It works! Success with the breather 💪

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome back to the Project Hercules Diaries after a rather splendid day of testing this morning. In fact, it's a rather splendid day altogether.

[00:00:11]You can see that because I'm wearing the hat that we bought on holiday last year.

[00:00:14]One of those purchases where the good lady says, "What are you going to buy a hat for? You're never going to wear that again." Well, here it is. And here's the proof. Afternoon, ladies. Yeah, it's a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous sunny day out there. And before long, we shall be off to the pub. But not just yet.

[00:00:29]Anyway, back to the bike which is over there. This is the bike. Now, I'm going to zoom in old school by getting off the stool of contemplation and moving in.

[00:00:38]So, we put everything together. We put the oil scavenge return pipe on and the oil supply pipe to the pump on the other side of the bike. We put the um oneway valve in. There is an orifice in here still, so about a 16th of an inch. And then this pipe, I've deliberately left it oversized. I know it looks a bit of a mess not following the neat line straight down parallel to the front tube, but I'm going to do that later. If I'd made this the exact right length, um, and I put in here a support and there a support and then decided that we didn't need the one-way valve, um, the pipe would then be too short and it was eye wateringly expensive. So, I am going to shorten the pipe. Uh, probably about there and maybe about here. Uh, I'm going to put a clamp, a clip like this sort of thing. So, that will support the cable. And I'm I'm expecting this um sort of set there to be a little bit more in that plane rather than coming down so low. Um, so what did we find?

[00:01:41]Well, we found that uh we started the bike initially with the other oil tank cap, the one that's got a big hole in the Goodrich hose and the big um filter on the top, the Canan filter, and there was no evidence of anything trying to chuff out the filter. There was no oil trying to overspill, which was great.

[00:02:00]And then when the bike's up to temperature and ticking over nicely, we slowly took that oil cap off and looked down inside there. And what we found was that the volume of oil coming from the scavenge return side of the pump had massively increased. There was a lot more oil flow from this pipe than there ever was before. I don't know why. Maybe on the other side of the bike, for reference, this is the other side of the bike. Maybe taking these pipes off and cleaning the threads out uh has done something. Maybe there was something blocking those, although they're quite quite a large diameter, so it's unlikely. or maybe the fact that we are um not moving so much air in and out of the the crank case is allowing the pump to function better. I don't know. But either way, there's a lot more oil returning through here, which is very promising. From this pipe, you can feel the chuff um the chuff of air uh at the start when the engine first starts up and then that diminishes because the crank case I expect sort of becomes slightly lower than atmospheric pressure with the one-way valve. Um but either way there isn't there isn't a lot of a lot of air movement coming out of here. Occasionally this does go about a chunk of oil. So I think whether whether the oil sort of works its way up here and then just gets dumped, but it doesn't do that with any great force. It doesn't sort of eject it or try and climb out of the top to the point where we could run the bike with the oil cap off um and there was no detrimental effect. So what we did then we tried running the bike with the standard oil cap which has just got the tiniest debreather holes in it there so that when the oil in the tank goes down it doesn't create a vacuum. And that worked okay as well. When the bike bike bike first starts, you can feel a little a little bit of a a blow out of there. And then when it's up to temperature, it's barely perceptible. Um, and I don't think it's pressurizing this tank. So, that's also really good news. So, it looks as though we can keep that t uh cap on the oil tank. That that is how it will finally be. Um, and I'm very happy about that. These pipes have not leaked at all. So that's great. We fixed the leak on the pipe. We fixed the leak on the gasket. And just to show me who is boss, there is a new leak that has appeared from where the pickup goes in for the electronic ignition. But that that's just pushed in there. It's it's only a push fit. So I I expected that to leak uh earlier. Um and it's just a case of a bit of silicon sealer or bit of loctite to put that in there. Not anything to be concerned about. So the only leak that remains to be fixed is the one from that sump plug, which unfortunately is an engine out job, but I can do that in due course. So yeah, I'm very chuffed about that. So the next job on this side of the bike, because this is this side and that is the other side, obviously. Uh the next job is to secure this pipe in here, shorten it, put it the right length. Um and then try and find somewhere I can go for a bit of a longer test ride and start thinking about some covers for the uh the belt and the chain which will not be 3D printed apparently. Um oh yes, one other bit of news. Farmer Mark, thank you sir. A local farmer has said, "I have about 1 kilometer of private road and as long as you tell me when you're coming," and I agree to it beforehand, uh, you can use. So, it's better sit back down on the stool of contemplation.

[00:05:37]So, I should be able to get some footage of it being ridden, onboard footage, and footage of me going past and actually do a little bit more road test, which will be great because it's only been ridden a total of two miles. If I can get to sort of 10, 15, maybe even 30 miles on it, um, then I know everything is working properly and then I can think about finish powder coat or just leaving it in bare steel and doing the last few jobs to get through the uh through the test.

[00:06:05]So, that's where we're at. There's plenty of day left, but I'm off to see my mum first and then probably Did someone say beer garden? I think they did. So, that's that's what we're going to do. One last thing, quick message for Mr. Tinch, who had a fantastic idea about getting a little bit less volume out of the end here. He suggested putting one extra baffle in here on the outside of the perforated tube, which I have done, and it has made it a lot less antisocial. I wouldn't say it was quiet, and without a decibel meter, I can't measure the actual volume uh until I've borrowed one. Might be able to borrow one from work, perhaps. Uh, but certainly it's got to the level where I would start it at 10:00 at night because it's not going to really disturb the neighbors, especially if I keep it in the garage.

[00:06:54]So, that is where we're at. Fantastic step forward. I'm very happy about that.

[00:06:58]As usual, thank you for watching. Enjoy your bank holiday weekend if you are based in the UK. And more updates will follow.