'68 BSA Victor Build..... Bloody 'el mate... You 'effin daft or sommat?!?

New guides showed up yesterday evening. Stuck 'em in the freezer. Went ahead and heated the head this morning and tapped 'em. in. Valve play is less, but still a bit more than I'm comfortable with. Close, but what's the point of new guides if you're gonna settle for less than ideal? I should note here that the book gives NO specs on valves and guides.... just says check for excessive wear. Since I couldn't measure to see if the valves were worn, I held off on ordering new ones. New (NOS) ones on order now, should be here next week.

EDIT: The reason I'm bein' picky with the valve fit is the Victors don't use valve guide seals for oil control. It's all down to the clearances to prevent a smoker.

Gonna hold off on cutting guides and seats 'till they arrive. I did dig a few reams up that should work. We'll see...


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Jim said:
New guides showed up yesterday evening. Stuck 'em in the freezer. Went ahead and heated the head this morning and tapped 'em. in. Valve play is less, but still a bit more than I'm comfortable with. Close, but what's the point of new guides if you're gonna settle for less than ideal? I should note here that the book gives NO specs on valves and guides.... just says check for excessive wear. Since I couldn't measure to see if the valves were worn, I held off on ordering new ones. New (NOS) ones on order now, should be here next week.

EDIT: The reason I'm bein' picky with the valve fit is the Victors don't use valve guide seals for oil control. It's all down to the clearances to prevent a smoker.

Gonna hold off on cutting guides and seats 'till they arrive. I did dig a few reams up that should work. We'll see...


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My 750k0 was that way. They quickly changed the next year, but if they ain’t tight, you get a smoker.
 
Signal said:
Is it possible to machine the guide to take a seal, just a thought if you can't get the clearance you are happy with.
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Ya know.... I thought about that... after I tapped the guides in. And at 50 bucks a set, I ain't tappin' 'em back out.
But yeah, I think chuck 'em up in the lathe, cut a groove in the top and Bob's your uncle.

Doh. :doh:
 
Last valve finally showed up this afternoon. Friggin' lazy assed Ebay sellers. Went an entire week saying "shipping label created." Guy couldn't even be bothered to take it to the post office. Grrr....

Had to visit my neighbor Jeff to find a ream that would work. Closest I could get was about .002" play in the valves. Book gives no guidance, but as a rule for 5/16" valves, you want to stay between .001 and 002". So I'm good, even though I'd rather have hit the lower limit. Oh well, I ain't spendin' 50 more bucks for guides... it'll do.
After that is was a simple matter of re-cutting the seats (thanks again JP), lapping the valves and putting it all back together.


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A light oil, bagged, tagged and on the shelf.
 
Just a quick one....

Carried the big lug out to the driveway and scraped most of the muck off it.
Pulled the covers from both sides... only had to drill one screw out... they were all pretty buggered though.

Here's one method I use sometimes. Take a flat tip screwdriver and put the edges on a bench grinder. A fine wheel and you can get pretty sharp edges on it. Disregard the "V" in it, that was for something else.

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Drill down into the head just enough for the screwdriver to gain a little purchase in the hole, then hammer it down into the hole. A sharp edge will bite it's way into the hole and you can remove it. Keep in mind this doesn't work that well on stuck screws... mostly jus' those with buggered heads what won't hold a phillips tip.

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If you think about it, you're only other option is to drill the head off the screw. So worst case, this don't work and you're halfway there. Chuck up a larger drill bit and finish taking' the head off.



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Anyway... back to Victors lump...

Ever seen Mud Daubers build a nest inside an engine? Me neither, 'till now that is. This was inside the primary cover.



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Storms incoming, so I took it into the workbench. I'll see how far I need to go into it tomorrow. Nothing definitive, but my initial impression is everything's tight.... fingers crossed.



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I was going back through this thread and this post reminded me of something,
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Back in the mid 70’s, when I was a teen, there used to be a city ran dirt bike park, it had a moto cross track, a scrambles track, and some mountain trails. I was there riding my stripped down Honda XL250 dirt bike. I saw this guy riding a BSA Victor around the track. He was a pretty young guy, whose left leg was missing below the knee. He was there with his buddies and I went over to talk to him. He was a Vietnam vet who lost his left leg to a land mine and he bought the BSA specifically because of the right side shift. He had a really good attitude and was clearly enjoying riding again. He said the only problem he had was sometimes forgetting that his left leg was gone and he would go to put his foot down when he stopped and he would topple over. He was laughing about it. I had a lot of respect for the guy.
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