Dismantle, degrease, polish...

Well, I've set about polishing the timing cover, but no pictures! I've decided that I need to find some abrasive wheels to tackle the timing cover since, as you can see from the pictures it is quite discoloured & needs more grief than I can give it with a sisal mop!

So, I have moved on to the removal and resurrection of the Lucas C35SD dynamo. No problem getting it off, but I had noticed a while back that the commutator was full of fluff, leaves and oil. I had assumed that this was down to the fact that the end cover was in a bag with a lot of other parts, and not on the dynamo!

I'd bought a puller as part of the toolkit crusade, and so removing the sprocket was no problem. As we noticed a day or two ago, the nut was missing and the puller screws right on. You undo the nut you can see behind the puller, extract the sprocket, and the dynamo is then held only by the clamp.

So here it is, some hours later after dismantling & scrubbing with a small brush & white spirit. All the major parts are in good shape, with the exception of the oil seal which is completely cratered - it is now obvious why the thing is full of oil. The distributor retaining screw is noticeably bent, and is 1/4" BSF - not what I would have expected in a soft ally casting.

Here's a close up of some of the smaller parts. No wear or other nasties apparent.

 



Next job, when everything is finally clean enough, is to check out the field coils, the armature, and the bearings. The data is all contained in the handy instruction manual, so no problems there. We can then reassemble and do a motoring test before refinishing.

Next though, after a few days real work, we will probably get the abrasives out and finish the timing cover.

Is it time to strip the engine yet?

Well, what delights will we find under here? 

Since I have not been able to shift the head, despite undoing all the fasteners (no I didn't miss any) I have decided to attempt to remove the barrel & head together and biff the head off the barrel using a block of wood from underneath.

Thanks to the ever-helpful Brenton Roy for that most excellent suggestion!!

The only challenge is that now I must undo all the cylinder base flange fasteners, several of which are inaccessible due to the dynamo and the timing cover. So, off with the timing cover! Unfortunately my imperial  hex keys were not at home - so I had to wait a little while. It's interesting that someone has fitted a set of cap head screws to this engine, so it's likely that someone has been in here before - which I guess is almost inevitable on a 60 year old machine. 

However, it comes off very easily, apparently with no stripped threads, though there is a quite a lot of Red Hermetite about.

Here's what I found:

Nothing too appalling at first glance. Everything in it's proper place, nothing mangled, the chain looks good and the tensioner is all there.

It's quite dark though. Is this evidence of a lot of blow-by I wonder?

Looking a bit closer, there is quite a bit of wear where the chain tensioner bears on the case - but this is probably normal and inevitable since the blade is free to flex at this end and the chain tension forces the blade against the soft aluminium case.

I'm not too worried about that.

But see what is missing? I didn't remove the nut on the end of the dynamo drive shaft! It's gone! Thankfully, unless it is stuck to the inside of the timing cover (I haven't looked yet) it must have been lost last time the engine was apart. There doesn't appear to be any damage from it flying about inside.

What else?

This is a bit peculiar - the tab washers for the oil pump haven't been bent up.

The alloy block and the two plungers are free - we will have to see what tolerances are specified for these parts.

Next stop we need to figure out how to time the engine so we can put it back together. Then it is dynamo off, oil pump off & we will attempt to remove the barrel  What fun! I might do some polishing first through, so I can clear the bench of the rocker covers and timing case.

Number Crunching

Lest we forget: Cylinder numbering for the four, according to Mr. C.W. Waller:

Next job is to lift the head. We remove the four sleeve nuts inside the rocker boxes; we loosen the twelve nuts around the outside of the head and, using a 1/4" BSW ring spanner especially reduced to fit in a confined space as shown in the picture on the left we remove the final four nuts.

A curiosity here. The front two studs were both fitted with two nuts - one with a regular 1/4" BSF nut, the other with a reduced hex 1/4" BSF nut. One is tempted to think that was to allow a bit more room to throw a wrench around, but I suspect it was more a question of convenience - whatever came to hand. The two nuts were I guess fitted to protect the threads.

In theory, according to the book the next job is to lift the head and place two 1/8" wooden strips between the head and the block, to allow us to raise the head and then to actually remove the nuts from the twelve studs.

