Millyard Kawasaki Z 2300 V12 motorcycle - How its made

in this video i'm going to be explaining how i made my 2.3 liter kawasaki v12 back in 2002. the first thing i had to do was to get hold of some old kawasaki z1300 engines and i was really lucky because some chap gave me some that he was going to throw away the cylinder block on the z1300 has a big casting that sticks out the back that holds the drive for the water pump and the camshafts this had to be cut off otherwise i couldn't lean the barrels back with the rear part of the casting cut off i was able to put the barrels onto the bottom crankcase and lean it back as far as i could until it touched bits that went round and then put a bit of wood under it to hold it while i evaluated the v i made a template out of a bit of steel that would roughly hold the barrels in place so i could visualize how it was all going to look with the crankshaft in place with one connecting rod and one piston inserted into the rear barrel i was able to check the deck height hold everything in place with a bit of wire resting it on my template and it all fitted perfect from this point on i could make the v12 the next thing i did was saw off the starter motor mounting bracket put the template on the end of the crankcases and then scratch two lines and saw off all the metal above the template the cup was so long i had to turn my hacksaw blade sideways so i could reach the whole length with two 10 millimeter plates welded on the crankcases to form the v i machined them flat on my milling machine i then refitted the barrels to make sure they fitted i will be cleaning up all these words later on with my dremel so you couldn't see them and here you can see the two top plates welded on with a big long work right along the middle and all the studs fitted with the cylinder studs removed i inverted the top crankcase on my milling machine and tied it up a few areas where the world had penetrated past the surfaces so now i can relocate the whole starter motor and add its assembly to the front of the engine from the rear the starter motor housing was welded to the front of the engine and the crankcase is machined slightly to clear the motor and then two brackets welded at the back to bolt it on and it works perfect and here's the view of the starter motor assembly all while it's in position and all the gears meshing nicely when you make a v12 engine where the cylinder head bolts to the crankcases and the barrel the deck height machining is critical so i had to place the gaskets underneath bolt down the barrel and machine the crankcase and the top of the barrel at the same time here i am machining the end case where the starter motor assembly is with the back deck heights machined i bolted on the front head tight so i could check that it fitted this picture shows the size and complexity of the v12 engine from underneath with all the castings fitting together nicely i now had to concentrate on all the inside parts especially getting the drive from the first motion shaft up to the camshafts i can hear some noise coming from the kitchen and tracey's making another cake i think it's a carrot cake oh no it's coleslaw for lunch but she has made some nice cupcakes so i take a couple back into the garage and they were just perfect i made a new crankshaft for the v12 engine that had needle roller bearings rather than white metal shelves so i had to line bore the crank cases the needle roller bearings were about 10 millimeters bigger in diameter so i had a lot of metal to remove which was a good thing with the cutter set i used my electric drill to machine the bearings with the crankcase main bearings machined the next thing i had to do is make the crankshaft so i got the standard z1300 crankshaft and sawed it up to remove the center portion that has the drive gear i then gripped the center portion in my lathe and machined away the flywheel webs the center portion could then be pressed into standard kawasaki h2 flywheel webs the kawasaki crank cases were very narrow for a six cylinder engine and there was no room for side by side rods so i had to use a link rod system like they're using radial aircraft engines my friend chris at pre-tech engineering offered to make the connection rods for me that would have been so much work on my old mill and would take me for ages with chrome malignant steel so that was really really great and when i got them back i pressed in some hardened steel rings for the house kawasaki h2 roller bones to run on the link pins are made from old gadget pins cut down in my lathe with foster bronze bushes they see a similar load as a normal little end so there's no full rotation just a gentle rock bouncing forwards oil is fed from the big end to the little rocking pin bar a little drilling in the connecting rod due to the geometry of the link rod system the piston on the link rod actually travels down further in the bore and goes below bottom dead center by a few millimeters this is about the amount of movement you get on the link rob where the indians running and this is a kawasaki h2750 connecting rod with its needle roller bearing i'm going to use a needle roller bearing in this connection rod with a preston hardened steel ring and a standard kawasaki h2 crank pin the main bearings for the crankshaft are similar to this one but slightly larger in ina needle roller bearings with hardened steel rings that press onto the standard kawasaki h2 journals although the flywheel webs are standard cast like h2750 i had to reduce the length of the journals a little bit because the cylinder balls are closer together on a z1300 with all the machining complete i can start assembling the crankshaft starting from the center two cylinders the flywheels are pressed onto the main journals with my hydraulic press and then i drill down six millimeters half in the flywheel half in the shaft and tap in six millimeter dowels to prevent slippage the big end bearings are phased in pairs at 120 degrees and here you can see the ina needle roller bearings as i build the crankshaft i trial fit it in the crankcases at every stage to ensure that it runs free with the crankshaft fully assembled i trial fit it in the crankcase and it spins perfect i was well pleased this was a really complicated job to assemble the crankshaft has a stroke of 71 millimeters bringing the engine capacity to just under 2 300 cc and here's the crankshaft assembled in the bottom crank cases with the first motion shaft primary drive chain and clutch and gearbox all ready to go together hello is that henry what do you want milliard tracey's reading me your book the magic of sheds i'm really enjoying it are you mate really how far have you got have you gone to the uh chapter about biscuits yet yo it's written for you mate yeah we're on that chapter now i'm partial to a biscuit i also noticed that the flying milliards in the center pages yeah i know your photos in it okay a book wouldn't be a book without your flying milliard the one thing is though mate you can't do startups though can you in your book gotta go i think i got an incoming call from greta on the other line something about startups hello hello it's been long perhaps the standard cylinder head needed a lot of attention the first thing i had to do was cut off all the inlet stubs that were way too long the front cylinder head was relatively standard but the rear cylinder head was heavily modified because i had to reverse it and the cam chain isn't in the middle on the z1300 engine which caused me no ender problems with the reverse cylinder head you have to turn the camshafts upside down because the sprocket is not in the middle it hit straight into a water gallery which i had to cut out and then re-weld up there was no room to fit the original mechanical water pump at the front of the engine so i had to weld up all the passages redirect some of the coolant flow and fit an electric water pump the camshafts are driven from the first motion shaft on a kawasaki z1300 so i used the same system to drive my v12 by fitting one big long chain around all four camshafts i joined together two heavy duty hivo chains to make the new cam chain for the v12 engine and i had also had to make a new cam chain tensioner that works at the rear of the engine on the slack side of the chain fitting the cam shafts and setting up the valve timing in the v12 engine was a nightmare i had no marks to go by i had to set the piston positions and valve opening positions with dtis and a degree disk on the rear bank and then move to the front bank and do the same again without disturbing the rear bank but eventually the was on and i was ready to push the start button and see if all 24 valves missed the 12 [Music] pistons wow the engine was turning over great with no funny noises i checked the compression and i had compression on all 12 cylinders i was really pleased i fitted the digital field injection system from a later z1300 and mounted the throttle bodies directly on top of the v in a downdraft position the digital field injection system was controlled by an ecu under the seat at the back of the bike but this had to be tricked into squirting twice the amount of fuel for a given rpm the ecu normally receives a signal from a pulse generator on the z1300 engine but i haven't fitted any electronic control on my engine because i'm going to be fitting points so i had to get around it a different way to fire all 12 cylinders on the v12 engine with a wasted spark principle i would need six sets of points but there wasn't enough room for six i could only get three but then i thought if i mount three on the engine and then three on another separate plate above them with a long cam it would work perfect the inner points run the front banker cylinders and the outer points run the rear banker cylinders and here's the firing order one twelve four nine two eleven six 116731058 with the ignition timing set the last thing i had to do was get my fuel injection system working so i connected the wire from the ecu straight to the ignition coil span the engine over and the injector squirted fuel i modified the existing fuel pressure regulator by making a new body fitting a stronger spring and an adjusting screw so i can adjust the fuel pressure when the engine's running i made a 12 into four into two straight through exhaust system for the v12 engine i had to modify the exhaust port of the last two cylinders on the right hand side of the rear bank to get the exhaust pipe out there was simply no room to get it past the clutch and the rear headers had to be bolted to the rear cylinder head while the heads off the bike because once the head's fitted you can't remove them there wasn't even room for the standard collars so i had to weld little clamps onto the pipe directly the exhaust system is made from mild steel tube that i had current plated to fit the v12 engine back into the frame i had to extend the frame by about four inches this meant i also had to extend the tank by four inches to make it look right so i cut the standard tank in half and welded in sections of metal one piece at a time retaining the original profile of the petrol tank with the top of the tank welded back together i had to create a space underneath the tank to clear the downdraft throttle bodies that protrude up from the engine with all the welding on the tank complete i try it back on the frame and it fits perfect and here's the finish on the side of the tank to keep the engine cool i needed a bigger radiator so i got two z-1300 radiators cut the top off of one and the bottom off the other and then welded them together i then fitted twin thermostatically controlled cooling fans the coolant was circulated around the engine by high output electric water pump and here's a walk run video of the engine running taken on my old phone camera in 2005 it's a bit jumpy wow the kawasaki v12 is on display in the baba vintage motorsport museum in birmingham alabama usa if you're passing by you should call in and have a look and while you're there you can have a look at my kawasaki v8 my kawasaki five center two-stroke and my honda ss100v twin that is displayed alongside i hope you enjoyed the video it was certainly a trip down memory lane for me looking at all my build photos it was a great bike the v12 i also love riding it anyway until the next time see you all soon and don't forget to subscribe [Music] you

