SQ4 - trip around the block

 A nice February morning saw an opportunity for an 18 mile round trip to Holt, via the coast. I filled it up before I left, and calculations show it's still doing 50 mpg. This is Cley church:

The Square Four has been on the road with me for 10 years now. She's looking fine, if a bit grubby!

It's going well, though it seems to pink about when you crack the throttle open...

FH - fuel line

 Here it is, burbling away at the top of the road looking marvellous:

The brakes are a little better but still don't inspire much confidence. I have adjusted them again but it's likely that we will re-line them when the wheels come off again. I've also corrected a slight misalignment in the rear wheel.

Keen eyes will note it's still wearing the temporary fuel tank in this picture - it's time to make a fuel line. These are the bits we need - some 1/4" fuel pipe, two ferrules, fittings for each end of the line and the little swage we made years ago from two bits of 1/2" square bar:

Fit the ferrule over the end of the fuel line and push the fitting in, being careful to orient it to suit the natural bend in the pipe:

Put the two halves of the swaging tool around the ferrule and nip it up in the vice. When you are happy that it's all in the right place, give it a little squeeze but don't fully close the swage; then turn the ferrule through 90° and squeeze it again. Doing it all in one go will probably split the ferrule on two sides.

There we go - nice neat job:

And back on the bike. The pipe could probably have done with being 1/4" shorter but it is tidy enough for now.

FH - fork oil

Changing or replacing the fork oil on these later Ariels should be a breeze with their neat drain plugs and filler caps and I was approaching this job with all the confidence of the naïve...

The stainless filler caps came (I think) from Acme and need a bit of a polish - I have given this a few minutes on a 150 grit wheel and you can still see some machining marks, so we will need something more aggressive. These are 1/2" CEI and fit with a fibre washer underneath:

For some reason that I don't currently understand, there is a further 1/2" CEI plug underneath these top screws, which closes onto a seat on the fork top nut, leaving a hole of around 1/4" diameter:

This plug is very short - it's easiest to lift it out with a magnet on a stick:

You need 7.5 fl oz of SAE 30 fork oil for each leg - that's about 215 cc. Fork oil is designed to avoid foaming and to protect the inside of the slides and stanchions from corrosion. I'm going to use the 250 cc syringe that I use for gearbox filling for this job.

Should take seconds.

Here we go. One good push will have it done.

Or not. It's cold, the oil is thick. The hole is small and the oil ends up on the lift table.

I'll stick a tiny tube into the hole to let the air out...

That works, but it takes a ridiculous amount of time.

Contemplating a special nozzle or a tin funnel, I spent a while gazing around the workshop looking for inspiration which I found in the drawer of goop tubes - silicone sealant, caulk, no more nails (other glues are available) and other stuff like that. This is part of a decorators caulk cartridge - the nozzle is long and thin enough to go right through the top nut of the fork stanchion, so the oil is introduced to the full bore of the stanchion and is already past the restriction. 

Of course, there is precious little room for the air to come out, but it does, slowly. You have to fill the funnel twice to get all the oil in, but at least you can sit down and pick your nose while it dribbles in.

Happy days.

FH - tank trim

 With the fuel cap fitting properly, we can fit the tank trim. This is a long strip of chromed brass which covers up two weld seams and the tank mounting. I have two - a very poor original one, and a shiny chrome one I bought cheaply on eBay which doesn't fit very well.

This is the dodgy one.

The strip is made with a simple fold at the rear; it hooks under a bar welded to the back of the tank:

Once you have it under there, it helps if you push the seat all the way forward in it's mounting lugs and bolt it up tight. This holds the shiny chrome strip in position and will stop it coming out while you fasten the front, with two screws into the Spire clips ahead of the filler cap:

You'll need to remove the damper knob to get at the screws.

FH - it pays to choose the right thread

It looks like a detail, maybe even a sign of obsession, but choosing the right thread is actually really important.

I've been working on the forks this week - you may have noticed - and one of the bolts I removed was conspicuously coarse - it was a 3/8" BSW bolt, 1 3/4" long: the front wheel spindle clamp bolt. British Standard Whitworth threads are coarse (20 threads per inch) and consequently strong for their size. What they are not good at is staying tight when subject to vibration. You use them in alloy, but you will find that virtually all the other threads on a bike of this vintage are British Standard Cycle, which in this size is 26 threads per inch. The helix angle in a 26 tpi thread is much smaller than that in a 20 tpi thread, and consequently the thread is much less likely to work loose under vibration.

IT also pays to choose the right length - this application needs a 1 1/2" bolt, so that most of the threads are hidden in the nut and don't get filled up with debris from the road.

 

FH - fork drain plugs

Another little job today - fork drain plugs.

These are just 2BA cheese head screws cut down to about 1/4" and provided with fibre washers:

To give them a better chance of retaining some fork oil, I've loaded them with Loctite 577 thread sealant.

 The other thing that I need to remember is that I need to find 7.5 fl oz of SAE 30 oil to put in each fork leg.

Also in the news today - the right hand tank knee rubber is now on, I've tightened some more bolts and I've scraped enough paint off to allow the petrol tank cap to fit.

