Front Mudguard & Stands

Here she is in all her slightly less moth-eaten-than-last-month glory...

Front mudguard, first trial fit - looks fine. That stay is slightly bent though, and the front stand bolts (to the fork leg) are also wrong. They shouldn't be plain machine screws as fitted at the moment. Or should they?

Rear view. Looking good. Front stay bolt hole looks stretched/bodged.

Side stand, first trial fit. Needs the primary case to locate the short end of the spring, but coming on. Not sure I would want to use it though, looks rather wobbly.

Here's my triumphant shot of the rear stand spring - all working now. I have scraped up the huge pile of pennies from the shed floor, released from the spring when I used it the first time.

Battery Carrier

Amelia is completely devoid of any battery carrying facilities. She should have the big Lucas GU11E battery that appeared in 1951.

Thanks to Brenton Roy & Guy Rayner of the AOMCC for these images of what I need to make, find, swap or a combination of the three:

What I need is the dimensions of this part. Anyone measure one for me?

Underside, showing the screws that clamp it to the primary cases.

Here is the strap, best English chrome plate, available from Acme Stainless in a rather more appropriate material.

And here is the large battery carrier, in position on Guy's 4G. As he says, his bike should have the small battery. Alas I don't have one to swap...

As a postscript to this request, the ever helpful Brenton sent me this:

We'll be making one of those later.

Welding under way

And so onto the repair of the front mudguard:

Here's a section on the offside, welding up the rusted folded seam

Here's the fatigue fracture in the mounting bracket, cleaned of paint but not ready for welding.

 Here's the offside at the bottom of the flare, burning away as fast as I can weld it.

And here is the long rusted seam on the near side, all repaired.

Well almost. Run out of gas.

Hopefully more tomorrow if I can get to MachineMart Norwich.

Back to the weld shop...

With the rear mudguard mounted and the forks in place, it's time to look at the front.

You haven't seen the mudguard I bought from eBay, but it is an original Ariel guard from I think 1953. Luckily it came with the correct aluminium number plate but, like the rear guard it is full of holes.

Here are some 'before' pictures:

There is a nice brass dealer plate. This bike was originally supplied  to Marcel Hallet, of Canterbury.

As usual, we have a fatigue fracture around the mounting thoughtfully chalked in by the eBay seller.

Then a series of pictures showing how the folded seam has rusted out from the inside

This is the worst of it. About 8" of the seam on the nearside has parted company. We will either weld this up & fill with weld or patch from the inside. The side panels are quite sound and will form a strong base to weld to.

And, matching fatigue fracture on the other side.

Time to break out the MIG set again!

No blogging...

Apologies to my avid readers for not providing any updates yet this month...

I have been in the USA for work, and my poor Bantam has decided it no longer likes it's crankshaft. I guess the SQ 4 engine won't be on the bench next...

I have however, courtesy of some helpful hints from the AOMCC web site, managed to fit the rear stand spring!

It Moves!

And here she is - a rolling motorcycle! You can see if you look carefully that the mudguard is not fitted to the L stays at the rear - the radius is slightly too large and I will have to cut & reweld.

I won't do that however until I am convinced that the front mounts are in the right place, and I need the proper spacers for that.

Tin bashing...

So remember planishing pieces of copper at school? making bowls & beakers surrounded by 30 other 14 year olds? well it continues in my cellar workshop, courtesy of some sheet from a local fabricator, some cheap panel beating hammers and a lump of sapele with a scoop out of it.


The plan was to make some repair panels to bridge and reinforce the cracks, then to butt weld the original material so that when the original metal, since it was so thin inevitably burn through there would be some meat behind it.

Here is the underside of the rear mudguard, with the first two patches in place. I'm quite pleased with the quality of the welds though this work is a graphic illustration of why welders are coded for the position of the weld - the horizontal welds with the torch held above the weld are of much better quality than the vertical ones! That mole grip is doing double duty, holding the patch in place and providing the earth connection.

Here is the topside of the same patches.

Good penetration all the way around and no holes! Below this you can see two large holes which had been used to mount the spring pillion. The two bolt heads above are, I guess, the other two pillion seat holes. I'll be leaving these until I am sure that I don't need them!

On to the outside of the mudguard. This is a small hole which appears to have been caused by the chain guard chafing on the mudguard. Looks ugly - I didn't really have the orientation right when I tried to weld this up. Nothing the flap wheel can't sort out.

And here is the outside of the area around the upper L-stay mount, where the pillion seat mounts were. Those two holes are uppermost in the picture, below that are the cracks which have now been welded up. The mudguard is now very stiff, compared to the wet rag it was before. 

Here is another shot of the same zone, in its more natural orientation.

