I have the Tusk kit too and it does look the same to me as well. Did you do the bark buster signals? I got some cheapo plastic bark busters off Ebay that are wrap arounds I'm going to cut the LEDs into and may do an extra anchor with epoxy. It was rifle day today, no wrenching.
No, just the standard LED's, I put the flexible stalks on the front, flush mount on the rear. The flush mounts aren't very good for the rear though, they are bright from the sides but not from behind. Sorry for the hijack, back to DisTech's build...
hey guys im building a new 350 motor w/big bore i got it all mostly sorted but one job i haven't done before is the conrod big end can any one give me a run down on splitting the crank in half and how to dial it in correctly again. __________________
Hey man whats your cdi ? mine is the std one in the black plastic case right in front of the air inlet. Yours looks like the biz, I would like to remount one in a similar fashion. on mine
This is a dirt model frame that is getting street model electrics. The dirt model frame doesn't have the mounts for the street model regulator/rectifier, so I bolted it to the front of the Vortex. The street model CDI (not in the picture) looks the same as the dirt model (but has more wires) and goes in the same spot. I wish the CDI was as small as the rectifier, space for wire, plugs and component is pretty tight.
oh yea i thought that was your cdi bolted down to the vortex . im making a high flow air box at the moment and wanna move my cdi as much much more air will be able to flow under the seat . i might just make a mount on the front of the box
Looking great man! Keep up this incredible documentation! What a great service you are providing all of us! Well Done!
Simply awesome! Read it from the beginning today, wow! Thanks for posting all this up and taking all the time to do it. That is gonna be an awesome rig, you got me planning now for a project this next winter! Dan
Problems: 1. Fittings length required to convert from the oil cooler -6AN (3/8") hard pipe to the oil line -8AN (1/2") is too great. The way I got it to fit in the following picture was to use a -6AN to 3/8"MNPT, drill and tap a -8AN plug. A -8AN to -6AN reducer would have added another inch to the length. AN fittings are ridiculous long. 2. The oil cooler connections are not spaced for 1/2" connections. So working on the 1/2" lines connected is very difficult. 3. Compression fittings to make the hard pipe connections on the oil cooler... just didn't feel good about them (see #2). Solutions: 1. The length problem can be eliminated by getting rid of all the adapters and solder/braze/weld on -8AN oil cooler connectors. Ordered more -8AN plugs, filed the back flat and drilled for a 3/8" connection. 2. 3/8" to 1/2" gave me room to do a little offset to spread the connections. 3. Welded, no compression fittings. Problems: 4. I don't have a torch for brazing (and brazing temperature is 800F see problem #5) or welding equipment (solder is not an option for the oil cooler environment). 5. The oil cooler is powder coated and powder coating melts at 275F. Solutions: 4. Muggy Weld Super Alloy 1. Kind of like soldering, kind of like brazing, but you can use a propane torch. If you believe the hype, it's supposed to be very strong. 5. Super Alloy 1 melts at 350F, just hoped the PC wouldn't melt. I tried and had to clean and restart at least 5 times on that right side connection, it's pretty toasted. What I found was the oil cooler acts as a heat sink (surprise!) and it was very hard to get the 3/8" tube and the fitting hot enough at the same time which is what you need to get the alloy to flow and bond to both. I couldn't do it fast enough holding onto the stick of alloy. This terrible picture shows how I got them to bond. The connection was made on the right. On the left you can see I wrapped the alloy around the 3/8" tube. So then I put flux (the flux is like really thick oil) on it and heated everything up as slow as possible. If you watch any of the Muggy Weld videos, right after the flux bubbles you have a very small window where the alloy will flow. Pretty ugly joins, but they held when I was wrenching on them. Update: Both Muggy "weld" joints failed during break in.
Awesome build.... I love to see stuff like this. Bringing an old bike back to a new life! Can't wait to see it done. My DR350 needs a really good home or I might end up doing something like this! Also, have you totalled the cost yet or do you really want to know?
I started the DR455 with the jetting that it came with from ebay. It was not easy. Over the course of a couple days and a couple hundred kicks it ran for less than a minute. Could have kept it running but it had a nasty tick that made me want to shut it down each time. It sounded like valves but i had checked, rechecked and re-rechecked them and they were good. Today I pulled the head to see what was what. The piston was hitting the exhaust valves. You can see they are a little scratched on the bottom edge. Jesse had sent me a couple base gaskets and I had a third from a kit. I used the one from the kit initially because it was thicker than ones Jesse sent. The first gasket was .6 mm and the other two are .5 mm. I wasn't confident .5 mm would be enough additional clearance so I used both to add 1 mm. Jesse said he used a mix of race gas for his DR455 and I haven't really like that idea. Maybe the compression will be dropped enough to just use pump gas. Also 1 mm made a surprising difference in the timing chain tension on reinstall. Jets arrived since the last time it was started (jetting post soon), so starting was much better today. And no tick!
That kinda sucks. So was the valve clearance issue only a problem when the bike was running? Did you try turning it over by hand first?
Yea, I turned it over quite a bit with the plug out before it was started the first time. Couldn't hear or feel any contact at top of stroke. Hoping there isn't any real damage. It sounded pretty good running today.
That would be a tough call for me -- I would hate to see the carnage one of those valve heads would create bouncing around in there if it were to snap off... I think if it were my money, I'd let it ride and hope for the best -- if it were a customer bike though, I would have no hesitation in having both those valves replaced...
Take a dremel and make some valve relief cuts on the piston top. you're gonna lose a lot of good squish and compression with that fat base gasket setup.
X2 on relief cutting the piston,you spent all that time and money building a performence engine, dropping the comp down 2 points will hurt big time performence wise, i can,t remember the cam u used, but if it is one of the bigger ones, it requires high compression, your engine might not even run right without it.
