Charlie's Shed - Making a sidestand

 The sidestand fitted to Anstey-framed Ariels is a poor affair that does not extend very far from the frame and has a very small foot which combines to make the use of the stand a very precarious and risky operation. I never use it. 

However, the bike is a heavy old thing which would benefit from a decent sidestand so in this episode I'll show you how to make one.

I bought a leg, a while back, from eBay. It's from a Suzuki TS125 trail bike, so it is very long and it came with a spring and a M10 x 1.25 bolt. Doing this again, I'd probably buy a Triumph or Enfield leg as I ended up cutting a lot of length off this one.

The sidestand is going to bolt on, but I'm not a fan of clamp on types so this is going to bolt across the two bottom frame rails forward of the sump plate. A piece of steel bar, 6 mm x 35 mm spans the frame. I start by putting a 45° bend in a short length at one end, to start to get an idea of how it will look on the bike and what sort of leg length I will need, where it will sit in the 'up' position and where the stops will need to be. I drill a 10.5 mm hole for the bolt and fit the leg:

The first decision I make is that the spring will be underneath, not above the leg as Suzuki had it. I'll cut the peg off and smooth the area:

While the 6 x 35 mm flat bar can provide the 'down' stop, it needs extending to provide the 'up' stop. I make a piece with a double prep and weld it on:

Some shaping with hacksaw, files and the linisher gives us two stops:

The stand is going to be held on the frame rails with three 1/4" U bolts, one on the drive side and two on the timing side. Here's a trial fit of the first one:

With the assembly in place we can look at the leg length, and the angle it is going to make with the ground. Obviously if the stand's touch down point is further away from the bike's centreline, the bike is more stable. We don't want the stand leg too short, but leaving it like this won't allow the bike to lean enough.

Next, we need to stiffen that bar. It's stiff, but this is a heavy machine and we don't want a rider sitting on the bike while it is on the stand opening our stand bracket out. The stiffener is a piece of 20 x 3 mm flat bar

The stiffener also provides somewhere to mount the spring lugs. I made these from a bit of 10 mm round bar on the mini-lathe:

One of the key issues is to get the lugs in the right place such that the spring holds the leg firmly in both positions, without the spring fouling anything as it moves:

There was way too much slop between the stand leg and the mounting bar. I built up the bearing surface with weld and cut it back on the linisher to get it to about 7 mm

It's much less wobbly. Obviously wobble here will affect the lean of the bike when it's on the stand.

Time for another fitting. At the previous trial fit, I marked the position of the timing side U bolts, so now I can drill the holes. I haven't yet trimmed the mounting bracket, but I have trimmed the leg. Here are all the bits:

The bike has a lean of maybe 5°, which is fine.

Time to start finishing the leg. Here's the foot, cut from a bit of 3 mm sheet. The sheet happened to have a hole in it, I'll fill it up later:

Gosh that was quick. In this next picture, the foot is partially welded on and I have made the foot finder from some 10 mm round bar and another bit of 3 mm sheet. To start with, I fitted the stand to the bike in the up position and held a 200 mm length of the round bar in place, deciding where I wanted the foot finder - it needs to come out behind the foot rest and to do that I needed a bend. Once I had the bend formed I held the round bar on the foot with a spring clamp to see if it was in the right place, and I was able to see how long the bar needed to be and where on the foot it needed to be fixed. I tacked it on the foot.

Next I made a 25 mm square pedal, and curved it a little to emulate the shape of the brake pedal. I tacked that on the end of the bar and refitted the stand, which revealed various issues. These were resolved by removing the leg and holding it on the vice, heating the round bar to perform the bends I wanted - the bar curved around the exhaust, but not tightly enough, and the pedal was not square to the bike in two axes. A bit of heat soon fixed those issues. 

That's it for now. The stand is back in position and working:

I'll run around with it for a while and see how it goes. I still need to ease the 'u' bolt holes on the timing side and trim the end of the bracket before painting, but for now we need to shake it down.

'Puzzled' of Norwich writes on the subject of Brake Rods...

Out here in the hinterlands of East Anglia, the winter has been hard & long & devoid of much motorcycling weather, so we have had to content ourselves with small jobs we can do inside, or snatch brief interludes of inner (shed) calm amidst the fun & excitement of family life.

Brian Challinor mailed with a question about the straightness of my brake rod, which had to wait for such an interlude. My brake rod is as straight as the day it was drawn through the die, since it is brand new and has never been fitted.

However, since that interlude came today, I have had it fitted to the bike. Here are several shots showing it in place:

As you see, it doesn't fit - due to the aforementioned 'straightness'

Here's a shot from a 1989 copy of 'The Classic Motorcycle' of a supposedly 1952 Square Four - I say 'supposedly' because there are a few elements that are more 1950 than 1952. Here's the brake rod:

Careful study will show you that it is bent as the proverbial 9 bob note.

