested in for timing purposes was the crossover point or point of equal lift, intake opening.



Degree wheel.
This one is nice because it highlights the tdc and bdc points for cylinder 1 and also for cylinder 2, which is 50 degrees away in piston position , same as the 50 degree angle between the cylinders.



Dial indicators in place. The front camwheel is still being adjusted here, you can see it is only barely onto the can, which allows for slipping the can inside the wheel to get perfect adjust ment. This was done in the vise as described above



Pressing the front can home after timing has been done.

Gears marked for timing with electric pencil. Timing marks were made with cylinder 1 on exhaust stroke at 4 degrees btdc, which is the equal lift point. The halftime pinion also was/marked relative to the big idler and the chosen keyway on the halftime pinion marked with a dot.
If any or all the gears are removed from the engine for some reason, it is easy to find the correct timing again. The engine is positioned at 4 degrees btdc exhaust stroke on cylinder one, then the gears and cams replaced with marks all lining up.
After this is done, one rotation later the marks will no longer lineup, even tho timing is correct. This is because, for longevity, Irving designed the engine with a "hunting tooth" in the big idler. The big idler has an odd number of teeth which means it constantly changes it's tooth to tooth orientation with the even toothed halftime pinion and camwheels. It takes about 100 revolutions before the marks line up again!
If in doubt about timing it is easier just to pull out the big idler, put the engine at 4 degrees btdc ex. Stroke cyl. One and position all components with marks lined up as the big idler is pushed in again.

My brother has built an historic speedway sidecar with an 880 JAP engine, for a friend. A week ago he took it to the Broadford Bonanza and raced it. For the first time, it behaved itself and ran properly. He beat two very good Vincents with it, one ridden by an Australian speedway champion. I would not have thought the 880 JAP would be that good.

Allen, those are some long pushrods!
Irving went to great trouble to design the Vincent with a high camshaft so that the pushrod length would be very short. This reduces Valve train weight and adds stiffness.
For all his trouble he was rewarded by having his design disallowed in some pushrod engine race classes. Some raceways would only allow the Vincent to race in Overhead camshaft divisions!

Glen

Your cams and followers do look nicely made, quite confidence inspiring when compared to the stock jobs.

Interesting that you're keeping the valve lifter mechanism etc. Godet does away with this, even my 10:1 CR 1330 had no de-compression facility.

This is a bit bigger job forthe starter as it is a 102 stroke and 10.5 to one. And then there are the T.P. heads.
Terry says that an e start will not crank this motor over without a compression release. For his Bonneville race bike, which is essentially the same engine as this, he built a wheel starter using a heavy duty Nissan truck starter. It would not crank the bike over with two 12 volt truck batteries attached. He fitted a compression release and that solved the problem. The T.P. heads are notoriously hard to kick over as they have a bathub shaped compression chamber with a very large squish band, which makes rollover particularly difficult.
I may or may not fit an e-start, it will add about 8 pounds to the bike. From what I have seen of e- starts on Vincents, long term it is a good idea to retain the kickstart as well. I recall P Godet and friends working on a broken e start on one of the two 1330 bikes he brought to the IOM in 2007. That bike was not fitted with a kicker, just the e start.
For kickstarting the compression release is definitely needed. I thought about fitting the Royal Enfield decompressor, however, that would mean loss of the second plug, which is needed to fire this head design.
So it is back to the hummingbird skeleton decompressor. Way too many parts, but when all done the Vincent decompressor works very well. Even after sixty seven years of use!

Glen

Glen, I was looking at the first picture in this thread. I have never measured run-out on a crank that way although I can see how it would work. It would need to be a precision chuck though since most 3 jaw chucks only center things to within .003". (My guess is that you cut the center point after chucking the piece of steel in the lathe.) We always just spun the crank in V-blocks and measured the run-out on the end of the crank. I always set up small Honda singles to .0005" even though I knew I would never be able to tell the difference from the factory allowed tolerance.

12 tons of interference is amazing! All of your stuff just looks absolutely great.
Dan.

Hi Dan
The chuck stays stationary and the crank rotates on fixed centres, so run out of the chuck is not a factor.
I did have to rework one of the crank centres with a Dremel as it was machined off about a thou. Once the centre holes are dialed in, then any run out in the crank itself is easy to spot.

Glen

The chuck stays stationary and the crank rotates on fixed centres, so run out of the chuck is not a factor.
I did have to rework one of the crank centres with a Dremel as it was machined off about a thou. Once the centre holes are dialed in, then any run out in the crank itself is easy to spot.

Click to expand...

That sounds like a good way to do it. I'll have to remember that. So you could tell the centre was off because it showed run-out right at the end where the crank centre is? The V-block method has the advantage of not needing a lathe or for the centres to be exactly concentric.

It might indicate a little glitch in the manufacturing process that the centre was off a bit. My guess is that it was turned between centres and the one in the chuck or morse taper (on the driven end.) needed to be skimmed before starting.

In any case it looks like it is going to be very close to perfect in the end.
Dan.

Yes, that's right, the starting point is to set up with the dial indicators as close to the ends of the crank as possible. Then any fault in the centre drilling position shows up. One end was not even flicking the needle, the other end was showing .001 tir, so an adjustment in the position of. 0005 was needed. 5 minutes with the Dremel took care of it.

Glen

The compression release is now fitted to Terry's high lift MK5 cams, another tedious procedure done. In addition to reshaping the dog bones to clear the cam noses, a small distance piece was made for the rod end. It sits between the first nut and the dog bone. Normally there is enough threaded adjustment on the left hand rod to get things right. With these curved followers everything changes, so the distance piece was needed.
The dog bones were made of some very tough steel, it took a long time to grind a bit off. At that , for increased life, they are fitted with a tiny hardened roller bearing , which is captured in the top of the dog bone. The roller bearing protrudes just above the top of the dog bone surface, so it contacts the hardened can followers for valve lift. No wonder the original compression releases are not worn out even after nearly seventy years of continuous use!

In a weak moment I bought a second set of MK 5 cams as , due to health reasons, Terry stopped making all parts a couple of years ago. This was the last set available of a total of maybe six sets ever made. They came in handy for fitting the comp.release as I screwed up the order of things. Having timed the engine and pressed on the cam wheels first, it was near impossible to see what needed modification on the compression release with the can wheels blocking the view. The spare cams went in and saved the day.
Terry is feeling better now and back in the parts business to a small degree, tho no more MK5 s have been made.
He is not planning on making more as the amount of work necessary to fit them is beyond what most customers are interested in doing.
On top of that, these cams are probably not ideal for most "Coffee Shop Racers" as Terry calls them. He has observed that there are a number of aging men with bags of money who are attracted to bikes like the Egli. The bike is built to very high spec at tremendous expense, then spends its life being putted down and parked in front of a Coffee Shop where the spec list can be trotted out.
These cams aren't needed for that application, standard cams will do and will provide a better idle etc.
I hope to do a bit more with the bike than park it in front of a coffee shop, though some days that is about all I'm up to!

The pushrods are another self induced unexpected hurdle. Standard Vincent pushrods are 5 15/16", but are also available in 5 7/8" and 6". Nice and short compared to most pushrod engines.
I found that the standard length pushrods I received from Terry were too long to fit. This is entirely because of the nonstandard curved followers that are needed with the radical cams. In the photo, Terry's supplied pushrods are the black Tuftrided SS items in the middle. On the right are some knackered varying length Vincent pushrods I borrowed from a friend , the shortest items he had in his collection. I used these for timing the valves, as the custom length pushrods 5.7" made by Smith Bros, had no arrived yet. The Smith bros pushrods are the ones on the left.
The standard Vincent pushrod is waisted at the ends to allow for the changing angle that occurs between the pushrod and the rocker & follower cups. The Smith Bros pushrods are not waisted, but have solid hardened ends pressed into hollow aluminium tubes. The solid Vincent pushrods are 1/4" dia. While the Smith Bros rods are 5/16" dia.
Change one thing and it changes everything!
The Smith Bros. Pushrods have been used by a few brave Vincenteers in search of an even lighter valve train. They have worked well, but must be modified.
The Smith bros pushrods must be reshaped at the ends or the end will bind on the cup and breakage will occur, especially with the high lift came I am using as this increases the angle between cup and rod end.
In the photo the reshaped end on the Smith bros rod can be seen in the lower left.

