Boring airhead cylinders? who does it?

[Chuey]

Boy, I didn't read Duane's post as being so bad as some of you other guys did. I surmise that the edit in the original post is that it was originally worded to ask for "honing" as opposed to boring.

I would send mine to Ted Porter and pay his price. Either that, or I'd get one of those boring tools, myself. What could they cost? And, then, I'd get the knowledge to clamp down some loose old BMW cylinders nice and tight so when I bored them, they'd stay put for accuracy. Something tells me I remember Mr. Porter himself telling me that the cylinders or the pistons need to be slightly tapered or that they shouldn't be but I'd just pray so I could know which way to go on that. Prayer is easy and free, so it costs even less than the internet so how could knowing that factor into the cost?

Now that I think of it, I would just call Ted Porter and pay his price. I'm not that confidant in my prayer skills. I really feel proud when I do something myself and it comes out right. But then again, when I paid Ted Porter, or any other time I paid an expert to do work for me, I've felt like I was participating in life and even more, the essence of a well conducted transaction. Sometimes I've had to wait and save to afford to have the expert to do the work. It has worked out pretty well for me because the expert is receptive to a few questions.

I'm not trying to make anybody wrong here, and sometimes I've shot myself in the foot (not literally, I don't have a gun and arrows have a built in "foot shooting" safety factor) by being cheap, so I have no room to do that. The above is what I do when I'm "good example Chuey" instead of "don't do this Chuey".

Chuey

P.S. Free advice - or maybe confession: A very important to me ride was sabotaged by a mistake I made. I'll say it here so someone else may be helped by it. You know the two 6mm allen screws that hold on each coil? I replaced mine with Stainless Steel.....they are so non-rusty! Also, those two split lock washers under each aforementioned screw? Also replaced by Stainless Steel washers. I never liked split washers anyway. Plus, I like Stainless Steel fasteners. Well, the screws on the left side coil loosened and spoiled the ground connections which made my bike quit running about 375 miles from home. It was two and half hours later that I figured out what the problem was. I hope this helps someone not make the mistake I made.

[Major Softie]

P.S. Free advice - or maybe confession: A very important to me ride was sabotaged by a mistake I made. I'll say it here so someone else may be helped by it. You know the two 6mm allen screws that hold on each coil? I replaced mine with Stainless Steel.....they are so non-rusty! Also, those two split lock washers under each aforementioned screw? Also replaced by Stainless Steel washers. I never liked split washers anyway. Plus, I like Stainless Steel fasteners. Well, the screws on the left side coil loosened and spoiled the ground connections which made my bike quit running about 375 miles from home. It was two and half hours later that I figured out what the problem was. I hope this helps someone not make the mistake I made.

But, what was the mistake you made? Using stainless? I don't think so. Not using the lock washers? Well, yes and no, as you could have used Loctite and been fine with the hardware you used. So I guess that answer would be: not using some strategy to keep those screws tight.

[Chuey]

I will go back to the split lock washers as much for the grounding contact aspect as for the keep tight part of it. In general, I don't (normally) have issues with bolts coming loose. I tighten them to a good level and that usually keeps them in place. It is possible that I didn't tighten those two screws as tightly as I normally do but I've had a pretty dramatic and humbling lesson on how important that grounding point is. In fact, on the bike that happened to, I have the Rob Frankham grounding loom attached at that point as well. The irony of that was showing itself to me in "HD" as I discovered the problem.

Chuey

[Rob]

I always liked the wave washers that were predominant on my '79 R65.
What I DIDN'T like, was BMW putting the main ground on the front coil mount, that WILL break from vibration fatigue, leaving one stranded by the side of the road scratching their head (hopefully not with a full tank of fuel!).

For something as important as that ground, it should have been given a frame mount all it's own.