Rocket88 Assembly

Here's the cases right out of the box from Nallin. Should weigh a little less now that the cases have been bored.

There's a spacer that Nallin tie-wrapped to the starter motor hole. You can see it as the shiny bit in the lower right. Not sure what that's for. I have a call in to find out.

Popcorn was easily shop-vac'ed out.

Here's the new White Bros. E-Pipe mountain motor core on the right compared with the stock one. Much larger diameter but also a lot more holes per square inch.

I'm swapping out the SE aircleaner for a Forcewinder in order to get air in with less restriction.

These are the only "performance" mods that I'm making in addition to the larger bore.

These are both Nallin pistons. The 1200 on the left was made by Ross and the 1440 on the right was made by Wiseco. They weigh pretty much the same. Interesting how they eliminated weight while maintaining strength.

Finally got started with assembly. Cases went in the frame easily. Stator on and transmission installed. The tranny is kind of fun to play with moving the shifting forks and watching the bit that the detent plate goes on. Gives an idea of how the shifter works. Everything loctited and torqued. The shifter will go on tonight. It isn't installed even though you can see it in the picture.

Is that one clean motor or what!?

The gear coming from the bottom of the case is on the oil pump. It meshes with a gear that is behind the one that is visible behind the hex nut. The top corner of the hex nut just happens to line up with the groove mark on the gear underneath it. That groove is lined up with the dot on the cam gear. There are dots on each cam gear. These all need to be lined up for the cam timing to be correct.

The cylinders as shipped need to be throughly cleaned. Twice I scrubbed with hot soapy water. When I was getting ready to insert the assembled piston, I wiped the cylinder bore with a paper towel with oil on it. I saw that there was grey on the paper towel. Bottom line was that I had to scrub the bores quite a bit to get them clean.

I started with the rear cylinder. I inserted the piston in the bottom of the cylinder. This is a little tricky and requires patience. Wiggle, press, wiggle, press, repeat. Then it was time for the first circlip. Did that on the bench with the piston in the cylinder. Assembly lubed the piston for the pin and the rod bushing. Inserted the piston pin through one side of the piston then placed the cylinder over the studs and lined up the piston pin with the rod. Pushed it in and struggled a bit with the other circlip in tight quarters.

It was then that I noticed my mistake. I looked down the cylinder bore and the arrow on the top of the piston was pointing forward as it should. But, the intake flycut which is bigger that the exhaust was on the back. The arrows on the pistons were pointing toward the exhaust flycut. Took it apart and reversed the piston and reassembled the whole thing.

Repeated without the error for the front cylinder. Here we are with the cylinders and pistons successfully installed.

Heads are on in this pic. But before I tightened them down, I remembered to install the front motor mount. Phew, glad I've done this before. Brian installed heavy duty studs in the cases. I took each respective head bolt and screwed it onto its stud. Took them off. Prepped each bolt with a bit of oil on the threads and underneath each bolt head that comes into contact with the head. Then tightened them in sequence to 7ft/lbs then in sequence to 14. Then I loosened them all. Then tightened in sequence to 7, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and then 40. Remember these are Millenium nikasil 3 13/16" bore alloy cylinders and heavy duty studs. A little different procedure than stock.

Intake manifold is on as are the new lifters, lifter pins, and their covers. The silver V-shaped bits at the base of the cylinders are the Zippers adjustable pushrod cover bases. The lower rocker boxes are sitting on top of the one-piece gasket on top of the heads.

Here are the adjustable pushrod covers. Zipper's didn't include a picture of what they were supposed to look like so a visit to their website straightened that out.

What a pain these things are. First a missing o-ring, some scratches on one of the bases which wasn't in a bag of its own, now one of the chrome uppers is jammed on the aluminum center tube. They must have had fun jamming that in there.

Managed to pound the tube out. The cover scraped about .002 aluminum shaving all the way around the aluminum tube. No problem with that. I even managed to re-indent the top of the cover so the keeper will work.

Here's the poop on getting Zipper's XL pushrod covers expanded. Many thanks go to Aaron Wilson who got me started in the right direction for these instructions. I'm assuming that you've installed the pushrods, collapsed pushrod cover assemblies, tightened down the rocker box, and adjusted the pushrods. Now the fun begins:

The tricky bits are the chrome collar, the aluminum tube, and the keeper. I'll call these the collar, tube and keeper.
Start by lightly greasing the outside of the o-ring on the top of the tube. First, I used syn oil but the tube would pop out in further steps. I used wheel grease.
Position the top of the tube with o-ring in the bottom of the head and slide the collar as far down the tube as you can.
With a medium blade screwdriver, press on the bottom of the rim of the tube up into the head. It takes quite a bit of pressure. You'll know you get it when it "pops" in place. This is essential.
Using 2 medium blade screwdrivers, alternate levering the collar down on the spring using the undersides of cylinder fins. One side with one screwdriver, then the other side with the other screwdriver levering the collar down to lower fins.
When you get as low as you can, keep one screwdriver in place while you insert the keeper.
Relax, you're done. Only three more to go. Repeat.

We're getting pretty close to the end here. The Millenium cylinder castings were better than the 1200's I had on before. I only had to cut fins for the Mikuni with these.

Should be able to start it up in the next couple of days. Need to get the Mikuni fitted and the new Forcewinder installed.

I'm going to static time the ignition and retard a couple of degrees. That should be safe. Since the heads, cams, carb, and pipe are almost unchanged, the carb tuning should be pretty close. If necessary, I'll richen up the main and raise the needle a notch.

I had problems adjusting the clutch per the FM. Here are some instructions from Julie Balassa that I found very useful:

First of all, don't loosen the cable absolutely all the way. Maybe it was on the older bikes, but I've seen guys take the cable to max slack and drop the little balls from inside the ramps right down into the primary, so I just got in the habit of leaving a bit of tension in the cable.
When you're ready to adjust the screw, push the lever in toward the handlebar as far as it will go. If you've loosened the cable and adjusting screw, it should travel almost all the way in. Then watch it travel back out as you turn the screw CCW, or place one finger gently against the lever so you can feel when it stops moving.
Once the lever stops moving, squeeze it a few times to seat the balls in the ramps, and start over. Go through the procedure a second time, and this time when the lever stops moving, turn the screw CW 1/4 turn. Then adjust the cable.
Many people misadjust the cable because they mistake slop in the lever for free play. The most accurate way is to grab the cable where it enters the lever and check for free play that way. Don't force it, just get a feel for how much free play you have.
If you have enough to be able to slide a quarter in between the metal end of the cable housing and the lever with a bit of drag, you're there.

2Tired Hal and His Rocket88

Sportster Potpourri from the Heart of the Redwoods