Here's another one, a 1951 bike sold at Andy Tiernan's a few years ago:

Again, bent. The case rests m'lud.

So, another day. another interlude... I have taken that most useful of tools, the wire coat hanger, and bent it to form a dummy brake rod, for the purpose of determining the routing the real thing should take and the bends that would be necessary to accommodate that routing. Having satisfied myself, I bent the real thing. Here it is:

Side view, see how long it is, and the poor (low) position of the brake lever?

Here is a top view, which gives an idea of the two bends:

And here is a view of the brake rod and it's proximity to the brake plate and Anstey stirrup:

Looks like the brake arm might be the wrong way around, and the rod needs to be shorter. I'll leave that until I have relined the shoes and positioned the pedal properly - once it's cut shorter, it can't be lengthened again!

Here's a view from Brenton Roy's original '51 Square, suggesting that my installation is along the right lines:

Proving yet again that the AOMCC forum is a wonderful resource for us! I'm thinking that my brake arm is a little more bent than Brenton's:

Amelia's Plungers

So, we spent the weekend cleaning, painting & collecting pieces of suspension from the boxes the machine was delivered in. We are missing a washer (!) which will have to be made and we were missing the two large upper shrouds (the ones with the slots in) which came from eBay, with better lower shrouds than the ones I had.

Generally the bushes are good - the tubes along which the sliding members move are a bit pitted in places. Some threads need recutting as well.

The chrome plating done by the previous restorer is flaking and will have to be removed - the link pins are especially bad. However since the first build is to be non-cosmetic, we will leave these for now.

Draganfly have the rear stands in stock, so when I have acquired the material to replace that washer we will take a trip down there and pick one up, along with the springs, the mudguard stay fixings and various other small parts. We'll go to Mike Peters at www.polished-stainless.com for all the stainless fasteners (as we did for the Bantam).

However for now, the plungers are loosely fitted in the frame:

And this is what it will look like:

Frank's Links

So, to bike building, starting at the back.

My Square Four, like many others is fitted with the famous Anstey Link rear suspension, designed by Frank Anstey to overcome the chain-tension problems inherent in the plunger design, whilst avoiding the complex frame re-engineering required when providing a true swinging fork. Mr. Anstey joined Ariel from Triumph, as Ariel's Chief Designer, in 1937. Here's an extract from Patent 498544, filed by Ariel Motors & Mr. F Anstey on 16th December 1937:

Patent Number 498,554. Spring frames for motorcycles. ARIEL MOTORS, Ltd., and ANSTEY, F. Dec. 16, 1937, No. 34840. [Class 136 (iii)] A spring mounting for the rear wheel of a motor-cycle comprises in combination, ...on each side of the wheel, a lever j arranged horizontally or nearly so at the rear end of the frame a, one end of the lever receiving one end of the wheel spindle m, as by means of a slot k, a fulcrum piece g having a pivotal connection, i with an intermediate part of the lever j means for carrying the fulcrum piece g on the frame so as to allow it to move in a vertical or approximately vertical direction, and means for attaching the other end of the lever j to the frame so as to allow this end to move in an approximately horizontal direction, as by means of a vertical link n or a horizontal guide, the movements of the parts being controlled by one or more springs.; The fulcrum piece g is slidably mounted on a guide pin f secured in a bracket c formed on or attached to the rear end of the frame a, the sliding movement being controlled by a main spring h and a rebound spring or rubber buffer, with or without a vibration damper, such as an hydraulic damper combined with the guide pin mounting. The lever j is formed with a forked part passing around the bracket c, the pivot pin i extending across the forked part. Thesprings are enclosed in telescopic tubes t, u. The two levers j on opposite sides of the wheel may be interconnected by links &c. and controlled by a single spring or set of springs

The  design uses all the 'normal' elements of a plunger suspension, but instead of suspending the wheel from sliding member it incorporates a cast steel horseshoe, which carries the wheel and pivots on the sliding member. This horseshoe is retained by a link, pivoting above the lower frame members and forward of the plunger allowing the horseshoe to travel through a short arc so that the drive chain tension was kept more constant during compression and rebound. Of course, this is not a perfect solution since the centre of the horseshoe's rotation is still a long way from the gearbox sprocket centre, but it is a lot better than a conventional plunger.

Of course, there are lots of pivots, sliding members & bushes to wear out...

Here are the bits I have acquired:

You can identify most of these from the sketch above. The long screw poking out of the horseshoe (and painted that WD green colour) is the chain adjuster, which replaced the snail cams. You will also see that my '51 bike has volute-type rebound springs in place of the previous coils.