Sump and Sprockets

At last I seem to be taking two steps forward and only one step backwards. Firstly I've fitted the baffle plate to the engine. That was a straightforward if messy process, because there is no such thing as a sump gasket on a CB1000RR and the sump flanges are sealed using blue gasket compound. When you fit a baffle plate you have too make two gooey gaskets (one on each side) in this manner. Still it was pretty straight forward. While I had the sump off I also fitted a new cap to the swinging sump which Graeme at Nova had made up for me (apparently it needed a 3 degree undercut on the connection tube and this had been missed on the original), and I also checked that it was indeed possible to remove the oil filter despite the close proximity of the exhausts. It's fiddly but possible.

When I collected the sump bit I also collected two new rear drive sprockets that Graeme had also made me . I now had a range of 34,35, 36 teeth at the rear which when coupled with some 14,15,16,17 front sprocket give me a diff range of 2.9 to 3.9 in 10% increments.

So a week of moderate success for once.

Engine Build Up, Ready for Mounting

So it’s been a few days since my last update and in this time I’ve made significant progress in fitting the new engine. The mounts have been finalized, trimmed down and fully braced up with strengthening gussets. This may seem a bit of overkill, but experience has shown that the high frequency vibration from the bike engine can the welds. Lastly they were painted up. They are fairly sturdy and probably wildely over engineered, but they do hold the engine nicely rigid.

I've also completed the floor mounts, in the engine bay, and painted up the tubes. It is all nice and clean now waiting for the engine's installation

I’ve collected the new sumps internals from Nova. Here you can see it’s component parts including the sealing O ring, swinging arm and bearing and internal gauze debris filter.
So I bolted it together and got it already for fitting to the lump. As part of this process I drilled and tapped the sump to take an NPTF oil temperature sensor. Unfortunately I had to use a NPTF converter to step the oil pressure sensor out a bit, as it initially stuck to far into the sump and stop the swinging arm from rotating which would have been a bit of an own goal!

Lastly I drilled the sump plug so that I can lock wire it into place and fitted this to the sump. After which the engine was ready for fitting.

Another good piece of news was that I discovered that those nice Chaps at the Kit Car Workshop can cut down and customize my drive shafts to make them fit the new Diff. Although I will be facing a challenge of linking Fiesta inner CV joints to my existing Escort outers

nts