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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I visited a number of machine shops recently and made many phone calls. Mostly these places don't want to modify existing parts; they want to construct from line drawings. In the hundreds. No one is interested in shrinking rods; no one wants to plate down bearing bores or make adaptors - except by the hundred. No one has any leads for me.

I expect better results from engine builders. I will query them shortly. They tend to be snmaller and specialze by the engine. I expect bore reduction; shrunk rods; and one-way breathers in the cam caps. We'll see.

Rods from CP-Crallio are around $850 a pair; from Falicon they are around $750. My thinking is that "shrunk" rods would be sugnificantly less costly. I just need to find someone to do it and willing to waranty their product.

I expect better results from the powder coater/ceramic coater. There is a big one near here. Unfortunately I am told that they are not cheap. We may explore other avenues. Ceramic plating has no substitute so we will still deal will them some. As soon as I can get some samples down to them; I'll post some prices: ceramic combustion chanbers and valve heads; exhaust ports. Maybe case interiors and exhausts. Be patient. I'm working on all this.