What have you done with your bike/s today?

[Colsbeeza]

Reassembled the carbs and fitted to the Lilac. I need a rest from the Beeza, so will tackle that next week. I have the T/S cover off and the Autoadvance is fine.
Col

[BagONails]

While the old girl is all in pieces and I'm waiting for parts, have been doing a few tidying up jobs including finding the flexible feed pipe between the oil tank and the rocker shaft banjo to be split. I thought the general oily film over everything around the oil tank connections had been getting a bit worse...The issue seems to be made worse by the outlet pipe feeding oil from the return is about 3/16" O/dia and the banjo inlet is 1/4" so the pipe is being oversqueezed on the smaller one. Not sure if this is correct but pretty sure this had something to do with the failure. Either way a new bit of pipe is required.

On the same subject I decided to fit Dowty washers to the banjo connection when it all goes back together and the rocker box needed a bit of a tidy up beforehand. Who knows what evils have befallen this part over the last 60 years or so but the sealing surfaces were like a ploughed field.  I set the box up on an angle plate in the mill and gave the old indexing boring head a bit of exercise.  These really are a nice bit of kit enabling not only very accurate parallel holes to be bored but this one also has the ability to outfeed so you can cut a face across the top of a hole (like a counter bore) or with the right tool you can create internal features in the bore such as a circlip groove.  For this job I needed to slightly increase the diameter of the sealing area to let the washer sit down fully on the face and also clean up the face to improve sealing etc. In all it only needed about 0.4 off the surface to clean up each side. Looks a bit better now. (see pics)

Next job, make a vibration damping head steady as per John CL's excellent design, thanks John.

[chaterlea25]

Hi BON
Please post pictures of your version of my head steady?
I cannot imagine having to work on bikes without having a lathe and milling machine, welding gear and so on .
I have a boring and facing head that came in a lined hardwood case with all its accessories thatt i won on Ebay for £80 i think, probably 20 years ago now.
If I had to go and buy every bit and piece that's needed to rebuild a bike it would "A" cost a mint, "B" drive me demented with brexit delays / customs charges and probably dissatisfied with the quality of the repro parts anyway ..

John

[Worty]

John, I don't have a lathe, milling machine or welder, and wouldn't be able to operate any of them well.  Having said that, that is why I'm thankful for chaps like you who have the skills to do the job for me (like MWAS).

[Joolstacho]

At one time I considered making a head-steady similar to the excellent 'sprung' Norton Commando one.

[limeyrob]

Put Belleville washers under the bolts?  Could work as its would combine friction with a bit of flex.

[BagONails]

Hi BON
Please post pictures of your version of my head steady?
I cannot imagine having to work on bikes without having a lathe and milling machine, welding gear and so on .
I have a boring and facing head that came in a lined hardwood case with all its accessories thatt i won on Ebay for £80 i think, probably 20 years ago now.
If I had to go and buy every bit and piece that's needed to rebuild a bike it would "A" cost a mint, "B" drive me demented with brexit delays / customs charges and probably dissatisfied with the quality of the repro parts anyway ..

John

Ah good things come in wooden boxes! Not much made today in China does though...This came in a plastic box but at least it's Taiwanese and pretty good quality.

Like most of us I guess, slowly accumulating useful things only to have them sold for peanuts or given away when we've gone!  I've been fortunate to be in and around manufacturing all my working life so opportunities have arisen as they say but one of my best wins was from a neighbour a few years ago who's father had been a toolmaker and had a huge collection of various engineering tools and cutters sitting in his shed going rusty. He'd been retired for 20 years and hadn't touched any of it since. I offered a reasonable amount but they wouldn't let me pay for any of it so I got the lot for a carton of beer.   I bought the mill from a business who had it sitting in the corner untouched for many years, they were asking about the right money but during negotiations he started pulling out all the associated tooling and clearly didn't know what half of it was for: parallels, vice, angle plate, dividing head, a big set of collets, and this boring head, that sealed the deal for me as to buy the tooling separately would have been half the cost of the machine.

So now I'm retired its any excuse to get the toys out and make some swarf, it all adds enjoyment to the hobby for me! 

