The full story of the Hooch build

[joedrum]

The start of the idea began with this.

A funny thing happened ....I changed the open exhaust on the mongrel and put on the 1100 exhaust system I have and it just killed the mongrel....it wont even get out of its own way....

I guess this speaks of its adjustability in the timing department ......im not even going to mess with it ....im taking it out and putting in the 1200 motor i have. This motor is very free and has lots of compression .......the mongrel 1000 motor will be my extreme build cause i want to add the 83 transmission in it to get the tallest of all gearing capable to run at 70mph at 3000 rpm, in that range anyway.....a very light custom bike with tall highway gears for travel....and I don't want to mess with the timing as it is set up for straghit pipes and runs super strong....

Anyway I'm taking 1000 out and putting in the 1200 ....i just want to use the heads and carbs i got for the 1200 .....but need intake turn downs, hydro clutch slave cylinder and clutch master lever and hose..... and to figure out how to work the ignition system past the electronic ignition out of the motor, with what the mongrel has is 3 ohm coils with no ballast resister and wires to plugs.....

So I'm starting today to get the mongrel 1000 out.....

 

[joedrum]

Yeah Dan, it's getting hard to deny all the positives to the 1000 heads.
It was hard for me to believe when i put the 1100 exhaust on the mongrel that it just killed the performance....i had the timing all tweaked for the straight pipes and the mufflers made it like it didn't even want to run....let alone the bikes wired up for it.

it doesn't really look like I need any insight on this any more.

Truth is when i put this together with the 1000 heads and with 1100 83 carbs this is going to be a monster....I'm hoping 83 carbs can keep it smooth ....75 heads and carbs will make a monster with an attitude that just eats up other bikes if they do fit......monster it is, smooth or radical, is the only question.

 

[joedrum]

I'm certain the 1000 heads will work on an 1100 (I had mine running once with the 1000 heads) and pretty sure the reverse should be true.
I'm sure enough the 1000 heads will work on a 1200 to try it.
Put this way, I set a 1100 head on Susies 1200 to check the fit and found they would bolt right up. I didn't check the crossover tubes but I think they'd line up.
I have a 1200 head I should compare with an 1100.

i was just looking at the 1200 manual and the ignition box looks like it is expensive .....Dan didn't we just have a thread on replacing the ignition box with some kind of car upgrade hei thing or something.....

so Dan you had the 1000 head on your 1100 and ran it that way??....that would be great news to me ....cause i know that the head gaskets claim to be the same for 1100-1200 motors...sky pilot said there would be problem with valve clearance and higher compression and the 1000 valves are smaller....I would think this would be less of an interference motor but he seem to think it would be more...actually i think the smaller valves is a plus on longevity and performance with the higher compression.....

The other 1200 is an 86 yr with the picups up front ....I've got an 1100 wiring harness but I'm like you I like the adjustability of timing and spring loaded timing advance of the 1000 and with the dyna ignitions and coils all the short comings are eliminated making it just the ignition i want to use.....

Its amazing some of the opinions you can get on things ...i saw no difference in the 1000 and 1100 head....i haven't been able to look at the 1200 head yet as it is still on the motor....but I cant see a obvious problem with it so far.

I guess the whole deal is to make a 1000 like 1200 with 1100 carbs is where I'm leaning right now.
It does seem that if i use the 1000 heads the 1200 carb rack might not be an option .....I'm going to look some more after posting .....

So thanks Dan for your testing on the 1000 head you used. This has somewhat put my mind at ease but I'm going to look hard at this issue to figure out what skypilot was talking about. He's no fool by any means so i don't take his words lightly at all.
He's doing the same project right now .........

 

[joedrum]

Well I got my daughter to ebay some early 76 1000 heads with the hotter cams in them....I wish I could find the money to get an early carb rack preferably a 75 carb rack .......its starting to become clear to me that the 1100 heads can be switched to the 1000 design. it looks like the 1000 ignition stuff will fit on the 1100 heads .....i haven't looked into this real thoroughly yet but its seems so....

The pistons on an 1100 are 3mm bigger than the 1000 and about 1/2mm smaller than 1200 pistons....it seems that 1100 heads are 1000 heads that have been cut wider to the outside area where the pistons are bigger....I'm thinking i might be better off to use the 1100 heads with the 1000 cams and ignition installed in them.

There might have been some change in the 1100 head to work better than the 1000 head ...it for sure adds a little more room but not much, but some ....I'm sure it could lower the compression ratio some .....and the 1000 would raise a little...hard to say what would be best.....

i still need to get a starter for the 1200 or figure out if the 1100 starter will work....and i need clutch slave cylinder and master clylinder lever and hose.....

Well I can answer your question on the starter, the 1000 and 1100 starter won't fit the 1200.