Lastly, this is the area around where the chainguard fits. There was a long crack on a fold here, where residual stresses in the material would have led to increased levels of corrosion. This was backed up with a narrow strip on the inside with continuous peripheral fillet welds, with a continuous seam weld on the outside. 

So that is it. the next step is to fit it to the bike, and for that I need a delivery from Mike Peters at www.polished-stainless.com, and the special studs for the L stays from Drags.

Building up

So, a few shots of half an hour's work, putting in the yokes:

Bottom bearing greased...

Steering damper parts all assembled. All from Drags bar the star washer and centre stem which are original

Top bearing greased

Bottom yoke in & bearings adjusted.

On to more serious work...

So, a while ago I promised to share the contents of some cool eBay finds...

These were a set of mudguards and chainguards I found in Doncaster, which were won at a very reasonable price and duly arrived. They were wellmarked and  photographed by the seller, and I knew I was in for some serious welding.

Here is the worst of the rear guard:

Here's one of the upper L-stay lugs, broken off and thoughtfully retained by the vendor:

So essentially we have a maze of cracks in each of the lugs for the L-stay at the top of the mudguard, along with two large holes left by a pillion seat fitted in the dim & distant past.

The metal is also very thin in these areas, badly pitted by moisture retained by a seat bracket that was still fitted when I got the parts.

There are also cracks at each of the lifting handle lugs. and a worn hole where (I guess) the chain guard rubs against the mud guard.

Unknown at the time of taking these pictures was the long crack above the chainguard recess.

A while ago I realised that the number plate that I had was a later BSA pattern, repaired it with the trusty MIG welder and sold it on eBay, to further fund the Ariel rebuild.

Of course, the holes for this are not the same as the ones I need and will have to be filled, along with the pillion seat holes and any others that I find I don't need - but then, this is the main purpose of the non-cosmetic Phase 1 build.

I've mentioned the fantastic AOMCC forum once or twice. Yet again Brenton Roy comes to the rescue with some photos of his Dad's '51 SQ4:

Here are the pillion mounts on Roy's bike's rear mudguard, looking down to the front mudguard mounts:

Front mudguard mounts in more detail. My mudguard has the front stay inside the mudguard bade.

Here is the routing for the rear light cable - presumably that is the end of the ignition coil. I'm not sure where mine fits yet.

And here is the whole rear end. I'm not fitting a pillion seat, though I am going to repair the holes left by the previous one, and reinforce the mudguard at those points in case I change my mind. That way I will have powder-coated a mudguard that is strong enough to be re-drilled for a seat.

This is what it is supposed to look like. You can see the L shaped stay and the lifting handle:

Charlie's Shed - Corks

This week, I have been mostly cutting up pieces of cork...

So while waiting for my fork tools to arrive, I have been cleaning up the petrol taps.

After several sessions in a hot ultrasonic bath, we have two clean Enots petrol taps, the type with the famous 'HexagON'. One is a reserve tap in that it has an additional reserve lever - so the bike will have three options - one side of the tank through one tap, the other side of the tank through the other tap, and a portion of fuel available from one side of the tank with the tap in the reserve position. How useful.

So, after ultrasound we have the Dremel & brass wire brush to buff up the nickel - which is has a distinct 'patina' brought on through years of service and inappropriate spanners. Nothing to stop them working though, at least, nothing that a new set of seals won't cure.

So, rummage around under the bench for the remains of a 1/4" thick cork table mat, and we can set about making some new ones:

• make a wad punch out of some 15 mm tube, sharpened at one end
• whack the punch into the cork with a mallet, onto a stout hardwood anvil
• realise this only crushes the cork
• think again and resharpen the punch
• screw it into the cork to actually cut the seal blank out
• do it five more times
• stick a dowel inside the tube and push out your six blank seals

having crawled around the workshop floor, since they shot out of the punch and went everywhere, go and have a cup of tea. Next:

• punch a small (4mm or so) hole in the centre of each blank
• thread each seal onto a suitable screw, retain with a nut & washer
• chuck the screw in an electric drill, or a lathe if you are lucky
• using a 60 grit sanding pad, followed by 120 grit, reduce the seals to 1/2" diameter in your makeshift lathe
• strip it all down and admire your handywork.

Next, oil the seals and wait a little while. Now you can put them in the taps, reassemble and revel in the fact that you have saved yourself £3.50!

So, where are we?

This is going to be the most boring blog post ever. It's sole purpose is to try to force my thoughts to coalesce into a course of action.

To summarise where we are - the rear suspension (apart from the stand mounts and the spring) is done and the back wheel is on. The gearbox could be bolted if I were to determine which studs I had and which were missing.