The operation will be something like that shown in the picture from the Floyd Clymer Ariel Motorcycle Owners Handbook (3rd Edition) shown as Figure 11 below.

Well, I hope it will. It hasn't happened yet. The head is stuck fast with the adhesion of decades of setting time of a whole tube of Hermetite, by the look of it.

I have taken the hide mallet and waved it around near the engine in a vaguely threatening manner, but I don't plan to do anything else with out a bit more thought and a plea to the AOMCC forum members.

On with the engine...

Winter draws on... and I have no lights outside, so I am only able to work on the engine until dusk. It is in the summer house with the rest of the bike until it is small enough pieces to bring inside. This is something of a pain but my view is that the enforced pace allows me time to think!

I can't wait until the new workshop is up & running!

Here it is - it's a 20' x 9' garage I have bought in the middle of Sheringham, and it has a 9' square area upstairs as well. It has a solid concrete floor, is built from breeze block and has a tiled & felted roof.

There is no power or light yet but at least it is dry.

I plan to get rid of the up & over door to make it a bit more bike-friendly, and then get UK Power Networks to provide a 100A power supply.

Anyway, this evening I have been preparing to lift the head.

I've been using the tool kit spanners I have collected, for the sake of familiarity, to back off the fasteners around the head. I've slackened off the 3/16" BSW rocker adjusters and the 1/4" BSW rocker spindles so that we don't have any accidents on the bench later, which all came apart quite easily (though they were all pretty tight, apart from one of the rocker spindles (offside rear)).

I then moved on to the head studs, and now I understand where they all are if I don't know how to get them undone! The twelve nuts under the third barrel fin were easy to find, especially the one at the front offside where the fin is missing.

The four inside the rocker boxes look straightforward, though I guess they are 3/16" BSW and I don't have a suitable tube spanner for that - over to you Mr eBay.

I guess that I will be replacing these fasteners with more from Acme Stainless, or possibly plating them.

As for the last four, two at the front and two at the back... one I got to with a small 1/4" BSW ring spanner; but they are very inaccessible. Maybe a tube spanner from above, though not at the back where the inlet manifold covers them up, or mabe a slender Britool ring spanner my grandfather gave me many years ago. I've asked my ever helpful AOMCC colleagues for advice.

Anyhow, I have ordered a couple of suitable tube spanners, and I'm off to Leeds for work tomorrow. then I have a couple of important family events... Maybe some more activity this time next week?

Labour of love

Going through the grits, page one of thousands...

There has been no time this week to take the head off yet - it is still sitting in the summer house awaiting hours of patience with an open ended spanner, but we can finish cleaning up the rocker covers.

I haven't committed to any polishing equipment yet, but with a spare hour I have started to polish the two rocker covers by hand.

Starting by scraping off the dirt with the ubiquitous credit card/hotel room key, we move on to 240 grit used wet to cut back most of the oxidation. Moving through 400, 600 & 800 stopping periodically to ensure that the whole surface is cut to the same standard.

For some reason we seem to be out of 1000 grit, but we move on to 1200.

The next step is a waste of time - we try with some Farecla G3 cutting compound, but quickly find that this will not cut aluminium. It is an excellent product for what it is made for - paint & lacquers.

For final finishing - Solvol Autosol, resulting in the shiny parts we see hereabouts. Shiny enough, not to ruin the patina of a 60 year old bike? too shiny? not shiny enough?

You be the judge.

More next time...

We're back - and it is engine build time.

Well at last. It may be nearing the end of summer, but what better time to get back up and running with the Ariel.

The Bantam is finished - it is now 12 V, and has had it's second engine rebuild. It's just carried me 25 miles around the country south of the city without missing a beat, even through a ford. It still doesn't like ticking over when it is hot though.

The Cyclemaster has been in the workshop for a look over. It is remarkably original as I had thought; it has a coaster brake and is a 25 cc model, but it has been some while with the spark plug loose and is siezed solid. I've put it aside for a rainy day as it's time to get back to the next step with Amelia, building the engine. Regular readers will remember that the gearbox is suspiciously offset, and part of the engine strip will include sitting the bottom end in the frame for an alignment check.

