THE RETURN OF THE ENGINE

At long last, encouraged by Tim, I had to agree that it was time to refit the engine (leak and all).  I have so many problems to sort out the leak is only one and until I can assess the size of the problems I wont know which to do first.

It was good to have Tim to help lift the engine into place.  I still placed a jack under it to take the majority of the weight.  Holding and engine out at almost arms length get very tiring very quickly.  The bottom mounting pin went in quickly and we were left with the fitting of the torsion bar link to complete the job.

After all my deliberations on how to remove the front link pin without doing damage to the needle rollers only to find my link had a plain bearing I felt that refitting should be easier.  Assuming that the torsion bar arm was in the correct position when I received the scooter I only had to replicate this position.  As I said previously I had only removed one end of the torsion bar so it was easy to find the original position.  With everything set up it was time to fit the front link pin.

I had forgotten about the offset cam tool to pull the bearing hole on the engine into alignment with the link bearing.  I had previously thought I would make one as it's a simple operation but it was too late now.  I resorted to the simple alternative - a large "G" clamp

























This "G" clamp method has dangers.  It involves two pieces of packing which want to jump out at the first opportunity.  Because of positional constraints the "G" clamp bar is dangerously close to the to the cooling fins of the flywheel.  (My flywheel already has part of one of the fins missing, not me I promise).  Some specific shaping of the font block where it fits onto the engine casting helps to reduce the risk of it slipping.  The rear block which presses on the torsion bar arm only needs to be cut to length that enables the clamp to operate.  With everything in position the clamp can slowly be tightened, watching the blocks all the time.

The torsion bar arm only needs to be moved forward about 8mm before the holes are in line.  The link pin can then be inserted from off side of the engine.  It's a bit fiddly because there are two spacing washer to be fitted, one either side of the link and these keep wanting to fall out until they are retained by the pin.  The dilemma is when to hit the pin to drive it into the link and on into the nearside mounting lug.  Apparently it's all too easy to break a lug during this operation.  I guess as always a bit of caution is required.  Eventually things seemed to line up and we were able to drive the pin into its final position before fitting the cir clips.  Release the clamp.  Job done.