FH - running in

 Another sunny day dawns and after more faffing about trying to get the chainsaw to run adequately I went out for some more circuits on the FH. Before I started though, I wanted to check the oil level and top it up - it was virtually full though, so perhaps it had wet sumped since it last ran and emptied the sump back into the tank in the couple of miles I did yesterday.

I also remembered to remove a large magnet I had used to stick a cable clip under the rear mudguard:

The bike ran beautifully, starting easily. The clutch seems a little notchy but the brakes certainly work, though the front is very spongy. There's a lot of flexibility in the lever which we will have to sort out.

It sat here happily burbling away while I took this picture:

On return, I went round the bike with the spanners. After my third circuit, I had noticed the front had started to clonk on braking and I was surprised to find the brake torque arm nut had loosened off.

This brings us to running in. This is what the Ariel instruction book has to say about running in:

It also tells you to change the oil at 1500 miles and decarbonise at 2000 miles. Pitman tells you to change the oil at 200, 500 and 1000 miles.

I'll be checking bolts, chains, cables and brake adjustment very frequently, especially at the beginning, but what of the head gasket? Shall I retorque at some point? I think not, at least not as a matter of priority since it has an annealed solid copper gasket.

FH - finished!

 Well this is it, I am calling the Huntmaster project finished. In the last post which I wrote yesterday, I fitted the wheels and brakes and tightened up everything in that area.

Today it came off the lift to be replaced by the Square Four and rolled out into the yard for some pictures. 

The yard is halfway up a hill and when I was happy with the pictures I togged up with helmet and gloves and rode it up the road to test the brakes. I've set the tyre pressures to 28 & 36 psi, on the basis that the weight is more or less the same as the SQ4 - though the distribution might be very different - and it's using the same tyres, albeit in different sizes. If nothing else, it's a good starting point.

Several round trips later, each interspersed with some brake adjustment, it was time to take a cup of tea to Mrs H at her allotment. Domestic bliss waits for no man!

Hopefully tomorrow, we will have some time to go a little further.

FH - tyres & brakes

 We're nearing the end now. I've got the tires tubes and rim tapes, the wheels are both built and the brake plates are stripped out. 

The plan was to fit the tyres myself so that I didn't have to have the bike off its wheels for too long, because I wanted to be able to develop the setting up of the brakes.

I started with the back wheel, trimming the spokes with a large half round file, fitting the rim tape and then the first bead of the tyre, making sure that the direction of rotation was correct. All went reasonably well. Next step is to put the tube in, so in the timeline of fashion I put a bit of air into the tube and pushed it into the tyre. Getting the valve in through the rim and the rim tape was a bit of a hassle, but it's never an easy job. The next bit is to get the second bead on .

Fortunately I've had some large levers lying around for quite a long time for fitting tyres and these came in handy. Handy that is until the following day when I went to blow the tyre up and of course I had nipped a tube.

B*****. Just save any further messing about, I decided to do what I usually do and take the wheels to SPS services in horsford to fit the tyres for me, but first I needed to order a new tube .

While I waited for the tube I engaged myself in some more domestic duties, putting up some coat hooks and repairing the chainsaw which we had attempted to use to trim some damson trees at the allotment. I found poor crankshaft oil seals in the chainsaw and remarkably a run out of just under a millimetre in the crankshaft - and consider how small a chainsaw crankshaft is!

I sent the brake shoes to Villiers Services as usual for re-lining. I had asked for them to be riveted as well as glued, but Steve at Villiers Services explained that they had bad experience with Ariel brake shoes cracking around the rivet holes and didn't want to do it. I accepted the shoes with no rivets.

A few days later the new tube turned up and we made a rapid trip to Horsford to drop off the tyres and wheels and to buy an apple tree, scones and a cup of coffee or two on the way home. 

I was back there the next morning picking up the wheels with the tyres fitted and properly centralised. I have found it very difficult in the past to get the tyres concentric to the wheels, but these are perfect and fitted in the right direction.

They were back on the bike with the brake plates rebuilt and fitted by the evening.

FH - front wheel

 A very short blog post just to record that I've finished building the front wheel. 

Of course the first step is to finish the polishing. Here it is with the 80 and 150 grits done:

I needed a break of a couple of hours to let my arms and shoulders recover from the strain of polishing - these hubs are quite heavy. Here it is fully finished:

With a bit of experience, you can build these up wheels very quickly. All the spokes are tight in this view but it's not quite true; I'll leave that for tomorrow.

