love the shine on the tappet cover is that mamas mag polish?? looks great .dave

Not "Mamas Mag" polish, Davo. "Autosol" one of the worlds oldest fine abraisve pastes since 18somethingorother. Polish anything steel, brass, whatever metal.

B.

GT00
never got my alloy to quite shine like that, even with Autosol ???

maybe its the extra spit that gives the shine...

keep polishing, unless Liz calls you out of the shed

OZ

hi did you use an attatchment on the drill or just hard hand work ...???

Hey, OZ. Suppose i'm lucky, that engine always had good chrome under the crud to begin with so it was a good starting point. , Did it on the kitchen table, not in the shed so Liz can keep an eye on me (polishing that is )

All done with elbow grease, no drills or attachments Davo.

tapat cover looks good clean clean polish polish

Cheers Rod. And the update is it's all gone back on the head neatly with the hand made gasket and screwed down. No leaks and going like a dream.

Eeeeeex-cellent!
Matt.

i thought you were making up another one for me since you got so damn good at it?
and you have some much of the roll of material left...


OZ

"SO DAMN GOOD AT IT".... Maybe.. but yes need to get some made, now the dust has settled....and looking at another "Kangi" prioject to celebrate 50 YEARS OF Bellett.Ness

Give me about 3 weeks and I will produce about 4.

B.

A quick update on the manufacture of the rocker cover gaskets. It had to be put on hold temporarily because of the unforseen trip to hospital. But I'm home on light duties and gives me a chance to knock out a few.

Claws loaned a rocker cover for the template, as i didn't think of tracing a few onto the gasket cork before getting my cover back on the engine...Doooh

I should see a few made by the end of this week i hope

B.

GOOD ON YA MATE STAY WELL ..DONT OVERDO IT .......CHEERS DAVO

Well it's taken a bit longer than expected. Back to work, lots of life changes, and slow recovery from the Pancreas issue. But here they are. I have produced in total 7 tappet cover gaskets for the G161 engine, out of one roll of 2.5 mm gasket cork. And there is still enough left for a a sump gasket for Claws. I don't know if the sump has the same gasket thickness, i guess we'll find out. Gasket cork comes in 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0 and 3.5mm thicknesses, i think.

The first one i made was the roughest, and is on my Bellett doing a fine job !! So by the third one, I had improved and developed a technique in marking out and more acurately cutting the gaskets. It was a handy thing to learn.

OZ has already had his delivered and was surprised at the quality of it. And thanks Claws for providing the tappet cover to draw tempates, I'll deliver yours next.

So that means I will have 4 left. PM if anyone needs one, and i'll find a way of sending. I can always make more down the track.

Very Nice work there Mr GTtoo
Good to hear you are Better!!
Josh

what is the secret for holding the Cork while you cut it out?

usually the cork moves all around the place when cutting

Great to hear from you also pa-man.

Glenn, no secrets here and willing to share what works. Gasket Cork can take some nutting out.

Three things are needed to make gasket cutting work :
1. the right tools
2. technique
3. method.

Tools: a craft knife is good and they usually come with a variety of blades. I use the scalpule looking curved blade as it gets into the corners cleaner and also cuts a straight edge well.
Find yourself a long straight edge like the ruler in the photo, and also a shorter ruler with mm's if you can.
A good ball point pen to mark out the template. Oh, good lighting and coffee, or 2 reds help. You also need a steady hand, a keen eye and paitients.

Technique: this partly answers your question Glenn, and explains part of the method.
Use the t/cover to mark out the width of your cork (length of the cover) to get a staight edge to work from for each gasket.
Mark this with the ruler and pen. Hold the ruler down firmly in exact possie and draw knife along edge, alot of weight is needed to keep the ruler exact and the knife bearing down through the cork and along the ruler. Then placing the t/cover exactly, trace around the exterior, the three rececess, the corners and the "back straight". Measure the inside line to 8mm by using short ruler by marking sighting dots. Still with pen mark many dots around corners, less in the straights. Then play dot the dot, hand drawing the curves and using the ruler for the straight bits. You should now have a template drawn.

Method: Using your keen eye and steady hand, cut all of the corners and recesses first, both outside and inside. Follow the outside line of the pen mark to ensure width stays ok. I push directly down on the tip of the knife and literally nibble around the corners with an up and down motion using the edge of a finger from the other hand as a guide. Once the corners are cut right around to the next straight bits, use the ruler and firmly hold down along the straight lines drawing the knife firmly and slowly from one curved bit to the next. You should feel when they meet the already cut curves and break away, hopefully cleanly.

To summarise your question Glenn, its all about where you start cutting and where you finish. I found the more intact you could keep your template, the less movement you would have. But it also requires you to bear down hard on the ruler to keep things in place.
So, do the corners and rececess first. Then do the staight bits from the front of your main piece of cork, cutting the recessed edge first, then the side bits. Then cut the inside line of the back staight, so the centre piece of cork pops out. Then your last cut is the outside of the back straight to finally severe the gasket from the main piece of cork.

Now have another red and.... REPEAT THE WHOLE BLOODY PROCCESS Siiimples

Thanks for the detailed method. Sure works well. The wine helps too by the sound of it. A practice one also I imr.

Very nicely done. And you reckon I'm the only one with patience

Cheers Rob. Maybe not so much about patience. But there is some kind of zen involved and i found it rather theraputic as well as a learning experience.

B.

OK peoples,

Some major updates on Blue Beastie. In particular, many thanks to "Mr Flibbles" for aligning the otherwise very "pigeon toed" front wheels on it. You are a champion at your specialty. Instantly gained a few HP by tracking beautifully down the road.

Next on the agenda was a visit to Mike from "Mike Dale Automotives". Beastie in all it's years has never had it's twin Hitatchis tuned properly, and certainly has never put it's wheels onto a DINO machine I can also highly recommend Mike for getting the best out of anything with a motor, worth the $200.

Unfortunately with my lack of techo savvy, i haven't worked out how to get the footage of the DINO experience, provided by my son Brad off his phone, onto Bellett.net yet. But it will be forth coming. I must admit It was a little uncomfortable at first watching Beastie being dialed off the speedo at 5,500 rpm. But it didn't protest much and was quite happy to push away under load. The print out showed it developed an inordinate amount of torque (NM's) under load for relatively little kilowatts !!

B.