Channel: Allen Millyard

Views: 872,758

Rating: 4.9262171 out of 5

Keywords: Super Six, home made, shed, shed made, old school engineering, engine repair, Z1, Hacksaw, hand cutting, MCN, Classic motorcycle Mechanics, The motorbike Show, HCA, Filing, Files, Colchester Lathe, Elliot Milling Machine, 1970's, Kawasaki, Camshaft, Dontgiveup, Notaseasyasitlooks, Haveago, millyard, millyardracing, hyperride2, lockdown, swiss army scissors, QBond, Kawasaki V8, millyard V8, Millyard V12, Kkawasaki V12, Kawasaki Z2300, Henry Cole, The life changing magic of sheds

Id: FnXUx4cYdHA

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/David_W_J]

You should also look for his motorcycle powered by parts of a radial aero engine - the name "Flying Millyard" rings a bell...

[u/CptnCuntcake]

And this and like 3 other superbikes he made are just sitting on display at some bike museum in Alabama? What? I'm a little disappointed they're not being ridden for some reason.

[u/NinjaGrandma]

Absolutely bonkers the things I just watched this guy do in a simple shed. In awe.

[u/iboneyandivory]

Wow. This guy's the Dr Christiaan Barnard of the motorcycle set, and listening to his utterly casual humble delivery, we're tempted to think we can do it too. Lines such as, "..and the next task was to design and fabricate a new crankshaft to accommodate the extra 6 rods. I decided to make this new assembly a roller-bearing type as well" are delivered with same casual tone as, "and I then made some square muffins"

[u/penguin_joe]

tldw;

The video covers how Allen Millyard created his insane Kawasaki Z 2300 V12 motorcycle engine

[u/penguin_joe]

tldw;

This video goes into detail on how Allen Millyard created his V12 Kawasaki Z 2300 motorcycle engine.