FH - wheel building

 With the hubs polished and the proper spokes delivered, we can start on the delightful job of lacing the wheels. 

These will use butted spokes like the originals fitted by Ariel back in the 1950s. The nipple end of the spoke is thinner than the head end - in this case the nipple end is 10 gauge and the head end, with perhaps 1" of spoke length is larger at 8 gauge. The idea is that the stressed part of the spoke is strong without making the wheel ridiculously heavy; this will have the effect of making the steering lighter by reducing the gyroscopic force on the wheel.

I'm building the wheels on a post which is of a suitable size to go through the wheel bearings. The bore of the bearings is 1"; the post I'm using is 1 1/8" so that the hub is happily suspended in mid-air. 

It's essential to get all of the spokes into their holes in the hub before you attempt to fit any of them through the holes in the rim. There is absolutely no chance of getting the spokes in the right place if you attempt to put some of them through the rim before they are all fitted in the hub, so be warned.

For this Ariel/BSA wheel Devon supply the rims in two packets - one for the inner and one for the outer spokes, that is the spokes whose heads are on the outside of the spoke flange but whose length is on the inside, and the converse for the outer spoke.

When polishing the hub I had used a brass brush in the Dremel to clean out the spoke holes. It was easy therefore to slip the spokes into place starting with the outer spokes. Because these hang down, it's a bit easier to do these first followed by the inner spokes.

You can see the butted spoke in this close-up:

Once you've got them all in you'll have this forest of stainless steel wire:

The next job is to offer up the rim. You have to decide which way the spokes are going to point-there is often a fret mark on the outer spoke flange which will show you how the originals fitted. I start with the outer spokes on the upper flange and follow the pattern shown in the spoke flange by the original spokes and fit three or four of the new spokes into their holes with their nipples screwed on by literally a couple of threads. These three or four spokes should all point in the same direction; then I will fit another one in the opposite direction still in the same flange which will serve to stabilize the rim. You can then carry on fitting the same spokes in the same flange until you have all the outer spokes fitted in the top flange. By this point you will have learned that for each outer spoke pointing in the same direction there are three holes in the rim until the next spoke of the same orientation.

When you've done that you can fit all the inner spokes from the top flange as well. This will enable you to ensure that all of the spokes cross in the proper orientation. Don't mix up the crossing, or you will end up with bent spokes.

You can then repeat the performance for the lower spoke flange but this time start with the inner spokes followed by the outer spokes, again to preserve the proper crossing.

Once you've got all the spokes in, you can do up the nipples gradually and evenly until the end of the spoke appears in the slot on the outside of the nipple, like this:

Now it's time to put your wheel in your truing jig or perhaps back in the bike. There's no substitute for using the bike frame as a jig to allow you to adjust the spokes so that the centre line of the wheel is aligned with the centre of the frame. This works beautifully on the Ariel swinging arm frame, but is much more difficult on the Square Four frame - because the Square Four frame is asymmetrical at the rear to accommodate the offset engine.

I made this spoke screwdriver years ago and it's very useful for tightening spokes when you can get to the nipple from the space usually occupied by a tyre. It makes it much quicker to tighten the spokes than using a spoke key.

I'm not going to explain the whole alignment process here because there are reams of material about it in this blog post, written when I was building the wheels for the Square Four. I must say though that these Devon rims and spokes pulled together to give a wheel that was virtually true and aligned out of the box.

Very nice indeed.

Now we just have to do it all again at the front!

FH - polishing hubs

 I've started on the rear wheel for no particular reason other than I expect it to be more work and secondly it's easier to get out than the front one for which I need to remove the wheel stop on the bike lift. 

The first step is to take a wire brush to the sand cast aluminium surfaces on the inside of the spoke flanges. You don't want to scratch the outer polished faces because it will be the devil of a job to remove the scratches made by a steel wire brush.

For the outside I have used a combination of 180 grit Scotch-Brite pad and a degreaser. This reveals a nice groove which whilst it looks quite uniform has actually been worn in place by the sharp edges of the chain case. When it's clean you can see that the bottom of the groove is quite rough:

With the grease removed we start with the 80 grit stitched mop and polish out as much of the tarnish as we can. We will also polish the edges of the spoke flanges and the ribs around the drum.

This progresses through the 150 and 300 grit wheels to the polishing mops:

It doesn't take long before it's ready for lacing on the rim.

Shame I have ordered the wrong spokes. It's shown here sitting on a 1 1/8" post, clamped in the Workmate, turned to just under 1" to allow the hub to slip over it. We'll lace the wheel in that.