pattern kickstart levers

[bonny]

i see kickstart levers/pedals on fleabay for around £30-£40 , has anyone used them ? are they rubbish from taiwan or india or are they worth a look ?
i need one and all the originals have no chrome left on them .

[tombeau]

Be very wary.
There was a batch in the early nineties that would brake in use. Somebody suffered a quite horrific injury from this.
Cheers,
Iain

[iansoady]

I fitted one to my Flash earlier in the year and have been very pleased with it. Fits very well, all radii nicely polished, plating deep & shiny and seems strong enough in the limited use so far. The cotter pin was a bit naff though.

Mine was £25 IIRC and from the chap calling himself jrpclassics - I've had other stuff from him as well and most is good although some (Tricon switch) not that well finished.

IMO you could easily pay twice as much and get exactly the same thing from elsewhere.

[bonny]

i did hear that some of the cheap ones were prone to break and leave a nice jagged edge to slice your ankle or leg on , i also heard of a chap buying a pattern kickstart for a triumph and when kicking the bike it snapped and the thing sailed through the air through a windscreen of a car. i don't need hastle like that at the mo , just wanna start me bike.

[Goldy]

I got an original one from an auto jumble for £10 and re chrome it. I had it plated with a batch of other stuff so poss cost me about £5 ie £15 complete and its original. As others have said they can be dangerous I read an article were one  sheared off and the broken edge stuck into the riders leg.

[chaterlea25]

Hi Bonny,
The cheaper ones offered are usually the A65 type with the pointy bit at the top
The proper A10 ones have a flat spring held by a 1/4 bolt which holds the folding bit in place when you are riding
I paid around £60 for a UK manufactured one
If you have an original one it is worth getting rechromed in my opinion

Cheers
JohnO R

[chaz]

can someone tell me what thread is in the pivot of the kickstart as I cant seem to get a good bolt in,

regarding the new made kick starts you wont know untill you have tried. Bill Brown did some for Maicos a couple of years ago.
the first one we had span on the splines, he replaced it and then on a good kick my eldest managed to twist the shank.
problem can see is one person/shop gets a batch made then other shops buy from them.

[BSA_54A10]

A shop which is real & can be identified will usually stock better parts than a cyber shop.
Why, well the cyber shop costs about $ 500 / year in fixed costs.
The bricks & mortar shop will cost around $ 50,000 / year in fixed cost.
Who has the most to loose by getting a bad name ?
So I can import a lot of absolute crap pop an ebay shop on line, sell a lot of stuff to myself and rite myself brilliant feed back, flog off all of the dangerous rubbish ( which dose not have to comply with the same safety standards as the retail shop) , fiddle around to slow down any one with a complaint till all of the shit is sold then dissapear .

Even worse a lot of cyber shops do not actually have any stock at all.
You order the parts, then they order your parts from a supplier. These are the generally the ones that "ship in 7 to 14 days".

Like Nigerian email scams, if it cheap enough then there will be some idiot willing give it a go.
The other thing to consider is where will you get your bits in 15 years time ?
Will the ebay shop still be there ?. Will the ebay shop stock the bits you need ?

[bsa-bill]

Your right Trevor but there are also high street shops that are well established big names that sell crap ( rhymes with Catalan).
There are decent traders on Ebay as well as the others, I look at where the goods are located and see if I can tie it to a trusted traders address
Good ones are "Whatsisname" - Lyford, Leigh classics are there too also Poly Palmer (although he can be a bit ---), JRP I've found good.
I'm not beyond getting it wrong though - from none of the above I bought a new rear brake cable before removing the clutch centre nut (stand on brake pedal method of removal), cable snapped - I still have a multicoloured right leg

[BSA_54A10]

Don't get me wrong Bill, I do buy stuff from ebay, but not because it is the cheapest part I can find.
Oddly enough blokes will happily name & degrade a retail trader but seem frightened to name an evil bay trader.
Many of the specialists that I buy from also sell on ebay.
However asking a question like are the nings nackers that sell for $ ???? on ebay good value is a bit stupid.
There could ( and are ) a dozen different clots flogging stuff off so which one is he asking about ?

I buy a fair bit of gear from Stradfast. The have a real shop and a cyber shop.
Their stuff is so good that they pay the extra 10¢ to put their name on the packaging and also on the photos that they use on evil bay.

Now a lot of evil bay traders do not have any stock, they post some one else's images ( no name on them ) then when you win the item they buy one, an oft not the same as the one in the photo from a cheapie maker to sell to you.
This is particularly true with the stuff from India where what is in the photo is a good quality part made in the west & what you get is some thing uncle Mesahd wipped up in his shed.

[brackenfel]

I've thought about a folding kickstart lever for a while now but haven't taken the plunge for fear of buying the latest foreign "bendy" one..

I use a mixture of Ebay and the bike jumbles.. The latter are only twice a year near me here (Shepton) and I use Ebay for odd bits I forget to buy or can't wait for..  Have used JRP, stuff seems fine (but the rear brake cable I bought was too long, but then again so was one a mate bought from a well known trader... ) JB Restorations seem fine too. Many jumblers also have an Ebay prescence.. The trouble is these days many of them, shops and virtual shops are all selling the same stuff due to a lack of manufacturers, it's just the price that varies...

For serious parts like bearings, bushes etc and when I have a large order I use C&D Autos, very highly recommended..

Which reminds me, I forgot the woodruff key I need for the gearbox mainshaft while I was at Shepton... b*gg*r.... 

Cheers,
Adrian

[chaz]

you have to use ebay nowadays, no two ways about it.
there are not enough shops locally or even customers locally to have specialist shops. likewise there is not enough demand for
British spares so its down to one shop, distributor to arrange a batch to be made, he gets feedback from his 'customers' the smaller dealers, to see what and howmany he needs.
recently I supplied a tacho cable to a customer for his triumph, he owned it from day one, Wassels supplied me with one, customer says its wrong, I contact Burton , TMD and others only to find their stock came from Wassels, have tried to convince him its the correct one as no other complaints have risen up.
In my town we had 3 bike shops now we dont have one or, only have 3 within 6 local towns. my point being ebay has its uses , dont knock it. if in doubt call seller, did this today on a brake part and promissed good conditon  and correct fitment.  some times you may get faulty parts but the supplier is at mercy of his supplier and quality may drop due to low quantity order.

[chaz]

Adrian, what size key? I was at Shepton but am local if can help.

[brackenfel]

Hi Chaz,
Am not sure on size - will try & measure.. It's for the gearbox output shaft to hold the ( 4 spring) clutch centre in place. I changed the mainshaft when I rebuilt the 'box. The keyway on the old one was a bit worn & the key fitted fine. It's too big for the less mangled replacement. I've tried filing to fit but can't get it right.. I'll get out to the garage later (am at work) and measure the internal dimensions of the keyway (won't very be accurate though, will do my best).. I , probably wrongly, imagined they'd be the same for any s/a mainshaft..

Thanks again, will get back to you later..

Adrian

[alanp]

The keyway in the shaft is usually about 0.205 wide but the keyway in the hub adaptor can vary. My current build has a stepped key for a 0.25 wide hub keyway. Make a nice tight fit sideways and top to bottom in both parts if you can to avoid the key tilting and chipping the side of the keyway if the taper doesn't match too well and needs some key help. Don't ask why I know!
Alan