The Carbs have come up lovely with a little help from some Gunk, Muck off a stiff brush determination and some elbow grease.
Before:
After:
Back to the safety of the Garage I decided to start on the engine, as its low mileage I hadn't intended to strip it right down just check it and give it a good clean up but now I think it may let the rest down so I am contemplating a full strip and clean any thing to keep me away from cleaning spokes!
Engine Before:
Very dinky and Dirty.
Heads off all looking good with hardly any carbon build up, most of the cylinder
head studs pulled out due to rusty nuts. Barrels took a little more gentle
persuasion, Scary but effective. All looking pretty good now just have to dive
in with the spanners and strip it.....to be continued.
One of the cylinder heads had suffered a knock and bent some fins, I sent it away to be straightened and this is the result.
Before:
After:
The final bit of progress to mention has
been with the engine, there have been a lot of decisions to make along the way
with this project but the most difficult so far has been with the engine,
obviously the budget has to be taken in to account with this one but my gut
feeling all along has been that the engine is in good order, even though I have
not heard it running. From what I have seen from the insides and the oil that
came out, its just a feeling I have got, so I have made the decision not to
strip it fully but to leave well alone. Some may say this is risky and yes I
would agree but it also adds a bit of excitement to the first fire up and if it
does backfire on me (no pun intended) i will take the knock on the chin and put
it right. If I do strip it down now its a new crank, seals. etc. etc, which all
adds up so let's live dangerously on this one and wish me luck.
Started to give it a little clean up anyway to help it on its way
Engine After:
Need to sort out a gasket set now and I
can continue with the engine rebuild.
But in the meantime the carb rubbers and the centre stand have been put in
place.
Today we have Pistons......... Barrels.......
Installation:
And heads......
Well sometimes not every thing goes to
plan
.......and this week we had a few hickups,........someone (not me) had
previously tried to remove the points cover housing screws using a blunt
screwdriver as a chisel, this had cracked the housing around the screw hole and
needed to be repaired. A welded repair was carried out and all was good until a
couple of days ago when i removed the cover and a piece of the Stator casing
around the same hole fell off!!.....Had to remove the stator assy from the
casing in order to get the casing repaired...now back to the welders.
Fitted a side casing to see how she
looks. Which raises a question of how shiny shall the side casings be? I usually
enjoy polishing the casings up but they were never that shiny originally. Don't
want it to look over polished really so maybe a soft sheen would be about right?
Still playing around with them. The Aluminum used isn't the best quality and
there are still corrosion type imperfections in the castings, using polish then
scotchbrite to dull down the shine. I'll just be happy with it then take it out
in daylight and change my mind!!
Cracking on with the engine work, Oil
lines, pump and carb mountings fitted now,
checking all the oilways are clear as we go, especially the little one on the
banjo bolts.
Then its on with the Carbs and I'm one
float bowl screw short!!! Doh
Kickstart lever and plugs also fitted.
Other jobs done included fitting and setting up the throttle cables nice and
fiddly and went smoothly just a few issues sorting the routing out. More good
news was that I managed to salvage the original choke cable with a bit of
cleaning and trimming, that too was fitted and adjusted. Made me realize there
is a lot of cables in a small place on the triples, still got to fit the clutch
cable in amongst that lot.
Oh And the final hickup is that the oil
tank to oil pump hose has shrunk and is now too short
oh well never mind............................