Before reshaping the Smith Bros pushrod ends, there is virtually no allowance for angle between pushrod and cup. In the photo th cup is pushed to the binding point and it still appears in line.




Reshaping the ends using a chainsaw sharpener.



This is enough angle and a bit to spare

nice photos and even nicer push rods, thanks for posting Glen looks as if you're making a fair amount of progress )

Hi CJ, it is coming along and I am quite a bit behind with the posting. I should have the engine finished and start on building the exhaust next week. There is also the kickstarter still to make and carbs stubs to modify etc etc.

After the pushrods I set about finishing off things in the timing chest. This entails setting up the big idler for zero backlash, selecting the correct size half time pinion and timing the breather gear.
Setting the idler for zero backlash is done by partially tightening the idler mount capscrews then tapping the idler up toward the cam wheels until there is zero slack between it and the camwheels. The idler should still be free to turn and easy to pull out or put back in. This is all done with the pushrods removed and the steady plate in place. The whole arrangement must be free to turn, that is there must be no tight spots should the idler be slightly out of round. If there is a tight spot then the idler mount is tapped down a few thou until the gears are uniformly easy to turn with just finger pressure, but no tooth to tooth slack can be felt when at the tightest spot.







Once the idler is adjusted into position then zero backlash must also be attained between the half time pinion and the idler. Pinions are available form the Spares Co.in one thou increments 8 thou up and down from standard size.
With my main parts order I received a standard pinion to use as a starting point. From there it would be a case of trying it, either getting lucky and having it fit or using it to guess at the correct size to order from England, wait a week, try that and repeat if necessary.
Fortunately my friend Dan Smith did something about this hurdle many years ago. While his machine shop business was still active he made or had made 1/2 dozen pinions in each of the 12 sizes. Everyone tossed money into the pot to hav e the 72 gears made up.
Local members could make use of this resource by choosing the appropriate pinion then replacing it at a later date with one of the Spares Co.items.
I like this form of Communism!



Halftime pinions I every size needed and then some:

With the steady plate on and the Pazon ignition housing mounted, the timing chest is finished, ready for the cover to go on.
The Pazon fit without modifications, seems like the first item that has gone that way on this engine.

When I installed the pushrod cover tubes the pushrods very lightly fouled on the tubes at the bottom end. This is because of the combo of highlift cams and slightly larger than stock dia. Pushrods, which were needed because of the cams!

The solution was to lift the heads one more time, remove the tubes and shorten them so they just run past the lower seals. Now everything is in the clear.



Pazon ignition trigger housing

worntorn said:

....... Now everything is in the clear.

Click to expand...

That's a mechanical marvel you've got there & totally freakin' awesome !! you should be proud of yourself Glen

Thanks CJ. Finishing off the primary drive today. The primary drive is from Bob Newby Racing and it has been another labour intense job to fit, mostly because I changed my mind and decided to run the stock Vincent primary cover.
Bob Newby suggested fabricating a flat one in sheet aluminium, which is what most people do when running these 40 mm belts.
That was my plan as well at first, but had a spare Vincent cover and it looks like a piece of sculpture, so I had to have a try at fitting it.
The problem is that the New by clutch drum and engine pulley are larger in diameter than the Vincent items, plus stick out more.
First trial of the pulleys using the provided 5/8" wide distance pieces. With the distance pieces in place the splines on the pulleys sit about right on the shaft splines but almost the entire width of the pulleys is protruding from the crankcase joint.
To use the stock cover and have it look decent I need to shift the line of the pulleys in as much as possible.

Fab up a primary cover spacer...