Saturday September 13th 2025

 Saturday September 13th 2025…

Armstrong 500…

Heinz bought his ex army Armstrong 500cc single into the workshop with a view to swapping its engine for one that had been stripped and blueprinted.  By the time I first saw the bike which was around 10:45 the engine and been removed and other ancillary items were being removed from the frame so that normally inaccessible places could cleaned up and the rust removed where appropriate.  Heinz and Mal were puzzling over how to remove the air filter box from its space in the frame, which seemed impossible.  At first, no matter which way it was turned, it seemed trapped between the frame rails.  When I returned to look at it later on, Mal had manage to free the air filter box but I don’t think anyone was quite sure how, except that it had been pulled forward into the space vacated by the engine.

Armstrong 500 minus engine ready to be fettled and rebuilt

Honda 650 Vigor…

Mal did more work towards getting the bike ready for its MOT.  On this occasion he managed to find his way into the air filter box to remove and replace the air filter.   Next it would be new tyres and perhaps time to see if it would pass an MOT.

Mal's Vigor 650 nears (yes gets even nearer) completion.

Yamaha Majesty 125…

Peter and Chris did more work reassembling the bike’s bodywork and removed the the inner bodywork beneath the sat  to make sure the wiring to the seat lock worked correctly when the ignition switch was turned to the appropriate positions.

Yes yer majesty we will soon have you back in one piece and ready for your MOT.

Honda CBR1000F…

Chris, Don, Allen and others worked to reassemble the bodywork until someone noticed that the fuel pipe was projecting from the right hand side and the fuel tap was on the left hand side.  Graham had not been involved in removing the carbs and was not familiar with the model (It was a Honda after all.)  The carbs had to come off and there then followed a lot of head scratching to work out which pipework went where. It was discovered that the fuel pipe joining the carbs had been put back on the wrong way round and turning it end over end put the pipe to the fuel tap at the right end.  More head scratching was done whilst trying to find the vacuum pipe to connect to the fuel tap.  The bike has the sort of fuel tap that would not allow fuel to flow unless vacuum from the engine was being applied to the back of a diaphragm inside the tap.  The engine's vacuum would overcome the force of a spring to pull the fuel tap plunger, unblocking an internal opening in the tap to allow fuel to flow to the carburettors. Once the engine was stopped, the vacuum ceased and the plunger once more blocked the opening, automatically turning off the fuel supply to the carburettor. This prevented the engine from flooding when the bike was not in use. But where was the vacuum pipe?  No matter how hard we looked at the carburettors we couldn’t find it. You Tube wasn’t our friend on this occasion and the Haynes Manual we found for the bike didn’t give us any pointers.  So whilst he saw waiting for his chips to be cooked in nearby Morgans’ Chippy Graham managed to download a factory workshop manual for the bike and sit looking for where the pipe might be found. It was attached to a small spigot projecting from the left hand side of the cylinder head, not from the carburettor or the rubber manifold as he had expected.  Eventually the pipe was found tucked away down the side of the frame tube and the mystery was solved.  Graham and Chris then began their efforts to try and refit the carburettors but try as they might they could not persuade the carburettors to fit into the intake manifold rubbers.   This was almost certainly due to the fact that the rubbers were old, harder than when new and had shrunken ever so slightly.  No matter how much they push, pulled, prodded and levered the carburettors could not be persuaded to pop into place.  Even a little washing up liquid failed to encourage them into place.  Perhaps some new Carburettor rubbers would be needed.

CBR1000F - We will fathom it out, I promise.

Mash 400 Scrambler...

Just when you thought it was all over...

The bike was removed from the ramp today, Graham having reached the end of his patience with the bike and its various failings. However when he mentioned the fact that many owners fit carburettors to their bikes in favour of what appears to be a very unreliable fuel injection system to Heinz, he immediately offered to try and fit a carburettor to the bike. He had a couple of Amal carbs at home Could they fit or would we need to find something CHINESE. Watch this space.

In other news…

Seimon Pugh-Jones came into the workshop with his friend all the way from the US of A.  Seimon came full of ideas to use his mobile museum to help promote the club.  His friend, although not a motorcyclist, was most impressed by the work we were doing for the community and for the benefit of mental health through engagement with motorcycles.