However today, there is not much biking time left. Just enough to make a little start and write a blog post.

So here are some rather grubby rocker covers, taken off for the first time in years, and bringing two of their studs with them.

Here they are again, after a session with some white spirit and a cloth. What I need to do now is source some polishing mops, and some advice on what compunds to use.

And here is what they revealed. Nothing apparently amiss there!

I'm going to spend the rest of the evening relaxing in front of the telly with a book. One by Mr C.W. Waller perhaps.

Drags Again...

Collecting more parts. Who knows what this vital component is?

Hallets of Canterbury

Some way back, eager readers might remember I bought my mudguards from an eBay contact and that they were from a bike supplied by Hallets of Canterbury. Well, quite by chance Marcel Hallet, great grandson of the Marcel Hallet whose name adorns a brass plate on my front mudguard got in touch. In his own words:

Afternoon Simon.

A little bit of history. Hallets was opened by my great grandfather after the war. My grandfather and his brother also worked there. It then purchased a company called Invicta Motors the dealer for Ford, who were in financial difficulty. Invicta grew and grew over the years having Ford dealers in Ramsgate, Margate, Faversham, Canterbury. Invictas was sold to a Japanese company in the early 2000's. Hallets the building you see in the photos was knocked down around 2 years ago and now has a block of flats with shops underneath.

Marcel Hallet

And there were a few famous names associated with Hallet's:

Derek Minter (born 27 April 1932) was a British former Grand Prix motorcycle road racer. After National Service in the RAF he often became a fascinated spectator at Brands Hatch and took a job with Hallets, of Canterbury, the motorcycle dealers who were to become his sponsors. The proprietor, Ray Hallet, had been a useful road race and grass track rider himself and had taken Derek to the Isle of Man to be his mechanic in the Manx Grand Prix. Eventually Minter persuaded the company to provide him with a BSA Gold Star. Twice he entered his name for races at Brands Hatch and twice he backed out, suddenly realising that it took more bravery to turn up and race rather than watch. Eventually he plucked up courage and began to show real talent.

His best season was in 1958 when he finished the year in fifth place in the 500cc world championship.In 1960, Minter won the North West 200 race inNorthern Ireland. In 1962, he won the Isle of Man 250cc Lightweight TT.

And the local motorcycle manufacturer, Norman Cycles of Ashford:

Dealer Hallets of Canterbury entered a two-rider team in the 1959 & 1960 Thruxton 500 mile races. Les Hatch (Norman employee) and John Punnet (Greengrocer) rode a factory prepared B3 Sports, engine was specially tuned by Villiers. The B3 Sports was more or less standard, they came 2nd in the 250 class in 1959. The result boosted the Norman order book by £10,000 over night.

Marcel was kind enough to let me post these splendid photographs:

A Sunbeam S7 & A Villiers twin...

An M20 and a Gold Flash:

An Ariel single and a VB:

Another M20 and a Gold Flash:

And this is the best one. Are those my mudguards? that is certainly a Mk1 Square Four, no chrome on the tank so it must be '51 on...

More Plating...It's been every evening this week...

Well I am persisting with the zinc plating while waiting for my Bantam engine to come back. I've reworked all of the engine fasteners now, not brilliant but usable, along with parts like the clutch adjuster. I've also plated a few spacers, chain adjusters & the brake adjuster:

Quite passable I think!

Plating

So, I've started plating some Bantam parts using a 4 Amp 6V/12V battery charger and Gateros Bright Zinc kit - £59. for enough to make two 4.5 litre tanks. I wanted to clean up the rusty fasteners & clutch adjuster on the outside of the engine.

I started by running a die along all of the fasteners to clean the red Hermetite out of the threads. Then they went in a caustic soda electrolytic bath, followed by a rinse.

Then it's a minute in a 30% hydrochloric acid solution (brick cleaner from B & Q), and straight into the plating tank. It's a struggle to get the voltage right with a rudimentary controller in the form of a coil of resistance wire, but the results are passable - especially as I was really looking for a cadmium plate look-alike, not shiny zinc.

