Ascot Forum

And the saga continues.
Cleaned up the inside of the head as much as possible and reground the valves.
The (inner) valve springs are out of spec so I have to start searching for new ones there. Any leads would be greatly appreciated.
I've used a copper wire wheel on some parts of the engine and it gets the paint of reasonably well. Decided that I will go for that look for the complete engine apart from the cilinder and head. I will not be able to get into the cooling fins so will paint those parts black.
I am also struggling with the rockercover shaft dowel. I got 1 out using the 'yahoo' method with tapping a thread on it and using that to pull itself out. The other one stripped the newly made threads unfortunately. I then tried the 'haynes' method by grinding a slot and trying to tap it out but as you can see that only bend the dowel.
Any thoughts or tips on this?
I also checked all the headcover bolt holes and it looks like I have to helicoil almost all of them (already anticipated that) strangely enough 1 bolt was M8, 1 was M7 and the rest appears to be M6 (although some stripped). The M8 and M7 do not correspond to the expected M7 bolts though.

Wow, how unfortunate! I hope you will overcome all your issues. I also ordered a new piston, a Wiseco 10,5:1, so a little more compression.

Olle

That's my plan to.
I'm looking into solid inserts that have small collar and thread in from the inside so it definitely won't come out when I remove the spark plug.

A bit more bad news today however. I don't know exactly what happened here but the piston is shot. The grooves in the cilinder wall are visible but I can't feel them. Hope to get them out after a hone and an one size over piston.
Starting to become a full engine overhaul 

I share your grief about the sparkplug helicoil. I have successfully repaired them using a solid insert (timesert, nutsert, etc) with good results.

I power washed the engine and started taking it apart to freshen it up.

I found a lot of non- standard bolts and RTV which is never a good sign. Someone has been in this engine before and he/she was not gentle.
Will probably have to helicoil every headcover bolt (standard practice with the FT anyway) and replace all of those bolts as the threads have gone on those too.
Unfortunately the rockerarms have completely worn so I will have to replace those. I was afraid the cam was a goner too but after comparing it with a spare one, which I know is good, it turns out this one is not that bad either. After measuring the camshaft journals and even the lobe height are well within spec.
The camchaintensioner bolt is loose but won't come out so I suspect the same problem one of the other members of the ascot facebook board had. I also discovered that the 2 head nuts on the underside of the head are missing... Pretty amazing what you find on a 150 euro 40 year old bike