1984 Katana 7/11

[dorkburger]

Ha, I'm certainly no expert on the topic, but the inlet ports looked to have thinner walls then the 1100s I've owned.

[pete]

I think you should budget for a heavy duty backing plate and the heavy duty nut.

There may be a basket available locally here which should solve it, but if not then yes definitely! The trick will be trying not to add too much more to the order... lots of tasty goodies on that site!!

Nice engine work stand IMO.
For my savage understanding, how did you hoist it up there?

Cheers Bill! Will let you know how it holds up to the impact driver punishment.

My house mate gave me a hand lifting and flipping it. He supported the front while I used one hand to support the back and the other to slide the rear engine mount bolt in, then the front bolt was pretty easy. It's not a one man job! Well not with my spindly arms anyway...

Ha, I'm certainly no expert on the topic, but the inlet ports looked to have thinner walls then the 1100s I've owned.

Ah cool, I'd never seen one before so you're far closer to being an expert than I

[viperg]

[QUOTE=pete;2238697]Ok finally time for some fun!!!

Got the shed to a point where I can start using it, so I moved the frame in there yesterday and loosely assembled a lot of what I have so I can get an understanding of where I'm at.

Need some wheel spacers, triple clamp fasteners, and so on to start with but I was still able to get this far:





Looking good! Nice bit of Kat parts you have collected there to make your dream bike. Nice job!

[pete]

Cheers mate! Yeah I'm pretty happy with how quickly I was able to get the majority of the bits, and I'm stoked to finally be getting into it!

I managed to nearly give myself a heart attack last night! I started on the retainers under the clutch, first one off was the one with the buggered up screw head and is for the cam driven bit on the end of the shift shaft. I didn't realise that it was spring loaded so I just pulled it out... breathed a huge sigh of relief when I managed to find all the pawls and pins. Just gotta sort out which goes where when it comes to reassembly time...

The engine stand seems to be nice and stable even with the sideways force of the impact driver with the mini sledge, so that's a relief too!

Got some of the other retainer screws loose before it got a bit too late to be hammering the impact driver so I got the sump cover off.

I was quite surprised to see how clean it is in there! Although someone has started butchering the screws on the strainer.





At least there's a gasket this time! No gasket under the clutch cover, just gasket goo, and I removed the gear position sensor also last night and it also had a run of gasket goo around it.

Then I noticed this sitting on the towel under the motor to catch any oil drips:



Definitely a Suzuki S on one bit and part of Japan on another... starting to get a bit concerned about what may lie inside.

I'm hopeful it's just a bit of casting been knocked off by something that's not important but I'll see soon enough...

[pete]

I was stuck on the front sprocket as there's nothing there to use for leverage.

After a few suggestions from the helpful Katana Australia folk I got the nut and sprocket off last night with no damage to anything at all. I damped down an old towel and draped that all over the motor so the only thing the welder would hit was the sprocket. I used the mount against the work bench for leverage rather than the engine case, didn't want to risk any damage at all.


Brace yourself for some of Pete's Awesome Welding... it ain't pretty...





I also got another couple of the retainers off last night and loosened the smaller crankcase bolts. Two retainers to go and the big crankcase bolts and then it's case splitting time.

[tatu]

You could've used the drive chain bunched up onto a solid part of the crankcase with a piece of wood as padding, will you be able to save that damper on the sprocket now?

[pete]

I would've liked to but unfortunately I have no spare chain around and if I did it would be 530 not 630. I'm doing the 530 conversion also so I'm not too worried about it... at least not yet anyway

[pete]

I confirmed yesterday the ruined damper is going to be a non issue, the 530 conversion is just a standard sprocket with a 6mm spacer on the nut side.

The oil strainer and last retainer came out last night. Strainer looks clean (hard to show in a photo through the mesh) and surprise surprise more gasket goo under the retainer...











Then I managed to get all crankcase bolts out without breaking any (yay!) and got the cases split.


The inside again is looking all clean, everything seems to rotate smoothly. I'm assuming if the crank was twisted it would be pretty obvious. Looks like it's all had enough oil left around it to stop it corroding and prevent any surface rust etc. I do need to start measuring things of course.











And a keen eye on that last photo should show where the little broken bits have come from.








I'm going to assume it was run with a loose cam chain at one point and it's caught on the cam chain guide holder and smashed it. I'm not sure how else that could happen. They're $11.75 from Mick Hone but the tricky bit will be getting that broken post back in securely. There's no front chain guide on this either so it may have taken that out as well.