FH - petrol tank

 The tank trims and rubbers were not a job I had been looking forward to. The trims were a bit mangled - they are thin aluminium, available new but very expensive and of course as I have said multiple times, I won't be a 'cheque book' restorer - and I knew they would have to be 'manipulated' to get them back on.

They fit around and underneath the welded plates that retain the rubbers, bending down into a depression on the tank (the bit I had cut out and rewelded) with a beaded edge laying flat (!) on the tank, around the knee rubber. Like this:

It doesn't look too bad does it! I removed a lot of dents with some purpose ground punches and a simple hardwood dolly, with grooves to suit the beaded edge:

The next bit is a job I don't enjoy very much - I am always afraid of tearing the rubber or scratching the tank. A smear of silicone grease helps, as does remembering (eventually) that you start fitting these at the rear, narrow end and move forwards.

If you start at the back, the bottom edge will go in easily and you can work along the top edge; you can then slip the front over, as there is quite a lot of length to stretch and it will move, leaving you with a bit in the middle of the top edge which is a bit of an effort. Very rewarding when it pops in though, and made much easier by the fact that the tank, on the bike lift, is at shoulder level.

A couple of other points - I polished the trim up on the wheel before it went on, and secondly it's much easier to fit the rubbers when the tank is bolted in place on the bike.

Talking of which, as a 1958 bike this tank has the single centre fixing beloved of BSA. I wonder whose idea it was? A Val Page idea or a BSA idea? The easiest way to fit this is to assemble the bolt, washer, nut and the rubber with it's tube and insert it into the hole in the tank. With the seat pushed to the rear, you can lift the tank and wiggle the head of the bolt into it's slot on the frame - then you lower the tank.

You'll be able to feel that the bolt head is still engaged as you do up the nut.

We'll fit the chrome strip in the next episode!

Coming around to filling the tank, experience has shown that a petrol tap cork that has not had a tank of fuel sitting above it will dry out, shrink, and leak profusely. I've removed this one and it is spending the night soaking in fuel.

The tap itself is fitted with a Dowty washer which will make a far better job of sealing than the fibre washer originally specified. I've sanded the paint off the sealing face in order that the seal works properly, and a miracle has occurred:

The tap is positioned perfectly and it is fully tightened!

FH - frame & fork bits

 Lots and lots of little jobs today. I've put the front wheel back together and back in the bike, noticing that the centre stand is off the deck when the front wheel is high enough to come out - I used the scissor lift to get the bike high enough; that centre stand is going to have to come off again.

There's a separate post on the work I've done on the fuel tank, but there are some other bits to talk about here.

These 2 BA screws hold the front engine plate cover in place - I must find a better way of holding small screws for trimming:

Doesn't that look nice:

By the way, I used a small flap wheel to clean the paint out of the front axle clamp hole:

FH - more brakes

 Moving on to the front brake, it's time to unearth the mysteries of the full width hub. This is the view from the parts book:

It looks like the brass bearing retainer used in the half width hub is still there but now has a sheet steel ring riveted to it retaining a small felt grease seal. This one has been a bit butchered and the steel ring is loose:

The one on the other side is still in place. That tube passes through the bearing and acts as a centralising mount for the brake plate:

As might be expected, there's a thin coating of rust on the drum, easily cleaned with various abrasive papers.

This spacer fits over the tube in the previous picture, between the brake plate and the fork leg. It was stuck in the fork leg - I guess there is some paint to clean out.

Both the shoes are glazed. This is the trailing shoe:

This is the leading shoe, though there is no lead-in chamfer:

As we found at the rear, the parts are all present and in good shape - but no lead in chamfer:

As an aide-memoire, while I clear out the paint from the front axle clamp in the fork leg, note that the drain plug is missing and there is obviously no oil to damp the fork movement!

Next job is to add a lead-in chamfer to both shoes and to reassemble & retest. After that it's:

1. Fit the tank knee rubbers and aluminium trims
2. Fit the tank, not forgetting to soak the fuel tap first
3. Sort out the wiring routing under the dashboard and find the dashboard fixing screws
4. Replace the rims and spokes when the tyres turn up.

FH - number plate

 I like hand painted number plates. I like the idea that in the 1950's someone would appear at the motorcycle shop with a tin of paint and sign-write your number plate, just like his Dad did in the 1930's. No sticky laser cut numbers here!

I think it's important to get the font right too - but what am I saying? I've already blogged this post here, so I don't have to write it all again!

Here's the template as a word document:

And again, glued to some card and in the process of being cut out:

It's helpful to draw a horizontal line in pencil, perhaps using the rear lamp fixing holes as a guide so you get your letters level. Draw a vertical line in the centre as well and line that up with the middle of one of the letters.

Stick the template to the number plate with a host of small magnets, and using a dark grey spray paint, mist coat the number plate very lightly:

Remove the template and as if by magic you have something you can use to guide your paint brush. Expert sign-writers can ignore these steps!

I used white Hammerite smooth to fill the letters in:

Sorry about the reflections from the desk lamp:

I use Farecla GU10 to remove any stray spots of the mist coat.

Looking good again!

FH - air filter

 You might recall that I recently oiled the air filter element with Morris SAE50 engine oil:

I left it sitting for most of a week before I assembled it. 

Here it is in place with the carburetter hose, which I got from 'Rubberman' Jeff Hunter Engineering.

Not cheap, but very nicely made.