Pictures taken 3/22/2004

Finally, I thought the day would never come.
The Yankee motor is being put back together!
The redone cranks just arrived, and other parts
such as pistons, cylinders, gaskets and tires have
been assembled over the winter.

At this point, the engine has all new bearings (10),
all new seals, reworked cranks, new con rods, new
transmission gears, new pistons, and lots of little
pieces needed to complete the assembly.

I'm no mechanic, in fact this is the first cycle I've
attempted to do a complete rebuild on. So, I'm
reading the directions twice for each step of the
way. The engine will be assembled once and
checked for clearances and gear operation. 

After that, the cranks will be joined together
(this is the point of no return), and the engine
assembly will be done over again. Hopefully
there will only be leftover parts that I'm expecting.

Once the cranks are separated and worked on,
they are welded back together again, so there is
no chance of slippage and loss of alignment. I
don't know why bikes don't have forged one-piece
cranks and con rods with bearing caps, like a car.

The one-piece con-rods are most likely the
lightest possible design, it seems like rod caps
wouldn't add that much weight, and the
crankshaft is balanced anyway, so adjustments
could be made there for more
reciprocating mass on the connecting rod.

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