Meteor Minor swing arm mod

And here is the machining to allow the 50 year-old swing arm to take a two year-old spindle and stub axle. Steve Baker also ensured the axle, when fully pushed forward, is exactly parallel with the swing arm pivot. A nice touch. Q Prep Engineering Services: 01832 270027, info@qpepr.co.uk

Morini 500 Camel wiring diagram

And here, just for a laugh to see whether anyone downloads it, is a wiring diagram for Hugo Wilson's Camel. The original is in three sections, according to dotty Morini practice. This one cuts out all that superfluous nonsense and adds Benjy Straw's cunning 12V battery to ensure good lighting at low rpm. I also discovered an error in the original diagram: a spurious connection at the fuse box between the green-and-yellow and white wires. That blew a few fuses until I figured it out.

If that isn't the most obscure motorcycle wiring diagram on earth, I'd like to know what is.

Indian Enfield forks and wheels, Redditch twin frame

After a good stripdown and clean, I had a look at what was there. The answer was: not much. John's last ride on the bike, just before Christmas 1967, had ended in a low speed spill, after which he seemed to have stripped most of the road stuff off. Bearing in mind the idea is to improve the chassis, that left just three useful items: the engine, frame and fuel tank.
I eBayed almost everything else in an attempt to raise enough dosh to buy the new parts: 18in wheels, more modern forks and shocks, light aluminium mudguards, slightly more rearset footrests (Hitchcock's do a Bullet kit) and so on.
Then, amazingly, my friend Gary Inman rang asking if I could rewire his Project Enfield Street Tracker project, due on the front cover of the next issue of Sideburn magazine http://www.sideburnmag.blogspot.com/. His offer: if I built him a custom loom he'd give me everything left over from the project. I almost ripped his arm off. The haul included two 500 Bullet wheels from a 2009 EFI model, some forks, a seat, a speedo, some switchgear, and various smaller parts.
The front end bolted straight in.
The back needed a little bit of machining at the excellent Qprep of Oundle, Northamptonshire.

Royal Enfield Meteor Minor 500 twin

Here's the new project: it belonged to my old friend John Robinson, technical editor of Performance Bikes. I plan to restore it along the lines John would have chosen: better suspension, brakes and ground clearance, more comfortable riding position.
Early days, but it should turn out to be a handsome beast. Styling, if I can afford it, will resemble a Series 2 US export Interceptor – small tank, chrome and upswept pipes.

BSA A50/A65 wiring diagram

I've cleaned up the old wiring diagram which I first drew in 2009, and which has since been downloaded 44 times by people in India, Australia, Canada, the US and elsewhere. This new version is easier to follow. It shows a bike with a non-standard ignition switch, Boyer Bransden electronic ignition and a 12V conversion with Zener diode. Not how I'd do it now, but it worked OK.

There's a good quality hi res version free to download here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?zbomb9hlhuow0

What goes wrong with NX650's Keihin carb?

1000 miles later nothing has broken, fallen off or worn out. Considering how worried I was when I first saw the inside of the engine, that's a decent result. The one nuisance is a tendency to stall approaching junctions, even though the bike ticks over and pulls away perfectly well.
Another owner, Simon Relph, says they all do that, and the best cure is a new carb from an XR600. I've also talked to the previous three owners and they all say the pre-rebuild bike stalled like that for years. The question is, why?
Assuming the ignition and valve clearances are fine, and taking Simon's observation that a new carb fixes it, I decided that the carb must still have some problem despite professional cleaning. Replacement isn't cheap, and the carb isn't worn, so it must be possible to put whatever is wrong right. Maybe the design makes some of the small bleed drillings incredibly prone to gumming up?
I stripped the carb down and spent a long time with carb cleaner and compressed air, trying to ensure the four pilot drillings were clear. These are the holes which the pilot adjustment screw covers or uncovers as you screw it in and out. I concentrated on these bits because when I tried to set the carb up originally after the rebuild this screw made virtually no difference.
Carb reassembled and fitted, fire it up – still no good.
I have found some extremely small drills. They may come in handy.

NX650 restored

After a month and 500 miles of debugging the bike is pretty sorted. The rear master cylinder turned out to have a blocked return port. It was the one thing on the entire bike I didn't dismantle and clean, and the heat from the dragging pads cost me a new rear disc.

