At the end of Update 8 I said I was going to pull the heads and cylinders off. After consultation with a friend I decided I would just pull of the side that was leaking. Why mess with something that’s okay?
So on Friday I took the left side apart. I took a bunch of pictures because who doesn’t want to see engine parts?
First off came the valve cover. This, of course, exposed the rockers.
Next I had to remove the rocker arms, rocker arm shafts and the push rods. Step one was to make sure this piston was at top dead center, so I removed the generator cover and rotated the crankshaft until the left piston was at TDC (easy to check because both rocker arms were loose.)
The rocker arms are removed by removing the two bolts that hold the rocker shafts in place and then pushing the shaft out. You need to take care as there is a spring and multiple washers in this assembly. The last thing you want to do is chase a couple of washers across the garage floor. Don’t ask me how I know.
After labeling the rockers so I re-assemble them correctly (though I guess they really would only fit one way,) I pulled the push rods out of the tubes.
Then I removed the nuts holding the head on. But I couldn’t get the head to come off. See if you can find what I missed? (Guzzi mechanics are laughing at me now.)
See that plug with the hex in it? Guess what’s under that? The sixth head bolt nut! After I discovered that mistake the head pulled right off.
Say hello to mister piston. Removing the cylinder was as easy as carefully pulling it off the piston so as to not mess up the rings. Mission accomplished.
Here is a nice shot of the cylinder head showing the carbon.
And here is a shot of the cylinder showing that there is still lots of crosshatching visable.
And this is the back side of the cylinder where you can see the oil from the leak.
And a shot of the piston, also with some carbon on it.
When I pulled off the cylinder I found a gift from a previous mechanic!
I know it’s not mine because all my crows foot wrenches are accounted for, and mine are all metric. Why is there a 9/16″ crows foot wrench on the top of the motor? Who knows.
So next I need to remove the base gasket from the cylinder. It’s pretty well stuck. And no one in Minneapolis seems to have gasket removal spray (yes, it’s a thing.) So I had to order some from Amazon. I hope it works, because that gasket is really stuck.
I’ll also spend some time removing the carbon from the piston and cylinder head. Then I should be able to put it back together.
Who knows, it might even be running again next weekend!
