In the workshop
Those of a certain age will be humming Dave Clarke Five’s song, younger people will just think “what?!?” There’s been a period of inactivity for reasons beyond my control.
The IT has moved to another workshop for more technical stuff to be done, offering a chance to look at other bikes in the stable.
There is no shame in admitting a task is beyond you for whatever reason. These reasons are as varied as lacking in skill, lacking in equipment or lacking in time. For some reason a bunch of these reasons have all banded together and caused a halt in every project I have. This bottleneck has arrived because I neither have the equipment nor the skills needed to weld either steel or aluminium alloy. I could learn these skills but it would require an investment of time and funds which are just not available to me at the moment.
It used to be possible for enthusiastic restorers to take an evening class in necessary skills and actually achieve a level of competency to advance a restoration. Additionally these evening classes, generally at a local tech college, would have access to way more equipment than would be possible for the average enthusiast to justify. Once the pandemic stops interfering in our lives I don't doubt such classes will start again unless some other factor prevents it. The IT has joined a queue of bikes at Audit CNC Solutions and I'm assured it is nearing the front of the queue. It needs a tweak to the sidestand bracket so the sidestand can fold out of the way instead of wafting about in the breeze; once this is done the new bits from A Yamaha Bits Place can be fitted and there will be a chance to at last see if this thing will make a noise. There are lots of other bits and pieces which have arrived from all parts of the world except Japan. These bits follow the apparently typical Yamaha trait of giving each bit its own part number and this can be a little confusing and tedious as it's not actually possible to say “I'll have one of your genuine clutch levers my good chap and here is my plastic payment device to purchase it.” Well it is possible to say it but you may receive a blank look coz the lad is Dutch. Also you may just receive the clutch lever rather than the assembly. I fell foul of this Yamaha trait in the late Eighties when I was prepping my Mono Yamaha for the SSDT. Yamaha had some very nice levers, very light, well made and easily fitted – they having a two-part clamp which meant the left grip didn't have to come off to change the lever. Ordering a lever to clamp to the bars as a spare, pre-disc brake days it would do either side, along came the package and in it was just the lever – I'd been expecting the whole assembly. I rang the parts place and asked where the rest of it was: “You only asked for the lever.” No point in arguing as the reply was correct. I learned, a few moments into the conversation, the lever blade I'd got was only one bit of the complete assembly, the others being upper and lower holder, blade, washers and pivots in all, eight separate bits to
make up the lever assembly, all with their own part numbers.
I ordered the bits to mount the exhaust pipe properly as the original rubber antivibration mounts were perished (bike is 40 years old, to be expected) and they arrived at a list of 14 bits. In some ways such a system is good, it means if only one bit is not up to scratch then only one bit has to be ordered, it also means double, triple and quadruple checking of the list – Santa Claus only checked his twice – then having another look to make sure nothing has been forgotten. I suppose some bits could have come from miscellaneous spares such as fasteners and washers if I'd forgotten such things but the bike is wanted to be right and Yamaha have this weird finish on their bolts, it is almost black but not quite, there's a greenish tinge in it and if one bolt is changed then they all have to change...
Unlike the British industry, when spares departments were staffed by old lads in brown store-coats and they tended to order 40 right-hand widgets from the manufacturer because they always ordered 40 right-hand widgets and ended up with a surplus of right-hand widgets. This meant when the restoration scene kicked off there were loads of right-hand widgets on autojumble stalls… pity, we needed left-hand widgets. The Japanese industry has a more regimented system involving computers and something called ‘just in time' stock control which cleverer people than me will know all about but from what I can gather involves knowing how many bikes of a model are being made, what wears out, what can be damaged in an accident and so forth. It keeps a tighter control on stock levels at dealers but means things are not always freely available.
The other side of this is bigger items such as the genuine exhaust system for an IT are not available new but repair sections are, just not from A Yamaha Spares Place. Given the location of the exhaust the vulnerable bit is the front 15% and the rest is unlikely to suffer much damage, beyond going rusty perhaps. This is where Musket Mufflers comes in; they have a thriving business producing repair sections for all sorts of exhausts, not just motorcycle ones. We contacted them, yes, they had an IT 465 repair section and would happily ship it to the UK from… New Zealand! What arrived is a finelooking bit which will weld on to one of our exhaust pipes and will be a thing of beauty. It's likely we'll keep this exhaust for show and patch the other one to use if I fancy doing an enduro. All of this is in the not-too-distant future as I'm assured the bracket will be welded soon and once it is, and the side stand flips back up to where it should, then progress can be made on other bits of the bike.