I replaced the cracked Bridgestones with new Dunlop Trailmax. Like other Dunlops they feel very stable, and glutinous as you lean over. They're good in the wet, and grippy enough in the dry for this kind of bike. If the Dommie is allowed onto Classic Bike's end of season Burn-Up at Rockingham circuit I reckon they'll be up to it.

I'd originally put Putoline 10W oil in the forks, which was too harsh. Honda recommend ATF which turns out to be quite light – equivalent to something like 2.5W Putoline. Since changing to that oil the front end is comfortable, though I've forgotten how crude these old damper rod forks were.

There are two problems left: first, the rear caliper bolts and bushes are worn, giving lots of lost motion at the pedal and a vague rear brake. I might need a new caliper, though it easily passes an MOT.

Second, the engine stalls round town and doesn't respond to Honda's recommended pilot screw adjustments. It could be that some fresh dirt got in there after the clean-up, so I'll check the pilot galleries. Otherwise the motor feels like new. Valve clearances are stable and I've revved it to 6000rpm without trouble now.

It's great to have breathed new life into a bike that belonged in a skip, and Fiona loves buzzing around the local lanes on it too.

Finished

It took a few days to sort out the odds and ends that inevitably arise: frayed carb cable, sticking brake pistons, carb setup and that kind of thing. So far the bike's not gone over 4500rpm out of consideration for the new rings. But it feels absolutely lovely, and handles a treat. So far the cracked head hasn't made its presence felt. Long may it continue. I used Castrol Power 1 after interviewing Matt Symonds, head of Castrol's bike development programme last year at Pangbourne. I am convinced they make some of the best oil available.

Things that have worked:

The rebuilt oe shock (Falcon Engineering)
Carb refurb (JRS of Swansea)
The pattern gasket set (no oil leaks)
The 1989 camshaft and new rockers/followers/sub followers
Five Wheel Steel paint on forks, pillion hangers and swing arm etc
Simoniz tough black paint on footrests and sidestand

Things that haven't:
Hycote high temperature black exhaust paint
The pattern Honda grips (they smell of creosote)

I'll report back in 1000 miles to say whether the engine is still OK.

NX650 top end rebuild

As the bike was burning oil I replaced the valve guide oil seals with genuine Honda ones. The pattern gasket set (from Wemoto) is fine in every other respect but Mark White at M&M Motorcycles in Essendine warned me not to risk pattern seals in such an important location. He should know.

A simple gap check showed the rings were beyond their service limits. Dave Silver supplied some genuine new ones, while the excellent Q Prep, a great engineering shop in Oundle run by bike enthusiasts, measured the piston, found it to be OK, and honed the bore for the new rings for £20. I cleaned up the piston and cylinder head with 00 wire wool, water and sieved wood ash.

The 1989 NX650 camshaft had been a risk. Sure enough it was slightly different from the 1990 dead one. But in a good way: the peg that secures the decompressor cam was slightly longer. Thirty seconds with a grinder sorted that. Pulling the decompressor parts off the old cam took a bit of heat and Rupe Farnsworth's three legged puller, but they went onto the new cam just fine.

Phil Joy had warned me to make sure the central journal didn't touch the camshaft, so Farnsworth scraped the journal carefully, removing any potential debris. The grey gloop on the lobes is moly grease, recommended by Honda.

NX650 bottom end rebuild

The only reason the cases had to come apart was the worn-out splines on the gearshift shaft. The Dominator is actually pretty simple to strip and reassemble if you have the factory manual. You don't need any special tools beyond a clutch centre holder, a very long 5mm Allen key which you can hook up to a torque wrench (for the engine casings), and a universal flywheel puller. A handy substitute for the Honda cam chain tensioner holder tool is a small punch, or even a ground-down nail would do.

NX650 cylinder head

The only way out of the morass of worn parts is to spend money.

Repair options first: Phil Joy at Joy Engineering, Ware, no longer repairs cylinder heads as he did for many years. He suggested one person who might do the job, but then pointed out the scored central journal is not critical. That reminded me of a stripdown Honda UK did of a 1989 Dominator used by Performance Bikes. Nine months from new the central journal was scored, but it went as well as ever and there was no other engine damage.

This gave me hope, but we still had a cylinder head crack to deal with. I soon gave up looking for a second hand head. They aren't available, for obvious reasons, and used engines on eBay or from breakers sell around the £650 mark. Not a risk worth taking. They could have cracked heads too. New heads are £800-£1000 as far as I can tell.