Keep pluggin away at it Joe. I like your idea of the forward controls.
I've been looking for a highway bar like the Harleys have for our bike, guess one doesn't exist so I'll have to make my own.

 

[joedrum]

well im not sure how i did it or what happened but im starting to get some good collaboration and some insight over on the saunders forum and the interest is gaining.
There are three of use trying to make this mod happen and all of us had different angles on how to do this and were all discussing the problems that need addressing in good way to help us all.....

i found out yesterday that early 1000s 75-77 had different piston cut out than the 78-79 yrs ....i got this info from a cam place that makes cams for 1000 and 1100 engines saying that if you use there cams on 78 and later 1000s and 1100s you have to cut the piston cut outs bigger .....now these cams are even hotter than the stock cams from 75-77. The stock cams may work on later engines and honda may have lessen the piston cut out as a cost saving thing with milder cams that they started using.....but this is an issue that i have to look into thoroughly.....i might have to go with the 79 1000 heads and cams if i cant figure this out to my satisfaction .....im sure the 1200 has cut outs too and everything will have to be measured for clearance.....

i dont want to put something together that might be to close in tolerance or clearance to be reliable....

im fixing to go outside and test fit the frame after posting ....ive got the 1200 motor blocked up off the gravel and going to put the frame right on it ....its much lighter than the motor and i can handle it ok by myself .......

 

[joedrum]

I'm trying to keep things at a level of it working pretty much like normal ...so your saying that the higher lift cam and longer duration cam is going to drop the compression level some .....i will have to check the specs again but i think that's what I'm dealing with in the hotter cams....
this would be a good thing to maybe counter act the possible smaller combustion area that will raise the compression ratio....I'm going to look at this after posting....

this is not a total tear down. ive got an 86 1200 motor that seems to be in real good shape and I'm basically just doing a carb and head change to 1000 switch .....why ?? because i think i can and i think it will make a nice pump out and stroke 1000 monster.
I'm not really trying to make a drag bike but a big hearted street bike is very appealing....

its going to come out geared like your 1100 with more punch to the wheel .... this was too tempting for me to let sit on the shelf so i just jumped right in took off on it.....

i wont know what 1200 pistons are like till i take the 1200 heads off and im not going to do that till i think ive got a handle on everything.....

there's always the option of using the 1200 motor stock ..... the deal there is you almost have to turn the entire bike into a 1200 as far as wiring goes and ignition box that's not even being made any more by honda .......

but i would like to hear more of your thoughts on this or going with 1000 set up.

 

[joedrum]

its seems very good to me ....it really captures my frame of mind and how clueless i was ...and how that meant nothing to me ...one second the mongrel had a 1000 in it and i just installed 1100 mufflers on it ...it was quiet but it didnt run as well as it did before on the test ride ...got home with it and yank the motor that day ...of course i had the 1100 standard to ride or i wouldnt have done that ...but really no clue that i could pull it off ...but thats never stop me in life :smilie_happy: :hihihi: :mrgreen: :help: :shock:

 

[joedrum]

I'm surprised at how close the 1200 is to the 1000-1100 motors I was always led to believe that the 1200 was completely different
there really not.....

I think the best way i could describe this project would be to say its a Valkyrie type setup of a 1200 motor...bigger carbs ..hotter cams and higher compression in a 1000 package .....I'm really quite pleased how easy things are going except for the frame work I'm still scraping and fooling around with it .....but parts were more important than getting the frame done with some money blasting.
seems I've got an early 1000 carb rack to go in the mongrel from a 77 model ....now I'm down to 1200 starter ,1200 hydraulic clutch lever master and slave and one timing belt cover to get .....getting closer all the time.....

I've also come up with another 1200 85 model locally for a good price and might have part of the clutch slave cylinder that I need not sure yet ...so lots of things to think about on what to do next .....the mongrel is my best buddy and I've got to get it back together soon....

I made a deal on some 77 carbs but haven't herd anything for awhile so I don't know whats going on .... so in the down time I've been working on the wing shack I have been putting together to hold all this stuff I have .....if you call this progress .....this is my progress report.... :mrgreen:

 

[joedrum]

my long awaited carb rack came in yesterday ...they look like they have never been open before this is good and bad but i was thinking more good than bad ......it seems they have 44,000 miles on them and then set a decade untouched maybe more ...
I'm glad to have them and will soon be going after the carbs in a clean and rebuild :mrgreen:
looks like i finaly got the clutch master lever , line and slave cylinder bought and maybe the starter and the one timing belt cover ....this will put the mongruel project back on the table ......great news for me :yahoo: :yahoo: k: :good: :mrgreen:

Hey guys I just got my clutch master and starter for the 1200 mongruel project .....this makes all the parts except gaskets ....what a long road of parts hunting ....the whole deal that I got a starter clutch master lever line slave cylinder and a right side timing cover for 80 dollars including shipping makes the wait a lesson in patience and not to push things ....

