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Monday, September 21, 2015

KH500 Refurbishment: Engine (part 2)

OK, so I've been assessing the damaged engine situation.  It looks like I have some options available.

First, the condition of the cylinders that I removed from the bike...  Not great.  They did clean up nicely though!

The center one has thse two nasty gouges in the liner

The right hand cylinder base is pretty chewed up from when someone previously removed gaskets (or pry it off another engine with a screwdriver).  I tried to dress up the gouges, but it really should be machined flat.

The center cylinder looks like it was pried off another engine with a screwdriver.  Sigh.  I must have just ignored these gouges when I put these on the KH.  At the time I lived in a small town with no machine shop, and 70 miles from a big town, so I probably just slapped them on and hoped the gaskets would make up for the crappy sealing surfaces.

It might be possible that these could be machined to a flat surface without affecting compression or clearances too much.  All three cylinders (including the undamaged left cylinder) would need to be cut down the same amount, of course.

A lot of damage on this set... :-(

I have some other parts though.  The guy who sold me the rolling chassis of the drag bike also had a box of spare cylinders.  I don't know anything about them at all.

I have other outer cylinders.  What happened to the center is a mystery.  Actually, I'm not sure which cylinders belong together, although the ones with rusty liners look like a matched set.  I will need to measure them with a micrometer.

Oh yeah, and I have two spare pistons, standard bore.  Maybe that third piston destroyed the center cylinder.  It's been known to happen...

So... I have a few options.  Just need to learn a bit about these cylinders, and then choose the right set to refurbish (mechanically and cosmetically) and install on the bike.

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