If it was me with no alternatives, I'd JB Weld it, but I really think there's a much better solution to that. Anyone have suggestions on the best way to go about securing it with the least chance of it coming adrift again?

[tatu]

Doesn't that anchor the bottom of the cam chain slipper shoe? If so its really quite important, maybe fab up something new altogether to do the same job/

[pete]

Yup tatu, that's it! And yes quite important! So far it looks like the best solution will be to drill and tap a hole where the post was and make up a suitable length and diameter spacer to replicate the post. Then use a longer screw to hold it in place.

A closer look last night says there should definitely be enough meat in the case to do so. I'll be getting someone more skilled than I to do this though, that's one task I'm definitely not up for!

Anyway, I figured it was time to take a closer look at the head and check the valves out last night given the damage. I definitely wanted to make sure there were no bent valves and on that count I can breathe a sigh of relief... they're all straight and actually look pretty decent. In better condition than the 450's were in fact and the guy who did the facing and tipping cleaned them up with the sand blaster so these should come up very nicely.

Here's some close ups of what you guys think is the porting work and the cut valve guides:









The only way I think I could check if it's a good job or not would be to take it to a cylinder head guru and get it checked out. I assume measuring flow rate or something would be the ticket. I'm assuming that's a few $$$ though...

Next up, 16 valves accounted for:



Exhausts look a little crusty with carbon as you'd expect but the faces look good to my eyes:



Inlets not so crusty and faces look good:



I haven't measured them yet I just realised but I'll definitely get them faced and tipped.

I have no real easy/accurate way to measure the valve guides that I can think of (don't think my cheapo verniers are up to that) so I slotted all the valves in the head to see how the fit was, and they all feel good. No free play and a bit of resistance when trying to get them in there. Looks like they all sit in well and looking at the valve seats again I still reckon a lap job will do the trick. I will definitely replace the stem guide seals with genuine ones too.



I also had a closer look at the advancer and yep it's good to go, just needs a bit of lube which is an easy job providing I don't lose the E clips (almost did that on the 450).



Continued...

[pete]

I also checked out the valve springs... 16 inner, 16 outer, 16 retainers, 32 keepers.





The free length of all the inners is between 32.3 and 32.6mm and the outers is between 36.2 and 36.6mm so all are well outside the service limit. I'll have to find a suitable weight to check the tension also.

I'll see if I can get the valves measured tonight and I'll take a close look at the pistons also.

Then I'll start on the crankshaft and transmission.

So far though, aside from that one little oopsie with the cam chain guide holder I'm feeling pretty positive about this motor!

Oh, I still haven't figured a way to measure the cylinder bores yet... any suggestions how to do that without a bore gauge?

[pete]

Last night I grabbed the pistons to check them out, they all like they've been somewhat cleaned up but overall appear in pretty good shape.









I used my cheapo verniers and that's where the concern lies for me... they measure at about the service limit of 71.88mm but I don't know if I'm keen to rely on them to be quite that accurate. They're not too bad but probably only really down to .1mm, I doubt how good they really are at 0.01mm. So, what's the consensus? Do they look like they're border line enough to go up a size or just leave it as is? I do have a micrometer here I can dig out, but it's imperial and confuses the crap out of me.

Then I grabbed the camshafts for a look see. I have no idea if these are stock 1100's or not. Someone once mentioned the numbers to look out for but I don't remember what they are...



Intake is a 451:



Exhaust is a 470:



All the lobes measure about 34.6mm so well above the service limit.

The teeth on the sprockets look pretty good too.

And I have no idea what the yellow on them is for...

[SVSooke]

They do that at the factory to show they've been torqued down.

[pete]

Cheers Greg, although interestingly enough one of the fellas on the KA forum has pointed out that those are not the stock hex head bolts on the sprockets so the question now is why have they been replaced? Have the cams been ground or replaced with something else or did someone simply choose to replace the bolts? Need to determine that yet...

John very kindly leant me some more of his tools yesterday too so I can now properly measure a bunch more stuff.

I should have a much better idea of the state of the motor over the next day or two I think.

[Fjbj40]

Do the cams have "in" and "ex" stamped on them? If they are factory this could help to be an identifier, some aftermarket cams do not have that on them but from my experience the factory a cams I have seen have those identifiers.