I'm going to get back on the build showing no patience at all :yahoo: :mrgreen:
now that i have plenty of seat time to put in to heal the back im going to work on the 1000 carb rack for the mongreul.....

this carb rack looks like its never been touched ....I'm going to take pics some how and post them

hopefully this project comes out fine ....I think i can handle it ...and the carbs will get done too :smilie_happy: :smilie_happy: :mrgreen:

 

[joedrum]

its been a long time since I've made any progress on the 1200 project.....but yesterday i took the 1200 heads off....the 76 heads are the ones I'm going to use ...

there some talk about the cams hitting 1200 ...so I've come with a way of safely figuring out if there going to hit and if they don't hit a way of measuring the clearance ....and if they do hit a way of measuring how much i need to cut out the pistons deeper...

this will also give me an ideal of what clearances I have in the 1100 with 75 cams....

I'm hoping to take pics of all this to go with my posts

the 1200 block looks great around the pistons and cylinders ....I was pleased how well it looked :mrgreen:
today I'm test fitting 76 1000 heads on the 1200 ....the 1200 motor looks good inside the cylinders..... :mrgreen:
okay what a day .....i did test fit the 1000 heads on the 1200 today after cleaning the pistons and stuff on it and a 1100 too....when i timed the 1200 to the t 1 mark the valves were hitting .....and looking at everything carefully on the 1200 and 1100 there just seemed no reason that the 1200 was hitting.... :rant: :rant: :nea: :mrgreen:

so i test fitted the 1000 head on the 1100 and timed it to T1 mark on crank ....valves didn't hit....how could that be..... :doh: :rant: :mrgreen:

so then I really started looking at stuff and discovered that the timing marks on the crank are different....on the 1100 the timing mark is on the T the marks are either side of the T then there is 1 with no marks on either side by it and then there's the F with marks on either side.....the 1200 has marks on either side of the T the 1 and the F :headscratch: :rant: :rant:

so then I tested the 1000 head on the 1200 again except this time I lined it up on the 1 and marks there on the 1200 motor ....and the valves didn't hit :headscratch: so I'm thinking that this is where the 76 head and cams need to be timed .....
I'm going to repeat everything tomorrow to make sure that the results repeats itself it was getting dark...... :heat: :mrgreen:

so I'm thinking honda changed the marks and you know that extra stroke has something to do with this .....so nobody take me serious yet as I'm in mid stream on this but its where I am now .......

when it come to parts mixing like this you never know where it can lead you ...you have to be so thorough on figuring things out.....its time to :lazy: on it :mrgreen:

 

[joedrum]

I did a valve check today on the 1200 with flour dough instead of clay ....I'm thinking it went okay ...it all stuck in the head instead of piston ....but I saw no signs of being to close ...and I'm confident that its okay and 1100 too ....I didn't even check the 1100 it seemed redundant....

so I'm on the the move now with the the 1200 project ...i will do a head job on the heads and stuff now ...i will have to come up with head gaskets ...I can't believe how much they want for them ...

I'm waiting on early heads and cams to come in to have a choice between the two sets ...I want to use the other set for a 1980 1100 motor I have.

so this is a huge step ...others on another forum are having problems with clearance and valve hitting on the 1200 mod ...I just don't see it and cant explain or understand what going on ....even if the heads were milled it doesn't look to me that would be the total cause of there problems so I'm going to just pay attention to my own work
:mrgreen:

 

[joedrum]

I'm going to try shoot another pic :headscratch: fire this is me messing with the 1000 head cleaning it up and staying inside

 

[joedrum]

okay one more time...okay ..i did this totaly by myself im the only one here ...this is good news im getting close to having a real thread.....with pics

 

[joedrum]

this is the adapter plate the screws to the 1200 head in rough fit so far ...you can see how close it is from 1200 cap holes and the clearance to operate the 1000 ignition.....

 

[joedrum]

I had to grind the whole lip down on the 1200 motor so the 1000 ignition would seat down far enough to engage the notch in the 1000 cam that is in the 1200 head once I get the camera thing down and uploading i will take the plate off so to see the grinding job that had to be done ...I have the fuel pump side done this far too

I have to get a 10mm tap to do the holes for actually mounting the ignition and fuel pump.

this is the fuel pump side the pump been fitted and reaches the operating cam I took the thick gasket out to get some depth in the head to reach the cam and will replace it with thin gaskets this will lessen the thickness of the plate to get good operation depth.....still didnt get the picture up like i want :cheeky: :crying: and after a three hr lesson on chat by Dan I will get it darn this is tough for me. :head bang:

 

