Rigid_EVO Phillober's 1250 Conversion thread (pic heavy)

[Arnie]

Great pics!

[921200hd]

sweet instructions with color pics looks good so far i hope to see more pics

[Phillober]

Now to get the wrist pins out, wasn't easy, they didn't just slide out. I searched the forum and found some great advice, some use a C clamp, some a threaded rod to help push the pin through... however all I had laying around was this giant bolt... which I guess is the same as a threaded rod


I stuck one end into the pin (wasn't worried about damage since the 1250 kit comes with new pins). I tried pushing, but what worked best was to actually start threading it into the pin while applying pressure


then I pulled it, and it came out a bit before the threads gave


no worries, I then took the bolt to the other side and pushed the pin out the rest of the way


pin comes out, piston comes off like butter, and now you can see the connecting rod, pin and piston all seperate


now you have the connecting rod left, we'll hook up the new pistons to that, also the book says the be careful around the studs (the 4 big long bolts sticking out of the engine cases, 4 for each cylinder), not to bend or hit them or they might fail... suggests putting some tubing over them but I don't have any tubing so I just played it safe.

next the book says to take out the tappets, I started to remove the base plate


but these were sumsofbeaches to get moving too, then I ran into this


out of a fear of stripping a bolt I stopped, however this was just on the rear cylinder, the front cylinder came out fine. I didn't actually remove the tappets until I got the cam cover off


placed a bowl underneath to catch oil, didn't have to drain the oil before doing this but a bit did fall out when the cover came off


and then it just swings out, there's still an oil line coming from the oil tank and the ignition module is still connected to the cam cover so I couldn/t take it completely off, notice the cams stuck to the cover

[921200hd]

what size of bolt did you use for the wrist pins ?

[Phillober]

The other side of the cam cover, notice i haven't drilled off the timer cover yet


ok, I'm not actually pointing to the hole there but notice what's directly above my finger, that's the bottom of the tappet peaking his little head out, they rest on the cams and as the cams spin the tappet's move up and down, since the tappets sit below the push rods they push those up and down as they move, if you go back to the rocker box pics, you see the top of the push rod sits under the rocker arm, which is connected to the valve springs which open and close the valves as they move


and if I push the tappet up, they come out of the top, (you must remove the push rod tube bases and loosen the bolts at the base of them - the horizontal ones in this pic, you can see one sticking out farther than the other one by the tappet I'm pointing to)


and here is Mr. Tappet, soak them in oil while doing the rest of the work



Back to the cam case, cams just slide right out. Well all except big #2, I have to get the timer cover off first to get that one off


Here's the tappet holes without the tappets, you can compare this to the pic above when they are still in there


And this is as far as I've gotten on the 1250 conversion. I mailed Dan the heads today and I don't have a drill to get the rivets off the timer cover to finish the cams. so far this has been about 7 hours of work over 2 days

I still have some more pics though

here is a comparison of the 883 and 1250 cylinders


upon closer examination you can see my old 883's are roughly 3 inches in diameter


and the 1250's are 3.5 inches...oooohhhh yea!!

[Phillober]

Originally Posted by 921200hd

what size of bolt did you use for the wrist pins ?

Looks about a 1/2 inch

[~Grind~]

Great thread! That bolt looks to be a 1/2-13. Please keep those pics and comentary coming. You're doing a great job!

[Phillober]

I decided to see what was inside my carb, seeing as I'll probably have to re-jet, here's the bottom of the carb, if I'm not mistaken (correct me if I am) the flat head screw at the bottom of the page is the mixture screw. these normally have a plug over them from the factory which require being drilled out in order to properly tune the carb. looks like mine has been drilled


Time to check the jets, there's 4 screws on the bottom of the carb that need to come off


those come off easy, then the bottom of the carb just slides off, notice the half rusted looking metal rod at the top of the pic, this slides through the rubber hosing at the bottom of the pic (you can see the hole it goes into), the half rusted rod isn't bolted to anything and can easily fall out, no worries, just don't lose it


in the above pic, the thing I pulled off is called the float bowl, it has gas in it, mine was actually pretty dirty with debries and junk floating around

Here is the bottom of the carb with the float bowl removed


in the above pic you'll notice 2 round brown things in the center next to a round hole, the bigger bottom round brown thing is the main jet, it takes a flat head screw driver and comes out easy


and here is the emulsion tube with the main jet stuck into it from the bottom


then a much smaller screw driver goes in the deep hole in between the two round brown things, this is the pilot jet. it only takes a handfull of turns to loosen completely, don't sit there for 8 min waiting for it to come out, it's small, after a handful of turns of the screwdriver just turn the carb over and it'll fall out



here's where it says "170"


and the "42"

[SuicideCharley]

Hell yeah! You're finally doing it, and showing much more patience than I did. I missed a lot pics because I was rolling, looking good man. I'm stoked for you!

[Phillober]

Alright, that's all I have so far, going to round up a drill and finish the cam install as soon as I can, then I just have to wait for Dan to do the heads

I'll continue to be overly thorough with pics