With work on the conrod finished for now, attention turns to the flywheels. The slices of big bar fit into the 4 jaw chuck on Bob’s lathe, which is handling the job nicely so far. Getting the tough outer ‘crust’ off the steel is hard going, light cuts are needed and plenty of cutting oil.

It might not be too healthy, but it smells great!

There’s a fair weight to each wheel so it’ll be a weighty engine, maybe a 2 man lift. Then again so is a GPZ900 so I’m not too concerned.

We can’t swing the conrod though, even on the big lathe. It’s 14 Inches and the lathe will spin 12, so some thinking is required to finish the eyes.

Anyway, small progress is still progress:-)

Now that’s a conrod! Bob took the other side off and voila, the mighty conrod is out! I held it in my hand to give some sense of scale in the photo, I do hope it’s big enough 😉

It’s quite fitting that the conrod emerges today as it’s my birthday. I set a deadline of hearing the engine running by my 50th birthday, so we’ve 3 years to get the whole shebang sorted. Actually I’d like to be riding the bike for my 50th, but I’ll settle for a running engine.

I’m very pleased with the progress so far, and have high hopes for the 3d printed cases – provided that the price is right. Time will tell.

One of the sides is off the conrod, now it’s really starting to take shape. The other side might come off today, if I get out of bed and leave the blog updates for a moment.

Right….

Can you see them? The steel has arrived and £ for lb it’s not bad value. Good job we’re not making it in Gold!!

It doesn’t take much imagination to see the flywheels, though a lot of work needs to happen before we get the finished articles. Fred might be coming up this week and joining the production team.

Also on the team, Gary has been busy on CAD and we have the side cover in a 3d drawing. I’m getting quotes to 3d print one as a full size model in plastic, but also a price for 316 stainless.

Stainless engine cases, that’d be a first!

The radii around each end is complete now, after a week or so off to cover work and funerals. The big end is also complete now and one side is removed. Now that’s real progress!

The other side might be off today so we’ll have a complete rod bar finishing work. It’s a great effort from Bob but at the same time an eye opener to how much spare time I don’t have.

I need to retire myself 🙂