FH - speedo cable

 After a suggestion from AOMCC member Stan, I've put an O ring around the speedo cable in an attempt to stem the drip of oil on the cable...

There's a fair bit of oil under the timing case, which might be coming from one or both joints or might be flowing down from the oil pressure regulator valve. There may have been no leak down the speedo cable, since oil can drip from the crankcase/timing cover onto the speedo cable...

Charlie's Shed - Speedometer Cable

For some bizarre reason the speedometer cable on the W/NG broke the other day. It's been there for a couple of thousand miles, but wasn't particularly well lubricated so perhaps that was the reason. I'd not considered repairing a speedo cable before, but there wasn't a replacement available commercially and I needed it for the VMCC run to Blakeney the following weekend, so I decided to attempt a repair.

The first attempt was to use the wonderous TIG set to weld a short length of 4 mm round bar to the end. I filed it square and it looked fine:

I made a little collar out of a bit of 8 mm aluminium round bar and used Araldite to hold it in place:

It lasted 27 miles before it broke in the same place.

Looking at the brand new cable in the Huntmaster, I found that the square drive end of the cable was made in aluminium and crimped to the cable end. I made up a similar fitting in the lathe:

Glued in place, with JB Weld this time, I fitted it to the bike.

I'd also bought a cheap Garmin GPS cycle speedometer, thinking that I'd need one if I ever used the Model A on a club run, which I certainly will do at some point. I'm currently testing the new cable against the Garmin, which reveals that the Chronometric on the W/NG reads about 5% high.

Winter Work on the SQ4

It's time to think about winter jobs on the SQ4. The W/NG is the go-to bike and with no chrome makes an ideal machine for the winter, so if I can resist the temptation to tinker with it I can get on with the SQ4 and still have a bike to ride. The SQ4 jobs are:

1. Fix the speedo and get the blurred dial replaced
2. Get a new slow-running screw for the Solex
3. Remove the indicators - I have decided to do this, because they look awful and because the indicators are regular tungsten bulbs and the load causes the LED headlamp to flash with the indicators. This is a bit disconcerting at night...
4. Upgrade the headlight again
5. Replace the front wheel bearings with sealed bearings
6. Replace the front inner tube which leaks slowly
7. Look at the brakes again as they bed in
8. Make a new tool roll
9. Fit a couple of transfers
10. Change the oil tank for the one with a good filler neck thread
11. Make a lower chain guard

I'll make a separate post for the chain guard. It's here.

But first, checking the bike over reveals that the horn doesn't work. A quick nose about with the multimeter reveals no supply at the horn, so we look at the 15A horn fuse. This is blown, and was probably too low for the horn so we will change it for a 20A. This works fine and consistently, so we will leave this for now. We'll also pull the indicator circuit fuse...

I've stripped out the headlight, in preparation for sending the speedo away, uprating the headlamp and removing the indicators.The speedo has gone to Russell at Chronometric Instrument Services for a clean, new springs and a new face:

And here it is, back again just over a week later:

Soundly packed with lots of bubble wrap

New face, all numbers in correct positions

Guarantee sticker on the back

New screws and nuts

Now we can put the headlamp shell back in place with new bolts:

This is the new headlight bulb and it's driver:

It's from CDRC, like some other bulbs I have bought and is their 5th Generation LED headlamp bulb shown here. Not cheap, especially as to fit it I needed an H4 reflector which I bought from Paul Goff as usual. It's the 7" Lucas reflector with a pilot bulb. The bulb is very nicely made - aluminium, powder coated black with nice elastomeric seals and good quality connectors. I've chosen a 6V bulb, so that I can keep the ignition & generating systems running at 6V.

The bulb fits into an adapter ring, which is provided with the bulb. This allows you to twist the bulb through 360 degrees, offering left, right or central dip:

Whilst the bulb looks quite long it appears to fit into the SSU700 shell quite nicely. The cable goes off to the driver box which I will mount in the bottom of the shell.

All done and back together:

One job that wasn't on the list was to fix the offside fork leg which sticks down over large bumps. I pulled it apart to find that it was actually sticking with maybe a third of its total stroke left unused, so now that I have eased some very tight new bushes I am looking for better behaviour from the front suspension! I checked the other leg while I had most of it apart, which moved freely.