The fork legs are together, but I don't have the tools to screw the seal housings in place and one of the seal housings is dented - no matter though, I will fix that when I do the Phase 2 cosmetic rebuild. One of the top shrouds has a large hole in it - again, one for Phase 2. The yokes are together, but I am missing the fixed plate for the steering damper and the handlebars - both on back order from Drags.

So, if I had the puller for the fork legs, and the handlebars I could put the forks together in the frame; if I had the bolt for the brake plate (the torque reaction bolt) I could put the front wheel on; if I had all the bolts for the mudguards I could fit them, and then I could start mudguard welding.

So I need:

• front brake torque bolt
• front & rear mudguard bolts
• an assortment of nuts & washers
• fork leg puller & oil seal holder tool
• the bolt for the steering damper fixed plate

I need a trip to Drags... roll out the Bantam!

A leap ahead

Well, the sun is out, the old MZ TS125 is going for it's MOT and the tools are all out in the garden. At the end of the work day I'm needing some distraction and there are some Ariel stand parts lying around in the office... why not fit up?

The new stand with it's stainless fasteners goes on easily, so let's try the rear wheel in place:

The stand spring stud doesn't fit though, unless I have misunderstood. There is no undercut on the stud and a full depth tapped hole in the frame (more work for the 3/8" CEI taps), so it won't screw fully home. Looks good from the offside as well though. We also now know that the G1/99 double ended tube spanner in the toolkit needs to be 5/8" BSW, at least at one end...

And with the gearbox in place maybe we are OK with the chain alignment. It looks fine from this rudimentary view, but the problem is supposed to be with the clutch and the primary chain, so maybe we are not out of the woods yet!

Then we can lay the un-repaired mudguard over the top. It is now obvious where the stays, the lifting handle and the frame bolts fit. It is also obvious that the bracket on the top is for a dual seat that we won't need. another missing part springs to light though, it looks like two of the QD hub nuts are missing. The chalk 'X's', by the way, are cracks that have yet to be repaired!

Forks

So, the skirmish aimed at getting the rear wheel in place, in order to confirm that the gearbox mainshaft is the right length, has morphed into a campaign to make a rolling chassis. This means I will have to clear out and rearrange the summer house and face up to the awful prospect that the Ariel may be too big to fit into the only covered space available to it.

Bouyed up by some successful welding over the weekend (fitting Ford Ka seats into the Morris) I’m now almost ready to tackle the mudguards – hence the need for a rolling chassis. I’ve also bought the parts for the rear stand, necessary to get the wheel & gearbox in, and I bulked that order out with the fork parts & the handlebars – all from the ever-reliable folks at Draganfly.

As the forks came out of the boxes, we had the top yoke & the sliders in new gloss black paint, the stanchions & bushes rusty in rolled up newspaper, and the bottom yoke & shrouds somewhere in between – gloss black paint but plenty of rust as well. As well as a large hole worn in one of the stanchions. Another job for my newly acquired welding skills.

Some of the smaller pieces, like the top nuts, the races, and the adjusting nuts for the races were in the toffee tin full of fasteners.

So we’ve got all the bits out and surveyed the damaged and the missing. Missing is mainly confined to fasteners and the steering damper plates and friction discs – the special nuts at the top and bottom are gone too. The shrouds with the headlamp ears are nicely wrapped in newspaper, in the boxes - we've been quite lucky here. 

The ‘damaged’ list is far longer – virtually all the threads are mangled to some extent, either burrs, paint, chunks missing or dents – but nothing that can’t be fixed. The brass bit on the steering damper stem won't take it's nut, so something is wrong there.

Stripping it all down, a few hours with emery cloth and wet & dry paper reveals stanchions that are in good shape, under the rust. I haven’t checked them for straightness yet, but the sliders seem to move smoothly and without much play. The lovely gloss black prevents the chrome oil seal holders, and the front wheel spindle from fitting though. the adapters at the top have seen the attention of a bad attitude with a hammer - two mangled threads that will go straight in the bin. Five minutes with the blow lamp & Stilsons sorted them out.

With parts from Drags, we can assemble the steering damper and the yokes – the 3/8” CEI taps have seen some action this weekend!

Top adapters are back in, bolts & washer cleaned up (rechrome in Phase 2), new clamp bolts, new seals, no new bearings though.

I am going to refresh the races with new balls for the moment, and in Phase 2 I will change them for taper rollers. I don't want to do that now in case I trash them preparing for powder coating the frame.

So, next jobs – we have some of the steering damper parts – some are on back order. We need to clean the paint out of the slider threads and spindle holes, and we need to repair the hole in the top shroud. Then we can put each leg together, and look at the springs, and pull them into the bottom yoke. I need to finish trial fitting the top yoke.

I’ll also need to make or buy the tools for pulling it all together!