Mt Touareg - Elec start into a 500 frame

William
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Location: Doncaster

Mt Touareg - Elec start into a 500 frame

Post by William » 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
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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.
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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

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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.
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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,
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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)
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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.
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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) Image

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

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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 :)
Last edited by William on Wed Oct 28, 2009 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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MT500/aprilia 350 bottom end 6 speed E/s with disk breaks and a taco drive :D
Green Norton Commando-1969
Red Norton Commando- 1972
1977 commando 850 E/s

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Bunker
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Re: Mt Touareg

Post by Bunker » Wed Oct 28, 2009 12:08 pm

bloody good job william, very impressive, you now have one of the only 6 speed MTs in existence!
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TDIPower
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Location: Sheffield

Re: Mt Touareg

Post by TDIPower » Wed Oct 28, 2009 12:25 pm

Fantasic work!! Love the gas welding too.

I think from what I read your crank pully has only been fitted 90 out, the pulley itself has 4 keyways cut in it so it is possible for it to be fitted at 0, 90, 180 and 270 positions on the cranks woodruff key. There is some info in the book about it being fitted at 270 clockwise (90 anti clockwise) on 'some' engines but I cant remember which or why. the result (from experience) is the timing can be 1/2 or 1 tooth out either way.

Would be worth a call to Peter Knight (rotax) with the engine number and he will tell you which position it should be set to.

Pete
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MT350

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morpheus
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Re: Mt Touareg

Post by morpheus » Wed Oct 28, 2009 12:43 pm

Very impressive William, well done!

Morpheus
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frenchy3
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Location: snetterton,norfolk

Re: Mt Touareg

Post by frenchy3 » Wed Oct 28, 2009 7:33 pm

Nice conversion. Excellent job.
Steve
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MT 350 1996 The Albatross

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Daj
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Re: Mt Touareg

Post by Daj » Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:31 pm

Excellent work fella

Really well done

Daj
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Trying to find my own a*** with both hands
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Sserpent

Re: Mt Touareg

Post by Sserpent » Thu Oct 29, 2009 12:42 pm

Really nice work there William, it looks good!
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bth2bth2
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Re: Mt Touareg

Post by bth2bth2 » Fri Oct 30, 2009 7:08 pm

great job,well done.
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Slowly slowly catchy monkey.............
CBR 900rrs , zrx1100.in green gone but not forgotten.....mt500 in green ,stolen and abused but still alive.......cos one day , all bikes will be this slowwwwwww

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frenchy3
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Re: Mt Touareg

Post by frenchy3 » Sat Oct 31, 2009 7:56 am

Depending on where you are in the country i would be interested in your 350 engine if you upgrade.
Steve.
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MT 350 1996 The Albatross

sirguzzi

Re: Mt Touareg

Post by sirguzzi » Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:30 am

TDIPower wrote:There is some info in the book about it being fitted at 270 clockwise (90 anti clockwise) on 'some' engines but I cant remember which or why.
This is for the 348 engine, williams aprilia seems to be one of those.
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