TALES FROM THE SHED
One step forward, two steps back. Frank dances the Rebuild Tango, again…
It is like a dance, isn’t it? A chap gets all prepared, puts on special clothes, takes a deep breath and … heads to the shed. The Shed in my case is currently home – as you may recall – to an amusing number of projects, most exhilarating of which is this 1971 BSA – the one the pics hopefully nearby will reveal. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve started to inflict my skills and enthusiasm upon it, and in fact I’ve actually forgotten how long I’ve owned it!
However, sparked up by the understanding that if I don’t make progress at some point in the very near future I will join that sad legion of folk advertising a ‘project’ for sale, inaccurately claiming that only a few jobs are required to finish it. In fact in this case there are only a few jobs required: assemble all the parts and build up the bike to ensure that they all fit; make the thing run to ensure that it will in fact do that, then take it all apart again, get it refinished in an entertaining and wildly unoriginal way, put it all back together again, write a thrilling story about how well it rides and then sell it at once. Easy, huh? Flushed with the failure of my attempt to fit an entirely new carb and cables and things – because the inner cable is yards too long to work – I decided to fit my shiny and wonderful centrestand. I like my bikes to have one if it’s easy to fit them. Mostly because a bike on such a stand takes up less space when parked in a neat row with its chums, and because they make kicking easier for a feeble fellow like myself. And I had found a brand new old stock stand at a lower price than a new pattern item! And the spring and proper bolts are available from those fine folk at Draganfly! What could possibly go wrong?
A Minor Aside. Although I park bikes which only have a sidestand on top of a scissor jack when they’re on the bench, I’m never entirely trusting of such devices. And they do rock around somewhat when the spannering takes on extreme vigour, which can be the case whenever Thor, King of Hammers is deployed. Hence my enthusiasm for a centrestand. And in any case, the sidestand which came with the bike may have been a thing of wonder but it was also the wrong one.
Well, what could go wrong did go wrong. Have you looked at the pics yet to observe what the tiny fly in the delight actually was? No? OK, I’ll explain. The centrestand pivots off two lugs welded to the main frame. My frame has just the one lug. I know, I know, I should have checked for the presence of the correct number of lugs before a) I bought the bike, or b) I bought the centrestand, but…
So. Two choices. Do I pretend that I’ll get a new lug made up and fitted to the frame before I have it stripped back, blasted and coated again, or do I admit that I’m more likely to repaint the frame using Smoothrite thus avoiding a) effort and b) expense? You can probably work out the correct answer.
Moving slowly on – slowly because
this is a BSA and not a proper motorcycle like a Matchless – I decided that nice new centrestands rarely wear out while packed away, and in any case gazing with some depression at assorted parts lists suggests that BSA were very clever and that the same stand and fittings would fit our ever-so wonderful Triumph T100C, should the Better Third ever look away for long enough for me to slide it in while she’s not looking. If you know that this is impossible, please tell me before I ruin the Triumph by failing to fit the wrong stand…
So, new sidestands – new correct sidestands – are freely available from all manner of sources, they being common to lots of BSA and Triumph models, and I knew I had the lug because it came with a stand fitted (the wrong stand), so I acquired a stand. And the correct, rather special, bolt to fit it. And a spring. Sidestands are easy to fit, no?
Of course they are. Except that the rather special bolt was nowhere near a fit for the holes in the stand. A perfect fit for the hole in the frame lug, and a chap should always be grateful for small mercies, no? So it’s out with the files. Files? Plural? Yep, because the forked end of the stand – the end which fits snugly over the lug on the frame, doesn’t. Fit, that is. So I applied the flat file to the stand’s fork and a round file to the stand’s holes. This is all gentle stuff, a pleasant way to pass the time in winter. And the exercise keeps a chap warm and is good for him, so it’s a double dose of goodness.
Files applied, happiness. Apply stand and spring to the lug. Use the stand as a lever to stretch the spring before sliding in the rather special bolt. This sounds easy, and it often is. Except… everything gets in the way of the geometry. Things like the footrest, the brake pedal. The primary chaincase. The scissor jack. O for a centrestand…
After a few bleeding knuckles and a few more choice obscenities – creative bad language always helps in these complex technical situations – I understood that I was witness to A Sign. Because? The clutch.
If you have a magic memory, you may recall that I’d fitted a nice new clutch lever to the nice new handlebar and fitted the clutch cable which came with the bike to that lever.
Hurrah! Less Hurrah! was the discovery that the clutch didn’t de-clutch, which it should, as you may already know. How could this be?
The Sign? The restricted access to fit the sidestand would be considerably eased by removing the footrest, the brake pedal and the primary chaincase cover! Marvellous. I could almost pretend I’d planned that. In fact … I will pretend I planned it. What a genius.
Have you ever removed a BSA (or presumably an oily frame Triumph) left side footrest? Who designed that? Easy to fit the footrest with the engine out, which is presumably what the guys did on the assembly track, but, blimey it’s slow work with a spanner… But I got there. Diligence is its own reward, always. Dropped the brake pedal out of the way and made the unsurprising discovery that the chaincase screws had been done up by a gorilla. At first I thought that this was a Small Heathen gorilla … but there are two sorts of screws in there: two capheads in among the crossheads. BSA did not do that, which means that the chaincase has been apart before.
