The mission: Have a ported cylinder head with 268 cam and Twin Weber DCOE's on in time for Le Mans '08.

Now it might not seem like a tall order, but I'm taking it easy and it's the first time I've done it. And everyone knows newbies take forever and a day to do something, no matter how trivial.

The mockup below (first picture) contains 2 DCOE's which have had the lids painted in Alpine White, and a Cylinder head with porting work and skimming, awaiting reassembly. This weekend I finally knocked a couple of the most significant jobs out the way, the ones which you ponder over for a week but then you do it and you were like WAPAH! BAAAH! (surfer dude)

It really boiled down to this: It's all well and good buying a load of gear and letting it look pretty on a shelf, but until you use it, it's cash that's just up in the air. That thought got me knuckling down and assembling the cylinder head and servicing the DCOE's.

The Cyl. Head has been treated to porting and polishing (my own), skimmed gasket face, new valve guides, recut and lapped valve seats, and new valve stem seals. The DCOE's have been preened and 'mainstream' restored with new brass floats and laying into 'em with a full service kit each, in addition to some bonuses like new wing nut covers and fuel banjo fittings. Not everything is shown in the pictures below, because not everything has been photographed.

The carbs themselves were bought used for 132 pounds. They didn't look too bad at all and they seem to be A-OK. These are the italian-made gen Carbs and as such are probably older than me, I'm not sure. Either way for some reason I get a kick out of the fact that I was either not born yet or only just born when these things and my car were knocking about being used. And here I come whooshing in and claiming ownership nearly 2 decades on.

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Enough said, times of war will soon be here.

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And a guest appearance - my other steed. With a shagged rear hub

gota love a clean engine!

looking sexy! cant wait for le mans! i'll bring a spare jerry can just for you! lol

BBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!

Sweet! Like you say, doing is a completely different game to hoarding. Good to see it all coming together. What have/are you doing about attaching the inlet manifold o the head? I couldn't see any way other than running inlet studs all round and nuts to eliminate the problem of the bolt holes being awkward to get bolts through. Thats what iv chosen to do anyway, just wondered how you were going about it?

And nice sidekick.. i still have a mk1 DMR sidekick in't garage, no APS and fairly battered and bruised, but good old Taiwanese 4130 girth!

Edited 5 April, 200818 yr by randombadger69

mmmm thats a nice looking head

and carbs

All looks so clean and new

DCOE's have sex appeal. To everyone in earshot.

Looks like a good job on the porting.

What porting device did you use?

I used a Dremel kit with flexi-shaft and a few carbide cutters, in addition to some milder grinding stones in a sphere shape to help 'run' the inner radius through to make it more natural. Scotchbrite dremel bits were also used finally to mop particular points especially on the exhaust side. The difference between before and after, especially on the exhaust ports, is amazing. No enlarging of ports was done apart from that needed to match the ports to the DCOE manifold as the difference at the join is quite a bit, but it's in a 'good direction' and will help promote swirl as a result.

However, it's not over 'til the rolling road sings.

And sing she shall!

What's your plan with filters? Socks or an airbox?

do like a bit of picture progress, you musta spent near on the price of the carb on little fittings, nuts and servicing parts.

i sold my dmr rhythm about a month ago, in favour of a little kids bmx, fits in the boot alot easier see.

nice dmr, they shermans i spy on there?

I've got fireflies on my 24bikes, they're minnnntt

DCOE's have sex appeal. To everyone in earshot.

What an actual sound!!! Love it.

Love the progress fella looking sweeeet!!!

The one thing I like most about servicing the DCOE's was that it was actually worth servicing them.

Since I owned them, one was always suffering with a sticky/binding throttle spindle and I was biting my lip hoping it would go away. To put a long story short, the original linkage components on the ends of the throttle spindle on one of them was causing metal to metal friction contact, which the new linkage components fixed by offering better clearance between arm and body. The linkage kit is an absolute fine art, the bits of it which went on yesterday are pictured below. The rest is yet to come.

love the detailing on the carbs, its actually quite fun dismantling things, servicing them, cleaning them and putting it all back together. cant wait to hear your mk2 scream now

Following this thread/build with much interest Danny, very nice work so far.

Did you have the valve seats recut with 3 angles? Its a really worthwhile mod and not very expensive to have done.