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.

1 1 1

Viragos have gotten very rare and I've grown old and bored. Bores larger than 99mm will be special order and have a two month (minimum) lead time. Strokes beyond 75mm the same. Both of these are untested and will require some engineering; costs will be reckoned on work. Currently, I see a maximum bore of 105mm at 81mm stroke for 1403cc. Even this will require some stops and starts in development

Bored and stroked motors will require balancing and improved oil flow. For a 106mm by 84mm setup, all reciprocting and rotating parts much be shipped back and forth to a specialty machine shop/foundry. Costs would be $2400 for the top-end -re-sleeved barrels; Nikasil on aluminum; big CP-Carrillo piston kits with ceramic crowns and treated skirts. For the crank: $2300 for stroking, lightening, shorter rods, balancing, improved oiling, and new main and rod bearings. Reckon on about $200 for dowels, gaskets, seals, and venting, Maybe another $200 for an oil cooler kit. This leaves you with the need to bore out the case spigots to accomodate the larger sleeves. You may want to have your cylinders 0-ringed to hold in combustion.

Blowers: I no longer see mysef developing a kit. If you want to give it a try, I handle the blowers themselves, pulleys, inter-coolers, belts, "sneeze" valves, other bits.

EFI: I've done a lot of reseach but see no cost effective way to set it up. The same with ignitions. I recommend the Igniorg. I developed most of an LED-triggered, front cam set up (using a MicroSquirt), but I can't find a fabricator to make inner cam cap pieces for it. Nor could I see a safe way to keep the cam from moving laterally when it goes under and out of load. Venting I am just too tired and lazy to work on.

Compression releases? My idea is a TT/XT/SR500 style release that hold the exhaust valves slightly off of their seats. Solenoids mounted to the exhaust rocker covers would push down on the valve end of the rockers. Both cylinders. Pushing down as long as the starter button was depressed. Disconnecting a relay (probably by way of a toggle switch) would take it out of circuit and allow the engine to turn without its intervention,

Converting shaft-drive motors to chain or belt-drive? It would be cheaper to buy a more modern twin. Hard parts are no problem, except that at least half of the part numbers are no longer available. In some cases a left-side assembly is available, but not a right-side. Sometimes they can be modified and reversed. Sometimes you must search for a useable old part.

More Coming. . . .