The Cylinder Head Shop told me they could pop out the valve seats, grind the crack out, fill it with weld, remachine and then refit the seats for about £350. As a bonus, they would thicken the plug area to take a long reach plug. I sent it off. Six weeks and many calls later they hadn't started the job, so I got it sent back. They apologised and offered to get it done pronto, but I had lost all faith. The highly respected SRM Engineering reckoned a repair was not worth doing. Can you see daylight through the crack? No. Was it running OK when you got it? Yes. Well, you could always try putting it together and running it as is, they suggested.

I got a third opinion from Ducati bevel expert Tony Brancato, who I went to see on a job for Bike. Tony said he could repair it, but it would never be as good as a new. That settled it. I decided to replace the worn cam parts and re-use the old head. The cracks happen, apparently, due to overheating. I will make sure this engine never runs low on oil again.

Dave Silver Spares quoted £203 for a new camshaft. I found a cam billed on eBay (usa-motorcycles-inc) as an XR650/89 Dominator fitment in the USA for about £75 and went for that. Dave Silver supplied two followers and two sub-rockers for another £70 or so.

What goes wrong with 650 Honda singles

After 30,000 miles and a reported running-out-of-oil incident at some point the bottom end, piston and gearbox seem fine. The rest is a bit of a mess:
– knackered gearshift splines
– worn clutch shock absorber springs
– scored central cam journal in the head
– severe wear on two cam lobes and followers
– coked-up exhaust ports (it was burning oil)
– suspected worn rings (yet to be measured)
– a crack in the cylinder head.
I will explain how I propose to solve these problems, and what it costs, in future posts. For now here are the pics. And clearly I was robbed when I bought the bike for £31.

Carb refurb

Carbs, I have discovered, are often the first thing to wear out on an old engine. Slides, needles and main jets are all affected by the gas shuttling back and forth on tickover and at low revs. The result is crap fuel consumption and wooly low-speed running. There's also the problem of fuel residues building up during laid-up periods.
Under the filth this Keihin carb looked OK after 30,000 miles but the odd auxiliary slide lifter mechanism was seized. The bike ran like a pig, partly due to the lifter but mostly I suspect due to the inlet stub having a large crack.
Fed up with carb trouble on my ZZ-R I sent the Domi carb to Mike Davies at JRS in Swansea (www.jrs.uk.com, 01792 402458), who refurbishes mainly Keihin, Mikuni and Dell'Orto to what I consider to be the best standard in the UK. Japanese carbs are either unobtainable or very expensive, so worth taking care of. Mike's service was very good. He rang me to confirm he'd received the carb, told me what he was doing and estimated the final cost. When a pilot screw didn't shift he rang me to say the machining and spares (from Dave Silver) would be a bit more.
It came back clean, set to Honda's recommended values and with a superb fact sheet. Cost was £110.
The stripdown shot shows the strange auxiliary lifter, which uses a ramp on the throttle pulley to help lift the slide under sudden throttle openings.

Chassis finished

After a lapse of months, I've done the chassis. Nothing too tricky, just lots of cleaning and repainting. The rattle can Simoniz Five Wheel Steel which goes on so nicely and dries pretty hard is, I've discovered, not resistant to brake fluid. But then what is? The oily clag all over the top frame tube, ignition coil and loom due to clumsy refilling with oil (the engine burned a lot) took hours to clean with solvent (usually white spirit) and toothbrush.

The rear brake shows a sensible (tight-fisted) mix of repainted bits and cleaned-up old stuff. With summer use rust isn't going to be a big problem.

Suspension linkage gets another shot at life

Instead of working, spent a dreamy afternoon assembling parts onto the newly cleaned up chassis. These pics show how even the most unpromising bits and pieces can sort themselves out. Blasting by Pete at Summit, Paint by Simoniz Three Wheel Steel rattle can, bearings by Dave Silver spares. Unfortunately the four genuine Honda chassis bearings in this linkage were an odd size (24.5mm OD) and thus £73, plus another £18 for the seals. The swing arm bearings, exactly the same thing but 26mm OD, were a tenner for two at Anglia Bearings in Peterborough. The other good source of suspension bearings is Wemoto's website, but they didn't have the full set for the Dommie so I didn't bother this time.

Shock rebuilds

Most people would regard a knackered old oe shock as scrap, and it is – but a decent quality new one starts at £300. So rebuilding one for £180 is worth thinking about.

