Vincent 1360

That would be ideal except Pazon recommends against having the EI Module in the vicinity of the Coil or HT wires.They do recommend mounting the EI module under the mag cowl, which I have done. So although there is adequate space for them, the Mag Cowl is off limits for the coils.

I think I will roll this thing off in the corner for now, at least the engine is finally together and in the frame. In a few days we are heading to the North American Vincent Rally in Weaverville, California, a 2500 mile round trip. I really should give the old Rapide a bit of TLC beforehand, maybe fresh oil and a check over of the roadside repair kit at least.
After we get back home I leave for a week of lake fishing and THEN I can get back to what I really want to do, finish this bike off and see how it runs!
After many years of no holidays, 12 hr days and 7 day work weeks, I can't believe I'm complaining about holidays, let alone Motorcycling holidays, but the truth is, it would be really nice to hear this thing run.
Glen

worntorn said:

...............After much ado it is in there.........

Click to expand...

Super, just absolutely outstanding!! Looks like it was made to be in there..Oh.... wait a minute, it was, wasn't it :mrgreen:

Thanks CJ.
It ends up being a physically small,light bike that is all engine. The engine actually outweighs the complete rolling chassis. It is looking like this iteration will weigh around 335lb finished with oil but no fuel. There is another 10 pounds of possible weight saving to be had and that is it.
My memory of riding it was that it felt completely rigid as far as torsional flex when cornerning. The stainless frame is probably the reason for that.
Hope to get back at it by late June and running by late July.

Glen

Glen you've gone down in my estimations...

Very selfish action of you I say, going off on holiday and enjoying yourself, whilst we sit and wait for the next instalment !!

Hurry home now...!!

Eddie, at the moment I'm not all the happy with me either. :|
Silly as it sounds, I find that posting about progress gives a little added incentive to keep at it and reach completion. It seems that truly finishing a job is always a difficult thing, no matter what the job is.
Glen

Glenn

The holiday will do you good and the wait be worth it, you be more excited to get back into it and while on holidays you can think about where you will mount your coils, this is a great project that you have going, now go enjoy your time off and what a great way to spend it on your bike, ride safe and have fun.

Ashley

Thanks Ashley, will follow your advice.

I realize that I have not included photos of the combustion chambre and ports, all done to Terry Prince's designs which borrow quite a lot from the Australian V8 super car series cars. Those engines make about 650 HP reliably from a little over 5 litres, so treating a large V2 as one quarter of a Super car engine is good logic.
Hence the bathtub shaped combustion chamber, big squish/quench area and twin plug ignition.



D shaped exhaust ports reduce or stop exhaust reversion and improve flow. Pontiac first used them in the 1950s on their stock car racing 6 cylinder engines. They were very effective, but were forgotten for a few decades. The D shape is in use again on a number of high performance auto engines including the LS 9 Corvette engine.



Not all of Terry's design modifications are for increased power. The original Vincent engine sometimes had a problem with the rocker bearings becoming loose in the rocker tunnels. This was not generally a problem unless the bike was used for racing, which a great many Vincents were/still are. Somewhere along the line longer rocker bearing were offered by the Spares co to deal with the problem. Also a modification was sometimes done to lock the bearing in place using a special rocker oil feed bolt.
The longer bearing was only marginally helpful because the boring in the original head was only a little longer than the original rocker bearing. Terry made the boring full depth and made up rocker bearings that are almost twice the length of the originals. He then designed a much simplified rocker feed setup that seals with a single o ring rather than two fibre washers and which locks the rocker bearing firmly in place.
His design also gets away from the standard Vincent oil line design of rubber hose to steel, back to rubber, back to steel and so on about six times. Terry's design just uses sealed in barb fittings directly on the feed boss, so it is all hose to barb for all fittings. This should be a much easier system to keep oil tight.
As he says, all in a lifetime of working on riding, thinking about and modifying Vincents .

The vavle springs are from RD Racing in the US. Using RD for Vincent valve springs was something that came about at Bonnevill 20 years ago when Terry and John Mcdougall discussed problems they were having with the UK supplied Valve springs losing seat pressure(and much engine power) over time.
RD was contacted and given some dimensions, the kits were then made up. Their excellent metallurgy means that the springs maintain about 110 pounds seat pressure almost indefinitely.

Beautiful engine. Facinating to see details of the changes made by the various engineers involved.
Thanks for sharing.

