Boring Bars Have Arrived

I came in this morning and saw a nice package by the door with a UK return address- the boring bars!


These tools are used for finish machining the many accurate bores needed in the crankcases- transmission bearings, crankshaft journals, and cylinder bores. Because many of the bores are deeply recessed in the casting I felt a normal extended boring bar would not be able to achieve the required accuracy and surface finish.

The tools are from Microbore, a custom tooling house in the United Kingdom. I wanted to use domestic US suppliers for as much of this project as possible but all of the US tooling vendors I sent a RFQ to declined to quote the project. Microbore has done similar products in the past and their high quality, experience and reasonable pricing easily convinced me to choose them.
The boring bars are of the Devlieg adjustable insert style with an integral CAT40 shank. This will maximize accuracy and rigidity versus a boring bar held in a collet or end mill style holder.



Each bar has an angled machined pocket at the extreme end that receives a Devlieg Micro-Adjust carbide insert holder.


These Devlieg insert holders allow fine diameter cutting adjustment using the latest carbide insert cutting edges. We will use a test part to dial the cutting diameter to size for each bore then lock them in place.


In the next week or so we'll be machining the first castings and post some video and images of the results.

That's all for now.

Chris

Lee Klancher Article in MPN

Thanks yet again to Lee Klancher I am getting some press exposure in this month's print and online issue of Motorcycle Product News. The online edition is here.

Lee got in touch with me about a couple of years ago and asked to take some pictures of our shop for his upcoming book, 'Motorcycle Dream Garages' It's a great collection of real world spaces with grit under their fingernails. Little did I expect to get an entire chapter to myself and one for my neighbors at Spannerland! The book is quality, from the large pictures and great text to the print quality and binding.

Like most people, Lee was interested in the upcoming V4 project when he heard and saw what we are up to. Unlike most people, Lee is a journalist and saw the chance to help get a good story out. We've been in continued contact and articles such as this are the result. As the project progresses we can expect to see more.

I'll be getting to machining some castings this week and will post some images and video once it is sorted.

That's all for now.

Trunnion table Has Arrived

Today the trunnion table for our 4 axis machining center came in. It is a custom design from Martin Manufacturing Services and is a beautiful piece of work. It will be used by us for accurately and quickly machining many parts, most importantly the crankcases, but also some suspension castings and the swingarm for post-heat treat machining.



Stan from MMS was receptive to making a design to my specifications and delivered exactly what I needed. He is also a big MotoGP fan hoping for a good showing from Spies, as we all are! It was nice to talk with a vendor that shares some common interests, especially another person who felt bummed out about the direction Moto2 took with the spec engine! Once he heard this was for a custom racing motorcycle project it really piqued his interest. Regardless of the application, he did all he can to provide me with the best product at an extremely reasonable price.


The surface of the table has features to locate a Kurt vice and a square pattern of Ballock locating/clamping pins that for use with a fixture plate that will allow me to index the parts 90 degrees with an accuracy of +/- .0005". He supplied 3 ready to use fixture plates made from Mic6 cast tooling plate.


Having everything in 3D CAD enables me to simulate machining operations and verify clearance and machine travels.

Many of the machining operations will be done using by custom boring bars from Microbore which should be here in a couple of weeks.

Programming of the parts is nearly done, once the boring bars are in all we will need are some castings and then the chips will start to fly.

Until the next update,

Chris

Project Overview

I just realized there's no info on what we are building on this blog. You can find more info at www.moto2-usa.com, a URL name whose significance is largely irrelevant to our efforts at this point, but here's a primer. Hopefully saner minds will prevail and they will open up the specification to more engine configurations in the future.

Anyway, we started this project after seeing the FIM release with the initial Moto2 rules.

Here's a good analysis of them by David Emmett of motomatters.com

This quickly changed to a Honda spec engine which dashed our hopes. Ever the outsiders we decided to continue on and build our dream bike, which does not include any part of a CBR600. Now we have finished with the design and are starting fabrication of the following bike:



The chassis and suspension designs have been race tested over the past 7 years with good success. This bike is taking all we learned and incorporating a custom designed V4 engine as a powerplant. As soon as we have a rolling chassis we will be doing development, internally at first, then partnering with Celtic Racing, a top AMA race team, with access to top rated national riders, as the bike comes up to speed. We'll enter a few local club races by the end of the season and see how the bike does in competition.

Swingarm Taking Shape

In addition to the head welding, Scott is also taking on the fabrication of the aluminum swingarm and whatever welding and heat treat fixturing required.

We had the sheet material waterjet cut by North Eastern Water Jet from 6061-T0 material. Scott is machining the billet parts from 6061-T6 and will be having the entire assembly heat treated and post machined on our 4 axis CNC mill. County Heat Treat will do the heat treat to a full T6 condition.

Some CAD of the finished product:



Some pictures of the parts so far:


It's good to see so much progress taking shape on several fronts. Scott will be doing a lot of billet and welding fabrication on many chassis related parts which will free me up for the major effort that is getting the engine running.

That's all for now.

Head Weld Test

First, a little background:

For our first engine iteration we will be using sectioned ZX-6R cylinder heads to enable us to develop a stable and low loss bottom end without chasing induction, combustion and exhaust issues. To a large extent a 4 stroke engine makes power above the head gasket and loses power below it. Since we have complete cylinder head and cam assemblies and tuning info from the Attack Kawasaki team once this engine is running on the dyno we can clearly see how our short block design stacks up against a standard I4. Once we get a efficient and reliable short block assembly we can start on a bespoke cylinder head assembly. In order to get to this point we need to cut up an existing head and seal the exposed water and oil passages. The question was do we use a bolt on or weld on cap plate. After getting some advice from Ian Drysdale we decided to use the weld up technique for maximum reliability.

Scott Kolb of Kolb Machine, was willing to do a quick test head and see how the passages would seal up and the resulting heat input affected valve seat retention and deck flatness. A cheapie eBay head served as the test mule and taking it to the bandsaw resulted in the following part to be welded:

Scott proceeded to fabricate cap plates as shown:


He then beautifully capped both passages with stack of dime weld beads:

which he then dressed to give the head a factory look finish.



Excellent work for a proof of concept. Once we do the final heads they will be put on a machining fixture to face the valve cover sealing surface.

First casting samples

Big Day!!

I just received some images of the first sample cast pieces for the front suspension and steering systems. The parts are done with the V-Cast sand casting process by TPI Arcade/Harmony Castings. The v-cast process gives better tolerances, less porosity, and a finer surface finish when compared to traditional sand casting. It also requires no draft on external surfaces, which is a nice bonus. Another benefit is the process is somewhat environmentally friendly as most of the sand used does not need to be cleaned because no binder is used in the sand for the cope and drag sides of the mold.

The crankcase castings are being done with the same technique but are taking longer due to the increased complexity and number of cores. It will be another month or so before I receive crankcase samples. In the interim we are waiting for our custom trunnion table and several custom boring bars to be completed which will be needed to do the various post machining operations on the various parts.