From:Mark Hill e-mail:hillm@canton.edu
Subject:RE: RE: RE: RE: De-luxe valve caps Date:Sat Sep 7 10:57:23 2013
Response to:4818

On the cannonball the day of Bear claw pass Steve McDonald's 28 spit a bronze valve cap out of the engine. We fought those stupid bronze caps all the way to Frisco. Cast Iron is the only way to go in my opinion. If Mike Fockler had not come along it would have cost Steve his perfect score. The Cap landed on the floorboard and got caught between the frame rail and floorboard. The sealing gasket fell between the fins of the cylinder. Five minutes later "Mike The Bike" had Stevie fixed up and roaring on to Dudley's. It must get real interesting when you spit a cap at 9000 feet and are not on terra firma those Heath boys had Balls. Steve never hurt the motor and there was no sign of it was coming. Check your caps boys.----- ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS -----

Yes what a potential nightmare. I put aluminum Heath plugs in my engine but
it is proving difficult to seal a couple of them. I should have machined the
seating area on the cylinder flat
----- ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS -----
Dave, Ken!
By no means am I trying to compete with either of you when
we speak of use and abuse of Henderson De-luxe`s, still as I
said before I do really enjoy the ol`hen.

I will try to track down any of the compounds you describe
Dave, and honestly I too think the never seeze have worked
as glue rather than the opposite. On the other hand the
inlet cap that after all is very close came loose without
any problem.
Ken, loosing a corner of the cylinder head, horror, i had
that in mind when five strong men where fighting to get the
jammed plug loose.
I see from Bills web page he dont offer them plugs any
longer. I admit here (will no longer be a secret in the
Henderson world) I tried to loosen the plug when still
roadside by using a mandrel, this caused some damage to it,
hence I am looking for another plug to replace the broken.

Last year I bought a bunch of plugs on e-bay that were raw
casts, no threads yet. I should maybe try to machine them
myself as spares.

I will need to remove the lot of plugs this winter,
hopefully they will come loose.
Oh, I bought one of them original cap tools from Easy Russ,
not very long or solid at all. Wonder how they avoided
compression loss from leakages back in the old days??

Where can I buy the filled copper rings, will need to
replace them too this winter.

Kind regards
Sverre AMCA 3489
http://www.veteran-mc.com

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Nice one Sverre , are you competing with me ?? glad you had
a good ride but very lucky the plug came out , probably due
to the never sieze compound , I think you were lucky . Very
early in my Henderson days , I had to take plugs out to do a
valve job , do not know how long the plugs had been in
before I got the bike but I still have on my shelf the plug
still screwed into the corner of the cylinder that broke off
!!!!! Probably best to soak in some sort of release oil
first IF possible . Hope the others come out OK when and IF
you need to . best wishes , Ken

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Had my longest one day ride on the Henderson last weekend.
Rode 400km`s on single lane country roads, including two
mountain passes.

The first pass is kind of different from most mountain
passes over here, as the climb is done by two very long
straight hills, which the old De-luxe did easily in third (I
thought). Having stopped at the top of the mountain for a
while I found the exhaust valve on the rear cyl had frozen
in open position when I was to continue my ride.
I had my 8" long home made valve plug wrenchlong with me,
the one that I used to tighten the plugs after my
renovation. I couldnt move the plug to get access to the
valve, no chance. Had to ride to a nearby tractor workshop
(on a three cyl Henderson) where we ended up using a 50"
long arm on a power socket, using a hammer on the socket top
to shock the threads.
When I finally got the plug removed the threads was OK and I
could easily turn the plug back in by hand????
I dont understand why the plug was so hard to get out? I had
used Never-Seez high temp compound on the threads before
assembling.
Plugs where bought from Bill at St. Louis Henderson parts,
great parts I think.
Anyone experienced the same problem??
Now I am seriously worried about the remaining exhaust valve
plugs.

Kind regards
Sverre Gerber
AMCA 3489
http://www.veteran-mc.com