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winter project

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 7:54 pm
by ducapaso
Ok guys, take some time to read as I'm going to tell ou about a quite llong winter project. Everything begun when I happened to get a pair of 36 dell'orto carbs from an Elefant 650
OEM mainfolds were badly damaged, rubber collars were wornand they were impossible to fix. So I tried to rebuild them in fiberglass and epoxy resin, but this couldn't face heat from engine and I kept on searching for a better material. I meant to rotate the carburetteur on the orizontal cylinder frontward so I designed it on a 3d software and I printed it on polyamide 12 and carbon fiber, good for 160 °C (320 °F) and strong enough to resist to the pantah vibrations :-)
The conversion required also Tommaselli twin wire throttle and soft springs for carbs: this (and quite an amount of grease) made the handle soft enough to ride confortably. Two main jets 150 were needed too.
I decided to install also new float needle valves and this was a B A D decision, but I'll tell you about later. When I put the panels on to go for a test ride, the first bad new: fuel drops from the tank! A quick search on Ebay and I was waiting for a special paint, similar to Tankerite, not so easy to use, but quite effective! (I had to mix and whisk for about 30 minutes before the red component was ok). Finally a test ride: the engine went bad but the real matter was oil leak from anywhere! Ok, let's remove the panels again: new seal rings under pinion, gear lever, camshaft pulleys and timing spot. Still some drop from vertical cylinder but this will wait the end of riding season! Further ride tests without panels to setup carbs: NOT GOOD! Gasoline spitting everywhere, no matter what I tried to do: 2 weeks wasted!
Finally I removed float needle valves and compared to elder ones: they were completely different! Both needles and seats didn't match at all!. I put the old OEM ones and... magically everything went ok! Just a bit of tuning to the screws sand I could enjoy my ride! The torque is quite stronger, and the top gear sometime feels a bit too short, the noise from intakes (conic metal net filters) is really loud and the riding experience makes me SMILE :-D The end of the story is the 195 kms (120 miles) ride on twisty roads of Appennino mountains I posted two weeks ago: I kept on thinking "It's riding ok, let's go 20 kms more" until I realized I was went really far! Now my Paso wait for me every morning to ride me to job and every sunday for a longer and more satisfying tour!