TRIUMPH TALES
While welding and suchlike is unlikely to feature in my own workshop there are a few bits of machinery I've collected over the years I've been involved in working on my own motorcycles. A drill press was the first acquisition and given the nature of family around me and the area I'm from this drill press wasn't new but was quite a robust and probably a professional or college thing. Unfortunately I have no idea what make it is or what the specification may be. Why? It was rescued by a parent for whom the concept of leaving the maker's ID labels on was totally alien along with modern on/off switches, guards and other useful safety devices as he refurbished it with an old washing machine motor, bit of tin and a toggle switch – all three long gone – and the drill awaits restoration itself when I have a free moment. What I do know is the accuracy of drilled holes improved no end with such a machine. It was superseded by a small bench-mounted drill which had gone above and beyond the call of duty in the years I've had it.
A later, much later, addition to the kit was a small lathe, a Hobbymat, which may not be the most exciting lathe in the world but is almost perfect for me and may well be up to the task of accurately machining a nut to go on the end of an exhaust cam to carry the trigger for an electronic ignition… it may be, but I'm probably not, which is why the engine is in the queue at Audit CNC solutions Ltd awaiting accurate machining… also there are the bits of oil tank awaiting welding which means attention can go to other bits hitherto neglected.
Assembling a pile of bits collected over a number of years and not always from the same manufacturer is always going to be interesting. The big bits do often go together relatively easily and
slotting alternative non-unit engines into, say, a BSA A7/A10 frame requires making up engine plates from alloy to sit the units properly. Same with gearboxes and many an Mxer has been built from a Triumph twin engine, with an AMC gearbox and BSA primary drive sitting in an all-welded BSA single or twin frame as an example. The point being it isn't an alien concept and the only difference is in the detail; talented people such as Don and Derek Rickman made stunning machines, others less so. So, the big bits go together quite easily, as ever though it is the myriad of smaller details where the bit from make ‘A' joins components from make ‘B' so parts from make ‘C' can line up and so on. I know I wouldn't be nearly as clever were I to try this and to be honest it has been difficult enough to assemble bits from the same maker and broadly speaking the same year. One bit which has caused some head scratching has been the steering stops; you know, the bits which prevent the forks from turning too far and denting the petrol tank. On some bikes a simple bit of bar welded to the frame does the job, on others an Allen bolt is screwed into a tapped hole. Some unit Triumphs use an extended nut on the clamp bolt on the bottom yoke which butts against the frame tube as the fork is turned. I've never been a big fan of this method, the nuts bend too easily for me and as I'm using BSA yokes – because I want 13⁄8in diameter stanchions rather than Triumph's 11⁄4in ones and the Triumph
yokes don't have enough meat on them to bore out – there are other options. The Allen bolt stop idea as used on my B40 was discarded as there's not a hole in the headstock casting to take it. Almost since the outset this problem has been niggling away, a few ideas came and went, including one which might be revisited eventually.
When Triumph reworked their Adventurer model into something a bit more ISDT suitable the work included adding Betor forks to the Triumph frame. Their solution to the steering stop problem was elegantly simple and possible because of the way Betor yokes are made. An alloy plate, shaped to form a stop, was bolted to the yoke and the lugs butt up against the frame. With glee and pencil and paper I sketched out a similar idea and the two brackets needed to hold it in place, plus the hole for the front bolt. Then the clamp bolt holes needed drilling out as on BSAS they are tapped… and so on. All of a sudden the elegant simplicity was replaced by something incredibly complicated. Back to the sketch pad…
There is a lug cast into the headstock of the frame; it's for the Triumph steering damper anchor plate to bolt on to. A 10mm bolt slides through this lug, a couple of pieces of alloy plate shaped to fit and held in place by the bolt seem to have done the job. There was nothing fancy about making the bits, a file and drill were all I used, there was some thought perhaps the lug might break but if I got into such a tank-slapper, then a broken lug would be way down the list of things to worry about. All in all though I rather wish I'd done this a while ago as the nice throttle cable I made slipped down under the frame stay and the bottom yoke nipped it and crushed the outer wire so a new cable will be needed.
Thinking more about the yokes, I'm not 100% convinced they look right and may well investigate further. Had there been autojumbles I'd likely have picked up a C15/B40 set which are slimmer than the B25 type I did have in a box under the bench – I think they came with the B40 years ago – though another option is to have a new bottom yoke made which matches the Triumph competition top yoke, or ‘lug' as Triumph described them. Both ideas have a lot of merit and which one I go for is as yet undecided… I do want to keep the appearance of the bike as Sixties yet I want it to work too.
Meanwhile as I ponder such things there's the clutch…three-spring, fourspring, with the baskets having a number of depths too. What I do know is the whole primary drive is quite heavy and works team members such as Roy Peplow had whole drives made from as much alloy as possible…