Here are a batch of parts in the plating tank:

And here they are again after about 20 minutes:

A 'before & after' shot:

So having tested that out, onto some more valuable (read scarce) parts. These are the steel parts from Amelia's Solex 26 AHD in the tank. Same process as before:

And here they are after plating. They are still attached to their handling wires here, but they have been  in the clear passivating solution for about 60 seconds.

And here is the carburetter assembled. All the brass has been cleaned with Farecla G3 compound, a toothbrush and a brass wire brush in the Dremel. It all looks to be in nice condition though it will need a new set of seals and some parts from David Jones, including the air bell, the Bi-Starter knob and it's bracket.

The other thing I need is to find out what the cable bracket looks like, if there was an adjuster, and where the throttle return spring goes... anyone got one I can copy?

A pleasing distance from the 'before' shot from last week!

Carburetter

Well, while waiting for the Bantam engine rebuild to get moving (I'm waiting for the crankshaft to come back from Rex Caunt) I've been plating fasteners using a kit from Gateros.

While I had the tank out, I thought I would get the Ariel carburetter ready and plate the steel parts. I've been experimenting with aluminium cleaning with an electrolytic soda bath, along with various household products.

Here is a household product with which I have become acquainted:

I started with a spare Zenith mower carburetter I had knocking around:

I attacked one of these with Cillit Bang descaler and got this in a few minutes:

The electrolytic bath didn't help much. I started with the Solex 26 AHD from the Ariel, which looked quite horrible to start with. These carburetters appear on several small french cars - they were specified by Ariel because the constant vacuum from the four cylinder engine can prevent a spring return slide from closing:

But after a couple of hours with a small brush & Cillit Bang:

This is what it is supposed to look like:

The next step is to make some decision on how to plate the steel parts. I fancy a nice yellow chromate passivate...

Bit quiet on the bike front...

Apologies to my regular readers once again, things have been a bit quiet. I've spent a lot of time away this month - two trips to Norway & one to Scotland - but the smoked fish in Sandefjord was lovely!

No movement on the Ariel, but the Bantam is moving ahead at Rex Caunt racing. I've had to send my crankcases over this week as Rex has found some peculiar wear that needs investigating. The workshop is still choc-a-bloc with Bantam parts, and I am getting ready to try out some zinc plating on the fasteners for the engine. I have new clutch plates and springs courtesy of Howard at Bournemouth Bantams.

And I have a new toy! Years ago I bought a 1950's Hercules bicycle at an auction (a proper one where you go and wave your hands about) and I've been thinking lately that it needs a little more... excitement. So I have bought this at a very good price on the Bay of E:

That's right! it is a Cyclemaster! It is also about 1951, and sports 26 cc of 2-stroke technology giving 0.6 bhp of raw grunt. It is very original, with it's original Dunlop Carrier tyre & rim, and it's original control levers. It is however, or appears to be, siezed.

There is an excellent site about Cyclemasters at http://www.cyclemaster.co.uk/.

 

In response to a query...

In response to a comment on the blog, here is a photograph of the front stand bracket:

And some dimensions:

On to brighter things?

After the doom & gloom of the gearbox story, I fitted a few more parts and had a general clear up of the summer house - we don't want domestic bliss to be troubled by Ariel parts in the way of deck chair deployment!

The oil tank went in first:

Fitting was relatively straightforward; the ding in the filler neck was not as bad as I had remembered but the dent in the front was a worry.

This was laid to rest by the ever helpful Brenton Roy, AOMCC member & correspondent from Australia who confirmed this is as Ariel intended and is there to clear the distributor.

Not so the other picture!

A Dutch correspondent, and another fellow AOMCC member, suggest that the dent in the oil tank behind the battery was probably due to an exploding battery...

We may leave that one alone, since you can't see it when the battery is in place.

However, also visible in the picture is the very nice stud arrangement from Acme Stainless, holding the oil tank in the frame lug under the saddle.

Here's the oil tank again from the battery side, with the inside primary case in place albeit loosely.

Apparently the spare hole in the engine plate is for the clutch cable.

Here's a view of the primary case from behind, to try and ascertain what happens here. That shiny bit (there is only one shiny bit) is the brake lever stop, another Acme Stainless component. You can see it behind the primary case where there should apparently be a spacer. Thanks again to various AOMCC folks.

And here she is as she is today, looking a bit more like a motorcycle!