Mt Touareg - Elec start into a 500 frame
Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 12:00 pm
Hi there, a few months back i bought a aprilia 350 engine, this is the story of how i created my Mt Touareg (started off as my project but more and more help came from my dad towards the end) which is almost complete now im still looking for a seat however.
As the engine turned but the valves didn’t open we took the cover off to see what the problem was
As the belt had snapped i thought it best to investigate further to see if (altho im told impossible) the piston had come into rapid contact with the valves.
the main reason i bought this was for the electrical boot, so better make sure it works . . . which it didn’t GRR saw the kits on eBay for a new brush set at something like £23 but instead just bought a starter motor off a cbr 600 or some other generic bike, after some very careful filing and soldering they fitted in HURRAH only cost 99p
however luckily it all seemed okay so i didn’t delve and deeper than this. the main problem with putting it into the Mt frame is the section where the starter motor is, after looking at a few images and some help from people on the Mt forum. THANKS CHAPS
i cut the frame across the bolt hole and left the outlet pipe in place and then i tried it up against the engine to see if anymore needed to be removed and if i had enough clearance to get the motor out.
after it all seemed to go together fine i realised that there would need to be another bolt hole higher above the other two so i made the bit that fitted into the frame out of an old bolt,
and modified the front engine mount by welding a strip onto the top with another hole in.
it all seemed to fit okay so then i made some thin metal plate to plug the holes in the front down pipe. I then got my father to do the important welding bits (as i am only 17 and still have not picked up the skill)
The next main problem that you come up against is where to mount the oil filter, as to fit the engine you have to remove one of its mounting lugs to manage to get the starter motor into the gap.
After lots of cutting, grinding and yet more welding we had the filter snugly fitted, however as you will later hear it was all pointless but i thought id better show it just encase someone else was to do the same thing.
Thinking it was near completion all the parts got painted here is a picture of the modified engine front plate although not a brilliant one it still shows the modification (if you aren’t as cheap as i am you can just buy a mt350 one with the lugs in the right place)
The biggest problem i came up against on this bike was setting up the valve timing, i cockily went into the job thinking i knew what i was doing, for i had done it many times on the 500's. however it just wouldn’t work, it used to spit back through the carb and not run at all, so after taking the head of and grinding in the valves 5 more times (seriously hours and hours) we came to the conclusion something else must be wrong, so to find TDC we did it the manual way with a screwdriver down the plug hole, then after inspecting the manual closely i noticed a lock cut out in the crank that you should always use to set the timing (never done it that way before lol) so after the crank was locked guess what the pulley on the bottom was a full quarter turn too far, oh bugger must have sheared a key, so this projects scraped hmm but alas it wasn’t, try as we might with every tool at our disposal we couldn’t get the bloody nut off the end of the pulley to have a better look, so we crossed our fingers and ignored it if it was that firmly stuck on then it wasn’t going to be moving anywhere is it. so after the timing was set i gave it a squirt of easy start and it immediately fired up.
Oh yeah and why i didn’t need a oil filter there, well on Aprilia Touareg’s they fit inline filters so thats another few hours of time making things i didn’t need to ah well ? its all worth it in the end
looks good dosnt it job pretty much done
it starts good and runs fab all i need it to get a few more parts and it will be on the road
thanks to those who gave there advice on how to do it if only i knew your names haha
soon i think i will up rate it to either a 500 or a 604 just for that extra little bit of power.
if you got to here thanks for reading
As the engine turned but the valves didn’t open we took the cover off to see what the problem was
As the belt had snapped i thought it best to investigate further to see if (altho im told impossible) the piston had come into rapid contact with the valves.
the main reason i bought this was for the electrical boot, so better make sure it works . . . which it didn’t GRR saw the kits on eBay for a new brush set at something like £23 but instead just bought a starter motor off a cbr 600 or some other generic bike, after some very careful filing and soldering they fitted in HURRAH only cost 99p
however luckily it all seemed okay so i didn’t delve and deeper than this. the main problem with putting it into the Mt frame is the section where the starter motor is, after looking at a few images and some help from people on the Mt forum. THANKS CHAPS
i cut the frame across the bolt hole and left the outlet pipe in place and then i tried it up against the engine to see if anymore needed to be removed and if i had enough clearance to get the motor out.
after it all seemed to go together fine i realised that there would need to be another bolt hole higher above the other two so i made the bit that fitted into the frame out of an old bolt,
and modified the front engine mount by welding a strip onto the top with another hole in.
it all seemed to fit okay so then i made some thin metal plate to plug the holes in the front down pipe. I then got my father to do the important welding bits (as i am only 17 and still have not picked up the skill)
The next main problem that you come up against is where to mount the oil filter, as to fit the engine you have to remove one of its mounting lugs to manage to get the starter motor into the gap.
After lots of cutting, grinding and yet more welding we had the filter snugly fitted, however as you will later hear it was all pointless but i thought id better show it just encase someone else was to do the same thing.
Thinking it was near completion all the parts got painted here is a picture of the modified engine front plate although not a brilliant one it still shows the modification (if you aren’t as cheap as i am you can just buy a mt350 one with the lugs in the right place)
The biggest problem i came up against on this bike was setting up the valve timing, i cockily went into the job thinking i knew what i was doing, for i had done it many times on the 500's. however it just wouldn’t work, it used to spit back through the carb and not run at all, so after taking the head of and grinding in the valves 5 more times (seriously hours and hours) we came to the conclusion something else must be wrong, so to find TDC we did it the manual way with a screwdriver down the plug hole, then after inspecting the manual closely i noticed a lock cut out in the crank that you should always use to set the timing (never done it that way before lol) so after the crank was locked guess what the pulley on the bottom was a full quarter turn too far, oh bugger must have sheared a key, so this projects scraped hmm but alas it wasn’t, try as we might with every tool at our disposal we couldn’t get the bloody nut off the end of the pulley to have a better look, so we crossed our fingers and ignored it
if it was that firmly stuck on then it wasn’t going to be moving anywhere is it. so after the timing was set i gave it a squirt of easy start and it immediately fired up.Oh yeah and why i didn’t need a oil filter there, well on Aprilia Touareg’s they fit inline filters so thats another few hours of time making things i didn’t need to ah well ? its all worth it in the end
looks good dosnt it
job pretty much doneit starts good and runs fab all i need it to get a few more parts and it will be on the road
thanks to those who gave there advice on how to do it
if only i knew your names hahasoon i think i will up rate it to either a 500 or a 604 just for that extra little bit of power.
if you got to here thanks for reading