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.

FH - Burgess Air Filter

The original Burgess air filter was missing from the Huntmaster kit, so I bought this one on eBay at an exhorbitant price. It was complete apart from the rubber hose which I got from Jeff Hunter Engneering.

It’s in pretty good nick apart from the loose and damaged mesh:

After a trip to the painter, it’s looking even better. I bought some brass mesh on eBay and cut a bit with shears:

These three items I’m using to weigh the mesh into the bed of Araldite are locomotive keys:

You need one to make this beast go:

Air filter in situ. Looks great!

W/NG Silencer

One day, I was walking up the road to my workshop and found a piece of rusty perforated steel in the road, squashed quite flat. I thought nothing of it.

Weeks later , I was musing over the efficacy of the W/NG silencer and looked inside the taailpipe only to find a similar piece of metal, though this one was partly tubular. The penny dropped.

Apart from this shred of perforated steel, there as nothing else in the silencer.

Burgess silencers, as used by Ariel, are supposed to look like this:

The principle employed in this type of silencer is the absorption of soundwaves transmitted by multiple reflections from the inside walls of the pipe. It uses an expansion chamber which surrounds a portion of the straight pipe system, perforated to allow escape of the gases into and out of the chamber, which is packed with absorbent material to diffuse the pressure and deaden the sound. 

One particular advantage of the straight through pipe is that it is not liable to partial choking, through fouling of the absorbent packing; the gases will always get through without hindrance or increasing back pressure, though the effectiveness of the silencer will suffer. 

An alternative failure mode is rusting and the loss of the absorbent material, leaving you with a simple expansion chamber which I suspect would not be really large enough - expansion chambers should be something like five times the swept volume of the engine.

So, there was no option but to cut the end off and repair it:

We need to replace the perforated pipe, which is easily available on eBay:

Unfortunately that's where we run out of pictures. I wrapped the perforated pipe with fibre glass blanket, wrapped with wire to hold it in place while I slid the silencer body over it.

The last bit was to run a peripheral weld around the body to cap joint, and that was it. The simple finish of a WD machine is a real help sometimes.

'58 Huntmaster

Well it looks like the itchy Mouse Finger has been twitching again... This was, like the Bantam, another eBay accident and what I thought was a low bid - "I'd like it at that price but I will never win it" - turned out to be the best price on the day.

This is the original eBay text:

1958 Ariel FH Huntmaster 650cc basket case

Here is a good opportunity to acquire a very worthwhile project for next winter!

This Ariel Huntmaster is generally complete and in sound condition.

The engine is not the original but appears complete and in good condition. The original crankcases are also included and could of course be built into the engine to make the numbers all matching. Gearbox is complete and in one piece all looks good. Wheels are also complete, rims obviously poor condition.

Exhaust down pipes are as new, one silencer is missing.

Smiths 120mph chronometric speedo is there & looks good.

The bike  has its original buff log book registration 39 FRB. I have corresponded with DVLA and they inform me that they have a record for the bike on their computer and a V5C can be issued subject to an inspection at local office.

The old buff log book shows date of registration as 6th January 1958, the bike was supplied by David Tye Ltd, Cromford, Derbys.

The bike looks to have only had two owners.

Frame number is CAPR 10669, engine number CNLF 4656

This would be a very good project , and now is the time to buy it so that some of the prep work can be done over the summer and everything got together for rebuilding over the winter.

Don’t miss this opportunity to restore a very dependable old Ariel to its former glory!

Selling for Spares or Repairs as seen in the photographs.

Please note everything in the photographs is included in sale and there are no extra parts not in the photographs!

And as the man says, it is virtually complete. The horn is missing, and whilst the engine bolts are there, there are very few fasteners. All the tinware is in pretty good shape, though the seat base will need some welding; there are two small dings in the fuel tank; the gear lever is missing; the switches, lights and speedo are all there; the K2F magneto & dynamo are there though the pickups are missing; the forks are straight and clean; and lastly all the numbers match up.

Here are the pictures:



Eventually it will look like this:

Not sure who's bike this is, but it has twin exhausts - mine currently has a two-into-one

It has the same tan seat, and it has the airbox (though the hose is missing):

I had to buy mine on eBay, at vast expense. At least it is an original one:

My gear lever was missing too.

This lovely machine has a FERC, which mine doesn't:

That's the Fully Enclosed Rear Chaincase, to the uninitiated...