[joedrum]

ignition is test fitted and looking good and all the clearance is there so ....so now all I have to do is do the fuel pump again :shock: it was to easy and I screwed it up :smilie_happy:
well today I did some work to the adapter plates on the 1200 motor with 1000 ignition and fuel pump grafted to the 1200 heads .I hope the pics come up like I want.

ignition

fuel pump

 

[joedrum]

okay after a long break the mongrel 86 1200 motor is in the motor stand ....thanks to V who gave me head gaskets to use on it ...I was having a hard time buying gaskets without feeling i was being rape by TSA airport goons....anyway plan is to use 1100 heads on the 1200 motor as i have have a known good pair that's on the 82 motor that was tree slammed by the tornado of a yr ago or so ....then there will be 75 cams and and ignition hooked to it ...along with 75 carb rack ....

first i will check for sure about clearance with the valves and pistons with the aggressive 75 cams and there lift ....there been all kinds of talk about clashing ...the only time i check i didn't really see any problem ...but i will do a thoroughly good check first ...if cut outs have to be done I will ...its certainly not a mod stopper ...I'm expecting a huge gain in horse power ....and when matched with the 1100 final drive already moded to the mongrel frame it should be geared awesome ....this set up should be like a Valkyrie 1200 and actually have bigger carbs and more aggressive cams than the 6 cylinder Valkyrie...oh I so much like playing in the unknown areas of oldwings ...the joedrum prototype mongrel :rocks: :mrgreen:

It's been a long time me getting to this day cant believe I got it all cut in one day ...a lot of credit gose to the work ekvh did .....I trusted his work and didnt feel the need to repeat it ...and had at it knowing exactly where the trouble spot was ...and its tested out good...I'm just hoping the gaskets I got are for a 1100 and not 1000 ... :builder: :mrgreen:

 

[joedrum]

well I'm cleaning the old gaskets off the 1100 heads ...I'm going to reinstall with no gaskets on the motor and put belts on and use that as a test to to see if anything hits ....and yes my heads gaskets are 1100 gaskets that's good ...I'll just have to put things off until I can get some O rings for heads to be put on for good.

well that didnt work too good ...without gaskets the pistons hit the 1100 head around the edge ...so today I'm going to clean the heads even more ...they were quite messed up with gasket stuff on the heads and block time to get that all good.

I'll have to look and see just how things work on the 1100 short block ...I think the same thing would happen there also ...just shows you how close pistons and heads come together around the edge...the gasket is all that separates them...I'm going to go slow through here as I dont want any chance of doing something or not doing something that will cause a problem here ....there will be no rushing through this ...anyway the piston is only .05mm bigger than 1100 but it still seems to hit.

I've test fitted the carbs before and it seems you can pull the rubber intakes out one of the two knotches and it hooks up fine ...but this was only lightly testing I never tried to seal it down yet ...just looked possible....once past the pistons clearing I'm thinking things will be much easier on this mod...I'm really getting excited on the deal....the 1200 gearing matched to the 1100 final drive I think is going to be killer...just low and tall enough to be a real road ripper ....I'm very pleased it didnt take much to clear the valves ....

 

[joedrum]

well I've been waiting and cleaning still on 1200 86 motor ....its looks great and I'm still waiting for batteries to come home for the camera ..to take pics of the piston relief but its not much ...I think today batteries are coming ....I'm in the process of thinking I might put this motor in the 77 as its more ready for the road than the mongrel...to say the least :smilie_happy: and in wanting to try the 1000 final drive as in the gearing it will be rather low ...but the spread on the 1200 gearing is quite large compared to other oldwings to make this okay in my trying it ...I don't think it's going to be as good as 1100 final drive match up ...but i want first hand knowledge....around where I live the lower gearing might be nice ...as first gear can be an adventure out of my driveway to say the least in or out ...just thinking thoughts right now not sure what I might do :mrgreen:
Okay some pics of the milling job.

not the greatest of pics but you can see it doesn't take much to clear the pistons ...and now to the next step in the 1200 modifying :mrgreen:

 

[joedrum]

pics look a little deceiving the grinding was very little ...but I did transition it as I thought this would improve turbulence when taking in fuel and even the fire maybe too .....yes the pistons are rather flat ..you can see that they dome out some about 1/2" in from the edge.....the longer stroke I think will raise the compression some so I'm kinda glad the piston is flatter ....sure would like to know what the tube things are on top of the block .....I haven't a clue right now ..if I did know I forgot...this was a very rough looking motor on the outside and my care didn't help any ...

I'm still thinking real serious about putting this in the 77 ...why have a 77 1000 when you can have a 77 1200 instead :mrgreen:
getting ready for gaskets soon

a little more cleaning on this head

you can see the pistons sculpting better here ...cylinders are getting cleaner the worst cylinder was the one on the left here its looking pretty good now im pleased with it.
Getting ready for gaskets soon Heads are getting nice.