From: | Barry Brown | e-mail: | oldmill@kingston.net |
Subject: | RE: RE: RE: New cylinders and heads on Cannonball | Date: | Thu Nov 8 18:11:48 2012 |
Response to: | 4355 |
Mark's last name already starts with an "H" so the next logical step is to change it to Henderson ! PUT ME ON THE LIST FOR A HOT DELUXE CAM. ----- ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS ----- The two engines that had new cranks in them were the Crouch kj and Bramwell kj. No Dyno testing has been done to date. The cams have proven in service to work real well in the deluxe and we have had mixed results in the KJs. New timing gears are being made that will allow me to move the cam timing around. Yes the parts will be ready soon and prices are on the way. One word about the Cylinders they worked great. Dale and the hole team that worked with the cylinder project have done a great job. I have great confidence in the cylinders. I also have great confidence in the camshafts in the Deluxe engine. The new manifold is good. We think it can be better and we are going to do more testing. The same can be said for the new cam in the kj engine. I wont even begin to judge any manifold/camshaft combo at this time. One thing is for sure all the pack KJ bikes were better than the stock KJ. Think about this: The Henderson Motorcycle Company had 8 years to work on the Deluxe engine and perfect it to the best state of tune they could get at the time. They had 18 months to perfect the KJ before the plug got pulled. Our team has had about the same time. There is much more left in the kj to extract and civilize. I feel the KJ engines I built were Good not "Great" I am my own worst critic. I could not be more happy with the Deluxe engines not so many rough edges. At the end of the day these are great old bikes and can be pushed hard however they are not G.S. BMWs or KTM 990 Adventures and never will be. We are getting closer. I am headed back to S.A. racing next week for more development. Mark ----- ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS ----- Sounds great. Which bikes had special ground cams and counterbalanced cranks and are these items going to be available too? Were these engines tested on a dyno to compare before and after and if so what effect did the different cam grinds have? ----- ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS ----- New cylinders and heads on Cannonball: New high performance cylinders and heads were used on the following motorcycles: Byrne Bramwell’s #32 Mike Fockler’s #65 Dale Stoner’s #99 New high performance cylinders only were used on: Clyde Crouch’s #31 Motors in each motorcycle were set up differently to test parts. Coast 4’s built all motors. My motor was 100% stock except for the cylinders and heads. I used a Schebler DLX 84 carburetor with .937” venture. This carburetor is believed to be the original KL carburetor by some people. All new cylinders and heads on all of the bikes performed flawlessly. There were other issues with some of the motorcycles but no issues with cylinders or heads. These new cylinders are identical to originals on the outside. The inside has been changed to raise the compression from 4.7 to 5.7. The cylinders use a domed piston similar to a KL design. The exhaust valve and port are smaller. This increase velocity in the port and scavenges the exhaust out of the cylinders more efficiently. The more efficient removal of exhaust also makes the engine run cooler. We decided to develop a new head because the original head flow tested so poorly. In the original design the air has to flow around push rod and bolt columns. The air is directed up and down to get to the end cylinders. End cylinders receive 40% less flow than the center cylinder. The new head we designed all cylinders flow within 2% of each other. When using new cylinders and heads together all cylinders flow 30% better than the original center cylinders. Obviously, flow bench tests and real world differ. But these bikes out performed stock KJ’s by a large amount. At first glance the new head looks stock. The right side is nearly identical to an original. The left side is where the differences can be seen. The only way a person can see that a Henderson KJ has the “Cannonball Special” head is to knell down close to the motorcycle and look under the gas tank on the left side and look for the log style manifold. The carburetor mounts in its original location except it protrudes 5/16” out further. The cylinders and heads have been designed using professionals SA Racing and New Class Iron, worked together developing the combustion chamber and port design. SA Racing did all the flow bench testing and directed New Classic Iron in revisions to develop a casting with better air flow. New Classic Iron made the patterns to cast all the heads and cylinders. The tooling and machining of castings was also performed by New Classic Iron. Professional laboratories were used to select proper chemistry of the cast iron and were also used to select aging and annealing processes. High performance and stock KJ cylinders will be available in January, 2013. Cannonball special heads will be available hopefully in February, 2013. Pricing has not been established, but will be posted in a few weeks. |