I've had five shocks rebuilt by Falcon Engineering (falconshockabsorbers.co.uk): a TDR250, VFR750, ZZ-R1100, RRV Blade and now this. Robin Packham opens the cylinder, cleans everything up, and puts in a better-than-new PTFE piston ring, new oil and usually a new damper rod and seal too. He also cuts a thread in the cap and screws it back on. A final gas-up to get the pressure back and the job's done.

I've had the best results with non-adjustable shocks. The rebuilds on the Blade and ZZ-R altered the damping range somewhat. As the Dommie's shock is straightforward (once you've hacked off the plastic outer cover which eventually keeps the dirt and moisture in – note the blocked drain hole in the rusty 'before' pic) I got it blasted and sent it off. It came back quickly and with only a few paint chips on my rattle can-sprayed spring and shock body. On this shock there's nowhere to put the gas valve except the top portion of the thread (Honda must have assembled the original in a pressure chamber). So I lined up the best place and marked it with some tape before packing it in the box.

Robin replaced the spring and fitted the preload collars before Loctiting the valve in and gassing up. I can never change the spring now, or reduce preload beyond a certain amount, but that's OK.

The Dommie they couldn't kill

I guess I had better introduce the bike. It's an old hound NX650 Dominator, 1990 vintage, previously owned by three bike journalists, thus proving that I am acutely lazy when it comes to buying bikes. The price, two bottles of wine to Simon Brown of MCN, seemed generous for a runner with an MOT. But actually once I pulled it apart I realised it was a lost cause.

Oh well. Too late for being sensible.

The main trouble is wear and tear, an engine covered in oil, and corrosion. And Simon mentioned that it burned oil. It wouldn't tick over either, which I hope isn't due to a worn carb.

The pics show the bike after about two hours of cleaning.Plenty to do, but it should be salvageable.

And so to bed

Or at least, back to long-lost owner Fee Kelly. In a final flurry I screwed the last few parts together, ran it up, left it for two weeks and then, suddenly, a courier going to Cornwall had a space. So off it went...

(cue Monty Python Spanish Inquisition voice)

... with just one small problem. Fee couldn't start it. As this was the original reason she'd given me the bike 14 months before it was a bit embarrassing. It transpired that the soft 'mud' which formed as part of the tank electrolysis had settled on the fuel tap mesh inside the tank, and restricted or blocked the fuel flow. The first you know is that the carb won't flood for startup. I should have flushed the tank out moire thoroughly.

Intriguingly a Classic Bike reader suggested another tank de-rusting process, using a solution of water and black treacle left in for 10 days. Same effect as electrolysis, apparently.

The fuel starvation is a tiresome inconvenience, and may need doing more than once, but 20 minutes will sort it. Sooner or later Fee will find the time.

Next project: a 1990 Honda Dominator I bought for £31. My target is a nice bike for £600.

A Vincent Series C wiring diagram

I've also been wiring up my friend Mark's Series C Vinnie, which he's been restoring for about four years. Vincent specialist Bob Culver built the engine and did most of the stove enamelling.

It looks like the simplest loom in the world, but the tail light wires go through the mudguard stays, and you really need a highly trained baby earthworm to grab the cable in its teeth and slither down the inside of the tube, before poking it out the other end. Perhaps the original works at Stevenage had such influence over invertebrates.

Being happiest with Japanese notation, I redrew the loom in that style. I think it's going to work, but if the past pace of the restoration is any guide we could be a few months away from firing the old carthorse up. Or longer.

You can get the loom diagram hi res on this link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=28d9934ccbdf5306ab1eab3e9fa335ca3844f2d1a0c32910

BSA anti-vibration mounts

Rebuilding old Brit tat is an infinitely elastic occupation. Most of this is down to pattern parts, which almost never fit and provide hours of frustration.

For example the headlamp shell had the wrong cable cutout (and flaky paint), the headlamp brackets were different lengths, the speedo cable was too long, the tail light fouled the number plate, a fork top cap didn't screw into the fork leg and the headlamp bayonet connector didn't actually transmit electricity. The little rascals had crimped on the brass contacts without stripping the wires underneath.

So when the anti vibe mount on the tank came up for consideration I decided to make one myself. The rubber mount came from an autojumble stand ('tank rubbers', £1.50). The sleeve (which was a perfect fit) came from the wheel spindle spacers of a TS50 Suzuki.

Four hours with a bottom-of-the-range Clarke welder, a grinding wheel and files and Bob's your uncle.