Recent content by howardsmed

Hi Jack No worries, I had quite a few chats with Jerry Branch and Doug Coffey, Carl Morrow, ( who i used too work for in CA) about the shrouding caused by bathtub chambers, in the end the consensus was ( with HD and Buell's) that the increase in burn, and reduction in timing advance, with the...

Hi Jack On the 880 we raised the inlet port by around 6mm, Steve Mann who owned and raced the bike did the work, have you done the same ? Steve machined the head ( and broke into the bottom of the spring pocket) and shrunk in a an aluminium tube, I did something similar but far less...

well its a nice day in Dorset, been out for breakfast and having a cup of coffee

all conjecture without a dyno sheet too prove it lots of peeps on this forum saying " do this and do that" but without proof positive its just fresh air

David Newman doesn't run the company anymore, he has left that to his son Ken. if you call mention me, they know me well I will put the cam design for the SR500 on their computer in a month or so, i have very light valve gear, so can have the ramps and flanks very fast, sort of like a 25-140...

we copied the 25-130 profile and reduced the duration, and the program at Newman's "computer smoothed" the profile as well as increasing the maximum velocity from 0.004/degree to 0.005 per degree, this enabled us to retain almost all the under the curve from the original cam, yet drop nealry 10...

I went to see John Andrews years ago at Andrews cams in the USA, he was particular about what machinery he used and he had Landis. Ken Newman has two, one they recently bought from Mercedes. He has been making the cams that i designed for Smedspeed for around ten years, they are the only ones...

I have used SP370 pistons,( 85mm) i built a bike for martin Guilford, who was a professional sidecar moto-crosser, ( his father Mike was the workshop manager at WASP) using them, it is an 840cc, with an 84mm stoke ( same as SR500) it is a 999cc above 900cc, the heads strangle the engine, up...

I am not angry, sorry if it sounded so, email can be misconstrued easily, i am very grateful for your advice, i have seen your work, and its inspirational, one of the main reasons i welded my SR500 head up, was seeing your work. It is TIG welded, the guy who does it can weld tin foil ! On the...

Yes. the pin bores do wear on the XS650, but in the hundreds of XS engines i have seen, it is VERY rare. The XS1 I have, sat for a long while before i bought it, the rocker had stuck to the pin, and the pin moved in the bore. the 1978 and 1979 SR500 had a flywheel diameter of 148.5mm, in 1980...

Our XS880 has 92hp rear wheel hp, ( from TTS one of the most reputable performance shops in the UK) when someone shows me an XS650/880 dyno sheet that is better than that, i will see what we do next. I am not a clever man, i just use the mathematics that i learnt obtaining my B/Eng ( Hons) in...

Hi Christian I worked for Carl Morrow in Sana Fe springs tuning Harleys in 1994, Megacycle were in CA too, so no bother, but now, with no email, no PayPal, and very expensive, especially when i can get a cam reground in the UK for E100. The cams we get done, are either new EN40B billets, or...

Hi Christian SR500---the 41mm is the OD, all tubing in the UK is measured on OD, so yes the internal diameter will be the same size as the exhaust port at 38mm, then after about 300mm, up to 44mm, or if i can find tubing in 40, 42, and 44 as you say a 3 step header SR500--i dont want bigger...

Yes they are flat topped, which means its easy to set the deck height, and thus the squish clearance, we will have to get some 83.5mm head gaskets cut, but that's no bother, the nice thing for us now, we have dozens of people who make parts for us ( all UK made, not Chinese junk) so getting a...

it wont be a cheap day out if you do the stroker crank too, that is a lot of engineering work, However the 800cc big bore will be a bare Heiden big fin cylinder, oversize ductile liners and bored to suit, the crankcases will need boring, as the biggest you can get away with is 87mm OD but with...