Aha. I have wondered for a while why some previous owner had decided to break the bike for spares rather than ride it. In the same way that there’s always a genuine reason for sale, there is always a genuine reason to dismantle a motorcycle. Only one of those reasons involves it being hideous to ride. Another of those reasons is that it has a catastrophic fault which cannot be fixed for less than the value of the entire bike. But what can go so wrong inside the primary case that scrapping the bike was the only answer?
Of course the primary cover was stuck firm. Of course the gentle attentions of Thor,
King of Hammers encouraged the cover to come away … which it did. Take a look at the pics; observe the remarkable slackness of the primary chain. That is some achievement, and a small education. I’ve stripped an awful lot of primary drives down over the years but have never seen a triplex chain in such an appallingly stretched state. There’s also no oil … on anything. The clutch screws have been tightened far too far, and the alternator stator appears to have been baked. Interesting.
Time to dig out that nifty little tool for removing the clutch nuts. Such is the infinitely efficient way of things in The Shed, I find it exactly where it was supposed to be, and after a mere two days of trying to remember where I’d put it. Apply tool to nut. No movement possible. Apply tool to the other two nuts. Same result. Predictable, but slightly irritating.
Apply Thor, King of Hammers to a punch and apply the punch to the nut. That’ll fix it. Offer up a small prayer that the nuts are steel, not soft brass or bronze, and belt it again, this time with feeling. The nut turns. Hurrah. Belt it again and the nut turns again. Not much, but we are making progress. After an entire revolution of the first nut and a manly application of penetrating oil the nut is sufficiently free to allow the use of the nifty little tool. It works fine, and nut, spring and cup come out just like they should. Repeat on the next nut. Same result. Although it is mid-January and almost freezing outside, I’m still super toasty with the upper body protection of just a T-shirt. Just think how the planet would be saved if everyone vented their energies belting nuts with hammers instead of sitting around in overheated rooms sweating over Facebook…
The last nut, then. Apply the glory of Thor, King of Hammers. The nut turns. The nut then springs back to its original position. Repeat. Same result. Scratch head. Apply mightier force. The slots in the nut grind steadily away. The nut is unmoved. I belt it with the hammer and it turns. Then its spring returns it. Again and again. Bafflement, and time for tea.
Meanwhile, to avoid the inevitable headscratching leaving me entirely without hair and fingernails, I consult the mighty wisdom of the RC Facebook group, the true fount of all knowledge. I post a pic and ask for suggestions. There are many, ranging from the sublime to the other thing. Well, I did ask. Eat tea. Drink Gentleman Jack, contemplate the television.
The following morning I consult the group again, prior to declaring victory and giving the Beezer to the scrapman. And there, among sundry suggestions involving a deep pit, welding and magically destructive hand tools, is a suggestion from Lawrence Howes, long-time reader and occasional contributor. And plainly … a genius.
Why not, suggests Lawrence, apply the might of Thor, King of Hammers to the cup the spring sits in rather than to the nut itself? If the cup turns, it will take the spring and nut with it, surely. I think about this. The spring’s coil-bound tension is what returns the nut to its original – and unhelpful – position. The base of the cup usually has a small step to prevent the spring rotating, and the nut is sometimes similar, the idea being that this prevents the nut coming undone in use and the clutch slipping. So turning the nut in this case simply turns it against the spring, which unwinds and returns it to where it was. I’m being deliberately vague here because the bits are in The Shed and I’m not. I’m sitting at a desk, typing. But it sounds entirely sensible, which is probably why I’ve never done it before. At least … I don’t remember doing it before.
Repair to The Shed. Apply vigour and violence to the little indent on the cup which engages with a small slot on the pressure plate to prevent the cup’s rotation. It refuses to budge. Raise eyes to heaven, invoke
sundry deities and belt the thing really hard. The cup rotates, as does the recalcitrant nut. Repeat. This takes ages but is strangely therapeutic. The nut slowly undoes to the point at which I can grip it with some pliers and remove it. Lawrence, take a bow.
Time to take stock and contemplate the rest of the clutch. It looks fine. However, even with the springs and pressure plate removed it’s still tight enough to allow me to kick over the engine. This, gentle reader, should not be so. But it is. Remove the plates. They look OK. The steel plates look like new, with no buckling or damage to the tangs which grip the centre, and they come out easily enough, although they require a little persuasion to come apart. Even the friction plates look OK, although I don’t know how thick they should actually be, so can’t see how worn they are.
Looking good. Until I reach the last pair of plates – I think it’s a pair; it’s not easy to see. The last plain plate appears to have dropped behind the splines of the centre. And there appears to be another friction plate behind it. How can this happen? That’s actually a genuine question; it’s several decades since I last stripped out an A65 clutch (I think!).
While awaiting enlightenment from the RC Facebook experts, I’ll dig through my box of assorted pullers and extractors to see if I have one to fit the clutch, and I’ll pretend that the alternator stator is salvageable. I’ve already priced up a replacement chain and plates and springs and cups and…
This has all been something of a surprise. What I’d intended to write about here this time was a comparison between the A65 and the plunger A10 featured elsewhere in the magazine, inspired by gazing at engine drawings of the driveside crankcase halves of the two engines. They’re far more similar than you might expect. However, I have run out of space, so you’ve been saved.
Maybe later…