Case Work on Viragos

Have It Done Right

This one makes me a little nervous as it involves the back-and-forth shipping of empty cases: bulky and fragile. Be sure to empty all fittings and just send in the basre aluminum with the cast-in iron parts. Bolt them securely together. Lay multiple layers of bubble wrap around them. Fill with styrofoam "peanuts" or expanding foam. Anything that must be removed or scraped off on our end will incur more costs to you -- if you expect to get them back.

What we'll do:

Chemical dip (unless you ask us to skip it) to strip all grease and dirt. Blasting with several grades of beads, ending with walnut shells. All oil passages will be blocked at this stage. Optionally, we'll powder-coat black or silver inside; your choice outside. Your main bearing bores will be hard chromed down to 90mm ID and the 6308 bearings of your choice will be seated. Bearings that have oiling channels and oil holes could have passages bored into the transmission feed lines in order to make sure that there is no starvation problems as stock these bearings are fed by splash. Case spigots bored to appropriate girth for your application. We'll look into a maximum bore cut with snug-fit aluminum rings for smaller sizes included. All potential obstacles to long stroke cranks will be fly cut off; all iffy protrusions. New dowels for oil passages and a plugged tap hole for those that want to run an oil cooler from near the pressure release, rather than off the filter cover.

That's all that comes to mind at the moment. No prices set. Reckon on $65 each way on shipping. I must get quotes on plating and powder coating and prices on various bearings. All of these procedures take place elsewhere. Before you ask, do NOT ship complete engines for us to build. This location is not zoned for it. And we can't afford to farm it out. Shipping and transportation add up and no matter how good of friends we are with third parties, they won't work for free.

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Since I don't have a physical walk-in store most distributors will not deal with me. A few will; click the "Vendors" link on the start page to see some of them. A lot of manufacturers aren't interested in supporting rare, obsolete series - especially in small lot quantities. There are a number of mfg that don't deal directly with merchants; distributors only. There are also mfg and/or distributors that don't like to have their products sold at too many places. They tend to feel that certain areas are sufficiently "saturated."

Exhausts are no longer made. Every year; every model is a bit different. There are some still sitting in warehouses that get sold off in batches at pennies on the dollar. I pass these up as I lack space to store them and every year is different; and more importantly: most of these exhausts are quite loud and designed for boulevard cruisers. Not a good fit with our philosophy of what a sporting twin should be. A late entry: Niche Cycle lists a Gen I two-into one exhaust that is currently back-ordered. It could be adaped to any XV bike. However, thus far all of my customers who have gone full-tilt on modifiying the motor have opted to build (or have built) their own one-off equal-length header exhaust; not an inexpensive proposaition.

One that I can't help with is Motion Pro cables. I am in Orange County and Southern California is saturated with their merchants. Again, every year, every model is different. I leave it to the customer to send measurements and particulars to them. Expect about sevemtyy dollars per cable. Soon I will offer cables from Niche Cycle so this is really moot. Before I leave this topic: please do not run 1) a single carb manifold, 2) Bing, or 3) Dellorto carbs. These last two are using twenty plus year old orgnology.

Another brand I cannot provide is Barnett Clutches. This is because I don't have a physical store. Note also: I have never seen an XV built enough that a fresh stock clutch slipped under any (unintentional) circumstances. The only time a clutch has slipped for me is when I tried using Marvel Mystery Oil as a lubrication additive. So, I don't recommend running an after-market clutch. Or if you have a thousand or smaller bike, don't bother trying to adapt an eleven hundred clutch; it has the same number of steel and friction plates. The steel plates are simply thicker. You'd have to run the late model rightside engine cover, and why would you want to give up any ground clearance for a right turn? The exceptioin is if you want to build a dragaster or LSR bike; in these cases you would probably want to adapt a dry clutch with a larger swept area on the fricxtion plates. Maybe an automotive clutch?