Tools & Maintenance

You may remember me remarking on the inaccessibility of various items for maintenance, notably the oil strainer and the gearbox top bolt.

Well, as if to demonstrate this needless fact to myself I decided to cover myself in oil, last time I did the change, realising too late that the funnel I had to direct oil into the can really was too big to fit under the oil tank and no I couldn't squeeze it to fit...

So, I needed a small funnel with an offset spout. Could I find one? No. So like all good engineers I set about making one...

This is not actually a paper Shewee. Its a paper model of my funnel that I made to make sure my design would fit in that teeny tiny space under the oil tank. 

Here are the tin parts. I took the paper she-wee apart again and pasted the parts onto this old oil can. Cutting around the parts with two different pairs of snips (snips are designed for cutting straight lines, or right and left hand curves, in different pairs of snips) I came up with these:

So let's stick it under the oil tank and see if it fits. Despite the narrow space around the drain plug, this will do the job. What we will need, though, is something to stop oily, slippery drain plugs disappearing down the funnel. More on that later.

This is the top of the funnel. It has a wired edge for stiffness, made by rolling the tin around a 2.5 mm copper wire, which is then wrapped around the funnel shape and joined, again using the wire and a small soldered flap

So here is the wire-edge rim and the funnel soldered together:

And here's the funnel & tube section fitted together & soldered,

As you can see this produces a funnel which doesn't align with the top of an oil can

So it needs a crank in it, like this:

And now it fits happily in the can

And it fits under the oil tank, whilst its in the can. now I can drain the oil hands-free. All I need now is something to stop the drain plug disappearing down the funnel. 

And here we are, a simple mesh made from interwoven 2.5 mm copper wire:

So there we have it, an operational funnel made to fit in a couple of hours from scrap - an old oil can and a bit of 2.5 mm twin & earth, knocking about in the garage. Tools used are simple too - a 100 W soldering iron and a pair of snips.

A New Tank

I've had this tank in the loft for a while, in fact since July last year. It's in reasonable shape, but...

There are a couple of dents on one side, but nothing too bad:

And one of the rear mounts is full of lead, presumably where someone put an over-long bolt into it and split the bottom. The crossover pipe and the tap are there, with the knee rubber mounts:

It looks like it has been stood on its end, since it's rusted out. Its like this on both sides at the bottom:

So, it's off to be blasted, to see what it is really like, and to see what repairs we will need to do. More later...

Shameless Plug 2

The second in my series of articles for my favourite bike magazine, RealClassic, appears in the July 2015 and starts on the story of the rebuild, from the arrival of a basket case in a van in October 2011. 

This one has some pictures of the engine rebuild, the instruments and the KH tank in glorious Technicolor. Back issues can be obtained from http://www.realclassic.co.uk.

It's an excellent magazine, and I'm sure you'll find Frank & Rowena's writing, along with that of their regular contributors enthralling. Buy a copy, then when you've realised how good it is, take out a subscription.

Old Bikes & Morris Dancing

This weekend saw the annual Potty Morris Festival here in Sheringham, with 36 teams from all over the country visiting to dance in different traditional styles & costumes. Saturday & Sunday saw the town filled with folk in various regalia with bells ringing on every street & the sounds of the melodeon, fiddle & drum playing to accompany the dancers

The Bourne Borderers, from Lincolnshire

This was the 22nd Sheringham Morris Dance Festival since the event was set up by Clive Rayment & Reg Grimes. For the first time the event was unfortunately without the Sheringham Lobster Potties themselves, but 36 other teams danced Cotswold, Border, North West & Molly traditions over ten dance spots all over the town.

Leicester Morris Men

Holt Ridge Morris at the Crab & Lobster Festival, May 2015

Potty Festival is not complete without Real Ale, and the pubs were filled with revellers & more musical entertainment in the evenings.

Sunday saw us among the motorcycle exhibits at the Vintage Transport Festival. The bikes park up on Sheringham station platform. The loco, a BR Standard 4 number 76084 was outshopped in 1957 so she is contemporary with many of these bikes. Here's a lovely Norton Dominator 88 with my Bantam in the background, a C15 and another Dominator.

Same scene, a bit later in the day. The sun has gone but we have a Rapide and a Commando Roadster.

Very handsome Dominator, hiding my Square Four from view

A Silver Bantam, and the Suzuki AC50 & BSA SS80 Sports Star seen at the recent Classic Car & Bike Show.

A group of scooters:

A Matchless G9 with a very interesting looking Gold Star:

There were a lot of Velocettes this year:

A nice BSA A10:

The silver Bantam again, with Amelia in the background just to prove she was there: