Yes, you've got it right now.
I got the Pistons individually, nobody seemed to have a pair at a sensible price, one came from the States and the other from Holland, both genuine CA77 +.5 slight difference in finish and one is 2grams lighter but with the ca77 crank I can't imagine that's a problem. Just waiting for the thin rings to arrive, I've got a set +.5 thick rings spare now and a set of new standard thick rings also.
Head Rods
I'm a little surprised that you have removed the cylinder studs and are assembling the engine without the studs installed. ASFAIK in the air cooled, light alloy engine world, you try not to disturb the original head stud/case mating. but I have done it on 250/305 engines to replace broken studs. reluctantly and with lots of locktite. I know that on all the air cooled auto engines I work on, once you pull the head studs, then you are installing timeserts or equiv.
Good luck Randy
I *had to disassemble the whole thing to split the cases- the pistons were stuck in their cylinders, and I finally got them out - after weeks of soaking, heat, and every other 'gentle' method you can think of - with a BFH and a cold chisel. Destroyed the pistons, but didn't hurt the cylinders or con-rods at all, which I was pretty happy about.
I had no problem getting the studs out; and seem to have no problem getting them in, although you do raise a good point about how am I going to torque the bolts when they're buried as deep as they are. No problem, all I have to do is disassemble it, nothing is tightened down yet. Like I say, there's Always Time to Do It Twice, Never Time to Do It Right.
Head studsI've replaced these studs lots of times on both road engines and those used for road racing. Never had a problem at all, except for getting the skinny front ones out without snapping them! The threaded part which goes into the upper crankcase has a very long threaded portion, probably around three times the diameter of the studs so the threads aren't (individually) highly stressed.
Never thought to use Loctite on them and certainly never had one come loose, or perhaps I've just been lucky? As an aside, on my race engines I used to replace the skinny front studs with standard diameter studs and enlarged the oil drilling, dowels and O rings to restore the same capacity for the oil passages. I then increased the torque value for the top nuts from 14/15 ft lbs to 18/20 ft lbs. My thinking was that the thinner studs could stretch more in service than the others which in turn would mean that the front outer studs would be exerting less pressure on the head joint that the other six possibly leading to distortion and oil leakage problems. It may have been un-necessary but it worked for me although I didn't bother doing it on my two road bikes, a CL77 and a CB77
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||