Nice combustion chambers Glen.

Finally got some free time to get back at this bike. The exhaust was top of the to do list. Starting point was to play with some 2" flex pipe to get some ideas. A cross under exhaust was the initial favourite, however it would require relocation of the kickstand, which is welded directly to the swing arm, so that was out.
I settled on this general shape.


The standard Vincent exhaust is 1 5/8" and the nuts are sized for that. The normal practice when using an exhaust larger than 15/8" is to start with the 1 5/8" then flare out to full size, in this case 2", after an inch or so. The end result looks a bit like Jerry Seinfeld's puffy sleeved shirt.
To avoid that, I made up a stub that runs thru the nut at 1 5/8" then bushes up to 1 7/8", which slides nicely into the 2" main tube.





The 2" pipe gets a slot milled at the back top. The 2" pipe is slid onto the stub just a tiny bit shy of the nut, so that the nut can still turn freely. The 2" is then tig welded to the stub thru the slot.

Same procedure for the rear cylinder, except it was much more difficult because of the need to bend immediately to get around the front cylinder. I had to leave a little bit more tube to nut slack in order to make it work. Also removed a small amount of al. from the front cylinder in order to get space to allow the rear nut to thread in square.





All tacked and ready for final welding, then lots of polishing.(stainless)

Looks excellent and I think that exhaust will be good. Only question I'd have is about the gearbox and clutch, is it 5 speed CR ?

Just binned the Terry prince cams..gone forGarry Robinsons "hotish shaddow cams,hes the guy in the i.o.w , the TP where to radical , excessive vapour from the carbs[to much overlap] at low revs..and no tick over.
Also dropped to comp 1.5 points...1200 cc and 10-1 was a bit much for the 78 year old owner :lol:

Alan - trans is 5 speed quaife but 1 St gear is the lower of their two offerings. The high first would be too high for a roadbike. Clutch is a Bob Newby Racing one off belt drive clutch, made with two extra plates.

John- The cams in this bike are very radical, so I may ending going the same route as you. On the other hand, these cams were designed by the Mercedes F1 cam development program and are said to give a good idle as well as more power than Terry's other race cams.

Here is Mal Hewitt's bike fitted with the same cams as I have, the MK5s. Definitely cammy and not a smooth idle like a good Rapide, but if my bike idles as well as his does, that will do.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ibMu1dBf894

Glen

Glenn , the video link bike is like an old slipper compaired to the RTV i have been playing with! when the revs dropped the carbs coughed out large vapour trails and refused to idle..as you already know Terry wanted to "blow away" the public with "His" Black widow...claiming 80 bhp carbs..and 100 with injection.
The bike as never been on the road yet, Russ Kemp had retained it when Terry failed to pay him..sat in collection and went htrough the auction ..why my friend wanted a total none running prototype ..god only....but i have nearly sorted it...i will know better when the new cams are in..there is [was] lots of issues with it..the tank tap inserts where stripped and the tank leaked..blow hole in the GRP ..the fairing had to be cut out, as the steering jamed..no lock,
No speedo ..going for GPS. The battery is sat right at the back and vibrates ...and way,way to loud! Repack required? The trigger unit ex harley retarded when reved !

But carnt wait to have a go!

worntorn said:

Alan - trans is 5 speed quaife but 1 St gear is the lower of their two offerings. The high first would be too high for a roadbike. Clutch is a Bob Newby Racing one off belt drive clutch, made with two extra plates.

John- The cams in this bike are very radical, so I may ending going the same route as you. On the other hand, these cams were designed by the Mercedes F1 cam development program and are said to give a good idle as well as more power than Terry's other race cams.

Here is Mal Hewitt's bike fitted with the same cams as I have, the MK5s. Definitely cammy and not a smooth idle like a good Rapide, but if my bike idles as well as his does, that will do.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ibMu1dBf894

Glen

Click to expand...

