Monday, May 25, 2009

Spring Updates

Time for an update! The Norton had a good season last year, other than developing an oil leak that blew gearbox oil all over the right muffler. It turned out to be from the kickstart o-ring (no oil seal conversion on this bike). I pulled the cover, put some silicone in the groove, and installed a new o-ring. No more leak, for now anyway. I need to do the same with the primary case sealing band. ATF gets through behind the big o-ring and it drips onto the floor. Otherwise the bike is drip-free.

For this season, the rear wheel received some attention. I decided to remove the rim clamp as it throws the wheel way out of balance and does not seem to be necessary anyway. I found the original Dunlop steel rim to be heavily rusted inside when I removed the tire. I cleaned it up as best as I could for now, but the bike needs a new rim. I'd like to find another good steel rim if I can, but NOS ones are hard to come by and the new reproduction steel rims are said to be of poor quality. So I may end up having to go with an alloy rim.

I'm also replacing the oil pump and switching to monograde oil soon, to hopefully get the wetsumping under control. I bought a used pump on ebay and took it apart to do the lapping procedure. That's almost done, just needs the final cleaning and reassembly. The pump that's in there has gotten so bad I have to drain the sump if the bike sits more than three days. I'm hoping the rebuilt pump will do better!

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Wet sumping will not go away with a rebuilt/new oilpump :-)trust me after 17 years with a 74 850 and reading Norton forums my bike has always had a big gas valve that keeps the oil in the right place, in the oil tank.

1:16 PM  

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