As regards the steady, I found your post, John, just the other day and I reckon you've got it about right, should resist low frequency big amplitude stuff while taking the sting out of the high frequency movement to some degree, either way I don't envisage it doing any harm. I will certainly show my one when its done ...the pressure's on now! 

[BagONails]

Put Belleville washers under the bolts?  Could work as its would combine friction with a bit of flex.

The trouble with this I would think is the belleville washers are effectively springs. If you do the nuts and bolts up tight they must compress completely flat to achieve a good joint which defeats the object really. If you only squeezed them then they would allow some movement but I think things would loosen, you'd have movement, rusting, wear etc. You could get creative with extra washers, distance tubes to limit compression etc. but it all starts getting a bit cumbersome I think.  By all means have a go though Rob.
 

[muskrat]

G'day Fellas.
To day I serviced the old girl. First one since rebuild. Tappets were not far (0.001") out but re-torqued the barrels and r/box so reset them. Three hole oil change. Plugs looked great, carb didn't need touching, timing spot on. All good after her flogging the other day. Mate on a HD had a hard time keeping up and said not a whiff of smoke.
Jeez I live the old girl.
Cheers

[limeyrob]

Re head steady - I'm always slightly puzzled about what a head steady does on an A10.  Its only stiff in a fore and aft direction. Vertically its really just a hinged link and transverse its a bendy link.  I've never known one crack so there can't be a huge vibration problem (unlike say, oil tank mounts).  The Commando is isolastic so its a whole different game.
On my OIF A65 I had a big problem with fuel tanks cracking. They cracked at the top without the under tank stay and at the bottom with one. What fixed it was very stiff rubber bushes between the tank and the strap.  That's why I'm thinking Belleville washers at the frame connection could be just the right amount of flex.
My question would be "what is the problem?"  Do we collectively think the head steady reduces vibration?
My concern with the A10 set up is that the head steady is on the frame at one end and the rocker box at the other so the forces go though the rocker box / head joint by friction as there are no dowels.  This must work as the gaskets are not being worn away but it feels wrong.

[Colsbeeza]

You may remember me complaining about the LHS exhaust being purple recently on the Flash. So a few checks required. The recently overhauled magneto had a new cam and new points with fibre follower about 500 miles ago. Points gap was only about 9 thou. Since I had the timing at 31.5 Deg BTDC, the closed gap would have reduced it to about 28 Deg BTDC. This only after about 500 miles, so fairly quick wear on the fibre follower/rider/whatchamaycallit. The plugs were a little black and sooty, with the left side slightly drier. My best guess is that the reduced points gap retarded the timing too much and this was the cause of purple exhaust on the Left side. I reset the gap to a loose 12 thou, and the timing measured 31.5 Deg BTDC again, so nothing else had slipped. Now to relube the rear chain and fix the starter solenoid.
Col

[berger]

Rob many years ago before my mate sold me betsy he came to my house on her and she didn't have a head steady, he was moaning about how the ride was and you could see the engine shaking so he got a head steady. take your head steady off and ride it for a few hours and see how it rides and maybe what it loosens.

[BagONails]

I think without the head steady connected the other engine mounting points would be having a much tougher time. Not just in reacting the fore and aft vibrations but also resisting the torque as the engine cases try to rotate in the opposite direction to the crankshaft. The steady is a lot further away from the crank centre than the other mounts and as such sees reduced loads so it does not surprise me that the original parts are quite lightly built, it really doesn't need to be all that beefy to do its job and there aren't a lot of side to side forces to worry about either.

[limeyrob]

Good point about the torque and I think you may have nailed it.  Its the right design for torque and I can see the cases rubbing in the plates without it.  I certainly would go without it but that's not the same as being sure why its there.  But I like the torque idea so its coffee time!

[Swarfcut]

 My take on the theory and practice of eliminating vibration is that the moving parts should be a much smaller mass in comparison to the rest of the machine. So by adding a steady, in effect you take full advantage of the top frame tube etc and all the other bits to make the frame and crankcases a  larger single entity compared to the crank, pistons etc. Anything that dampens out the fore 'n' aft movement of the cylinder barrel has got to be of benefit, and a rubber bush mod is fine by me.

 Swarfy.