John the bike in the link is no old slipper, it is Mal Hewitt's Bonneville record setting bike! It does sound quite tractable tho, doesn't it?
It went 162 MPH on this run. It has all of Terry's stuff and is very similar to the 1360 engine I have built here. Mal's bike would be about 100 pounds heavier than my bike as it has a standard Vincent rolling chassis.
With all of the problems you mention with the RTV, it seems Terry has made some improvements along the way, or perhaps concentrated on what he is good at, the top ends.
Glen

Something i didnt mention ,is the piston crowns, They have been hand routered away at the valve cut outs...and very disappointed the valves are stock size..i expected to see at least a 50mm inlet..a.lar Vello thruxton? I conclude this engine started well..new castings electric foot, carello rods ..but then it stopped there...Fair play to the guy and i would never knock him...building a new vincent is a very time and cash consuming task..the primery cover does'nt fit right and needed a bit more alloy on the face...not plastic padding!
Terry was in big dollar debt ,partner interfering etc...maby a few more hunderd grand would have sorted it..as it was only a hand full where finnished...personaly a seperate ally tank/seat may have looked [ MHO] better. Bit like yours! I would like to do a Youtube blog when its running.
On your earler pictures with the crank betwwn centres...well i have never liked that method...errors can be found after ..there in my opinion is a far better way..and proved this a few times.

My prefered way is place a 2 inch bar of bronze in the chuck and bore out a very neat hole,,that the crank shaft is a really good "swivel fit" in other words the crank as to be twisted back and forth to Get it home...no play is allowed the crank sits in this bore with no up-down play on the other side... its at this point the lathe bearings are tested ..i then clock the far shaft .. this will instantly show any up-down error..that cannot be corrected..only side-side can be adjusted..
i would think your 14 ton fit would be impossible to move ..a thou or two..the Suddern pressure would cause the shaft to "jump" 7 ton can be moved with a rim bump on a oak post end ,as per vellocette. plus 14 ton will expand the fly wheel hole guess 3-4 thou interferance? which is a swage action..worst case broach! Remove the pin and measure the hole...well sometime?
Dont ask how i know all this..been fitting bearings donkeys.

John the fourteen ton press fit is something that goes back to the Vincent Works from 1953. They were given the task of building an aircraft drone engine that could withstand continuous full rpm for at least twelve hours.
When Vincent tried to do this with a standard Black Shadow engine, the 7 ton interference fit cranks let go, sometimes in as little as 20 minutes of full rpm running. So they used a heavier press fit. Then the main shafts broke, so they increased the mainshaft dia. With the heavier press fit and bigger mainshafts the cranks became unbreakable. These Drone aircraft were known as Picadors. A Picador crank was provided by the works for the Burns and Wright streamliner that set the world record 186 MPH in 1955 as well as for many other racing Vincents.
All Terry has done is use all of that info to recreate the Picador crank, but in 102 mm stroke in my case.

As far as trueing a crank, I don't doubt yours is a good method, however the centres and dial indicators method was shown to me by Dan Smith, a very fine motorcycle machinist and builder, pretty hard to fault his work. He has built some amazing bikes directly from raw materials including and AJS V 4 replica, Series A Vincent Rapide replica, and currently, the Supercharged Velo Roarer, almost done! When he owned his machine shop he was one of a handful of companies in the world that are certified to rebuild Helicopter transmissions. He did very well at that business and retired to pursue his passion, building one of a kind motorcycles from raw stock, making all the moulds and so on.
I did manage to shift the flywheels about two thou to a total run out of one half thou. Agreed, since it took so much pressure to move the flywheels, I was lucky to get this result. I do know that these flywheels will not shift from use!

Glenn, No doubt your gem will run well, mayby i have lost touch over the years...i can remember the 7 ton press fit took some moving..But as Vincents are a straight pin and Vellos are tapered...mayby that makes a differanc? its like a morse taper...excellent grip from that design.
Regarding centre trueing ..every thing revolves around the centres being true ,and the shafts being true..as you have new stuff this will not be an issue...i think back and recall doing the bored bush idea after finding the crank ends where hammered..which makes centre alignment inpossible. Just an idea for the future...and if you have collets...bingo ..
Best regards
And keep us up to date..carnt wait to hear the beast!
When i said the Daytona vincent sounded like a old slipper..i ment ticking over..boy did it sound great down the salt..sounded like a bit of clutch slip?

That's what I thought too and then realized it is wheelspin on the salt - even in fourth gear at what must be well over 100 MPH you can hear him trying to find traction for that thing!

Re Velo- I think they are terrific bikes. Don't they still hold the 24 hr speed record for a 500cc single? That was the one set at Montlhery, France. Phil Irving spent some time working for Velocette after he left Vincent. I wonder how much of his design is in the Thruxton and other Velos from the later time period?

Glen