To avoid itchiness from working with fibre-glass moulds, I machined some titanium parts today:
from 12mm bar a) a stud that will connect to the exhaust end can and also hold the rear brake master cylinder and b) a component that will actuate the rod that works the rear brake master cylinder
from 8mm bar front and rear disc pad retaining pins saving a full 17g over the steel items – a lot of effort for not much gain, although the old steel ones were corroded and had wear ridges in them.
The 8mm bar I bought off e bay as a job lot of 10 in various lengths between 200 and 230mm for £11.00 originally to make some new inlet and exhaust manifold studs but the old exhaust manifold studs are not shifting.
I was thinking of machining up a titanium clutch push rod but the longest bar I have is 15mm too short, however I recall a thread on here about early monsters suffering from the clutch rod spinning the slave cylinder and ruining the seals so I thought I could make a two part push rod with an 8mm ball bearing in the middle which would solve the spinning problem. I think it would work as I recall working on old British bikes Matchless G80 or RRT2 on a Triton or even Burman/AMC boxes cannot remember which) where a ball bearing was used to stop the push rod welding itself to the thrust plate. An 8mm ball bearing would be used which will fit inside the clutch main shaft (it cannot go anywhere else once in there) and if it wears the titanium too fast (I never hold the clutch in unnecessarily) it could easily be changed back to standard.
The proposed titanium pushrod would therefore comprise 3 bits, 1) slave cylinder end 8mm diameter, 2) ball bearing 8mm diameter, 3) clutch actuating end, initially 8mm diameter to bear on the ball bearing, wasted to 7mm for majority of its length returning to 8mm before two O rings grooves and then rounded end to fit in clutch pressure plate. Can anyone foresee any issues with that design?