My Track bike project

Some pictures as promised.





I have removed the radiator whilst I'm working on the cylinder head to make things easier.
I need to do the final fitting of the fairing at a later date, my priority at the moment is the cylinder head work and electrickery.
These are quite important to get the engine up and running properly.
I'm quite pleased that the cutout on the left side is ideal for the alternator cover( I must have been very close on the position of the engine). Unfortunately I'll have to do something about the cutout on the other side before it goes to paint.

Looking very good Andy - much more like a bike.
Thanks for the pics and the update.
Keep pushing

Looking great so far boss!

Andyc, you told that these FCR carburetors won't fit inside CB500 frame. Why, are they too tall?
Could you please help with FCR dimensions - length, width, height? Thanks!

Unfortunately, they are too tall and too wide to fit inside the frame.
The standard inlet rubbers are very restrictive because they need to squeeze the standard CV's between the frame rails at an angle of 20 degrees from horizontal. I have used straight inlet rubbers which sit at 45 degrees to make a straight path for the mixture into the cylinders. I believe that any advantage gained by fitting the FCR's would be lost by the restrictions of the standard intake path.






After all this started out as an excercise to see how far I could push the engine on the power side of things.
Quick update whist I'm here.
The valve guides along with new seals arrived today, as did the final valve seat cutters.
I can get on with removing the old ones and fitting the new ones before cutting the new seats to suit the +1mm valves.
I don't expect it to be a 10 minute job though.
I also ordered the stage 2 race cams yesterday

Where did you ordered those stage 2 race cams and what are modifications (lift, duration..)?

They are ordered from a French company that one of our number kindly put a link to earlier in this thread.
All I know at present is that they require race valve springs, which I'm allready using. This suggests (hopefully) more lift but until I get them and measure them I'm pretty much in the dark.
They do a stage 1 which doesn't require race springs, and they also do them with adjustable sprockets but at a cost that I think isn't justifyable at the moment.

The stage 2 race cams arrived today which was a lot faster than I expected to be honest. 
A quick comparison with the standard ones tells me that the exhaust has 1mm more lift and the inlet has 1.5mm more lift. I can't check on the duration until it's back in the engine.

Damn!! need that also in my life! I'm making my internals ready for superfinishing...

Do fireblade carbs fit with Blade rubbers? or do they need the original CB rubbers to fit?
I'll try to fit Blade carbs to my CB

Where did you find the Race valve springs? or is it more economical to order the baguette springs?
Where did you order the +1 valves? I've got valve cutting tools, so I can make them fit myself 

The fireblade carb conversion is far from straightforward,  the rubbers are the standard cb500 ones but they have to be bored out and blended in to suit.  
The carbs have to be spaced to suit the cb500 as the fireblade doesn't have the cam chain between the cylinders. 
The larger butterflies have to be fitted to the cb500 spindles which means that you have to enlarge the slots to accommodate them.
The throttle cable linkage needs to be modified too as the fireblade one comes off at the wrong angle. 
And if all that isn't enough to put you off then the jetting needs to be sorted. 
The standard fuel tank won't allow pod filters of any decent size either. 
I do have a set of double race springs if you want some.
The valves I had to have made to my spec, which again weren't cheap but I'm sure that I can get them cheaper than the brancquart ones.
If you're interested in the valves and springs let me know and I'll see what the cost would be.

A bit of an update on the little progress made, it's something that I didn't intially plan on doing at this stage. However as I wasn't happy with the pressure loss from the valves I thought I may as well go the whole hog on the head at once.
The larger race spec valves seem to open up the ports a lot more than you would expect from looking at them in place as the seat on the race valves is a lot closer to the edge than the standard valves.
And this is how they look in comparison with the standard ones in the head.



I would have liked to be able to put up more progress but other things seem to be determined to drag me away from this project.

A bit of progress made now, it seems an age since the engine was pulled apart to fit the larger valves but if I explain all will become clear (maybe)!
As I said, I ordered some stage 2 race cams. The larger valves went in and I did a pressure leak down test to get everything spot on, as you do. The results were great , HOWEVER!!!!, what I really should have forseen was that to raise the lift on the cams as they were reground rather than from new blanks, the base circle had to be reduced. Which meant that larger shims are needed to get the correct clearance, MUCH larger shims (read TOO large)  
I could have got shims large enough from other models but knowing I wouldn't have been happy with it.
I had to bite the bullet and order a new set of valves to be made up with longer stems to bring it back into an acceptable range.
The sump had to come off so I could retrieve a bolt that I dropped in whilst trying to fit it behind the cam chain tensioner blade, how I wished that I hadn't bothered with titanium as I could have fished it out with a magnet. On the positive side the exhaust was designed so I could take off the sump without needing to remove that. Not that I want to have to do it regularly you understand!
The cooling system is now all connected and the oil cooler is bypassed on the water side for the moment, I'm concentrating on getting the engine up and running before anything else.
Next stage is the electrics and then the carb jetting.

https://doc-00-20-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/securesc/hljpcegkc36rbissq673kfgrahbpvk5m/m5b5jkomo8a0r296ooasos07e9jobpd6/1561910400000/02999928936374566578/02999928936374566578/1wDcFBppVMZkobPWwzV3ks_7601QBt6kf?e=download&nonce=uo96d44hqvta2&user=02999928936374566578&hash=u1d461onthl2r3r25kf8ngovq63adv3m

IT LIVES!!!!!

After what seems like an age it's actually running
No leaks, all the gauges work as they should.
No unexpected noises, although the chatter from the flatslides worried me a bit until I diagnosed the source.
I expected the jetting to be way out as it was a best guess to start with but really pleased that it idles well and picks up cleanly(and very quickly).
The idling really suprised me considering it's running with high compression pistons, race camshafts, no flywheel, a 42mm bore exhaust and 39mm FCR carbs.
That would normally result in a very lumpy tickover.
Next step is to hook up my air/ fuel ratio meter and check and adjust the jetting as well as I can.
I'll also need to make a move on the fuel tank in replacing the bottom that I had to remove to clear the carbs and filters.

Nice job mate!!!

The link is broken? can't see anything

When you go to the rolling road?

Bugger!!!
I'll  have to get a video on my camera rather than on my phone when I get a chance. 
The dyno won't be until I'm confident that I have gone as far as I can with my air/fuel ratio meter, that was the whole idea of me buying it.
Hopefully it will help to speed things up now.

nice! do you gonna road tune it? or do you've something else to put some resistance on the engine?
And how did you solve the Camshaft to valve clearance issue?

I find the rear brake does the job enough to get it near enough to go to a dyno.
The valve issue was sorted by me having new valves with longer stems made.

The rear brake will do it for a few runs!
Which AF meter did you buy?

Innovate  LM2

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jpco2gqgycfuhk0/AAAkWops0K-wzERjqUqE0Epxa?dl=0

Hopefully this link will work.

The electric pump is already fitted, it's between the radiator and the engine on the left hand side. I did notice that I hadn't turned it on, the blue illuminated switch by the oil pressure gauge on the yoke. The green is the main power.
It should weigh in at about 135kg when finished, or as close to finished as it will ever be I guess. Any further weight loss will have to come from myself. I have 10kgs that I would like to  shed

Very impressive to see this running.
That's a lot of work!
Going to book a track day this year???

There's still too much work to do to even think of booking a day yet.
Not helped by me losing reverse gear on my car for some reason best known to itself. I had this week planned to work on the carbouration but have to waste time on the car.