Case Work on Viragos

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.

First, the oil filter cap must be modified and that will be exchange on your UNbroken core. For the sake of common sense and to cool better, the radiators fill and empty at the top, so most - if not all - additional oil will remain outside of the cases. Both stages tap into the oil filter cap right where the oil filter sits, this is the out up to the radiator. The normal flow will be interupted by a loctited setscrew and the second fitting will be downstream of that. The larger version will mount high off the front top engine mount and braced aginst the lug on the front of the crankcase. It's big: 15 rows and it has a 7 inch fan that will be controlled by a temperature probe. Way back when, there used to be an oil temp thermostat. I think Lockheart sold it, but they are long gone. The other cooler will consist of two 10 row radiators, mounted outboard of the top front motor mount, also possibly anchored to the lug. Either kit can be installed with hand tools at any time.

The hoses will have a little slack in them in case you want to shorten them for a trimmer look. I'll be looking to develop SR/TT/XT500-style (after-market) passive radiators for the oil feeds into the heads - price currently unguessable; they may never come to pass. Also I'll be looking for an easily readable oil pressure guage mounted on the front exhaust rocker feed.

Now that I have your hopes up, I must dash them. I initially considered AN10 fittings, hoses, and radiators. I quickly saw that this was too big. Now I must look at AN6. The fittings are expensive and hard to find in the shapes needed. Even the radiators are more expensive. It's like they suspected that they might be used on motorcycles. Also, the XV pump does not push much pressure: a 15 core or double ten core may well overwhelm it. I see that I must build a mock up out of my spares to see what will fit as well read everything I can find on what has worked. So it will be a while, but it will fit and give positive results. I'll try to hold to the prices below.