Saturday Workshop Session - Saturday February 10th 2024

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 A lovely 'do-up' job


The exhausts have been taken off the Honda C50 to have a much needed revamp.   Jess used Hammerite kurust and a great deal of elbow grease to give it a new look.  The small holes in the exhaust were plugged using epoxy glue.  
A similar approach was used by Jess on the Piaggio Velofax moped exhaust, which also had a number of holes. Again, these had to be filled before it was sprayed up in a coat of heat resistant black paint at Saturday's session.


Tin worm can't beat us!!



been taken off the Honda c50 to have a much needed revamp.

Time for a Black Russian...


Dave has been working with Annabelle and on 10th February was helping test out  Phil James's 6 volt system to 12 volt conversion. It looked to be working well - with Dave making some bespoke spanner alterations to ensure everything was put back tightly.

Due to the increased heat generated by the increase in power, a zinc plate has been inserted into the adapted power system. Zinc is a highly heat absorbing material.

Interestingly, the MT-10 was the first Soviet motorcycle to feature 12 volt electrics. Annabelle’s Dnieper is obviously an earlier model - and benefits, as most classic bikes do, from tax exemption!
Annabelle also took off the carburettor and gave it a good cleaning.

The ignition timing was done. The Dnieper has points ignition and a manual advance and retard unit. Annabelle found the correct timing mark on the flywheel, set it to full advance and at this point, the points should just be opening -  the 'fag paper method'!. Provided the contact points are free from pitting, placing a fag paper between the points and gently pulling until it can be pulled out, is a great way of determining when the contact points start to open. 

To start the bike operating the ignition manually, one must retard the lever on the handlebars, then manually advance the ignition timing with the lever as you pull away. So you set the timing as you are riding according to the terrain and speed you are doing. Russian engineering, amazing! You dont see it anymore on modern bikes!
Annabelle paying close attention to detail



When is a diff not a diff? 


When is a diff not a diff - When it's a Bevel box.  The shaft drive shaft is spins in line with the bike. This is no use whatsoever, because the wheel needs to spin at ninety degrees to the motion of the spinning drive shaft.  The bevel box contains a pair of gears that turn the spinning motion through 90 degrees to cause the wheel to rotate.  One gear,(The crown wheel) is much larger than the other (The pinion) hence the bevel box is quite large.  There are no chains involved.  The wheel fits into a splined hub that is part of the Crown Wheel assembly.  The Bevel box holds a quantity of gear oil to keep things running sweet.  This is where Allan's problem stemmed from.  Some kind soul had crossed threaded the oil filler so the oil couldn't be topped up or replaced.  Mr Honda had put the exhaust very close to the filler hence the exhaust had to be removed to get at and remove the cross threaded filler bolt.

Allan's Gold wing tightly restrained on the workbench



A bit of a cushy number!


Catching up with Jon, Guy and Mal having a good session on the Honda C50.  They'd taken the front wheel out, 

cleaned the front brakes and put it back together.  They then moved on to the back wheel. A really nice bit of engineering from Honda is that when you take the back wheel off - you don't have to take the chain and sprocket off. Brilliant!

Another nice bit of engineering is the Cush drive.  "A cush drive wheel has a separate drive hub that interlocks with rubber dampers between interlocking fingers. The sprocket is bolted to the outer drive hub or “cush drive”. Those rubber dampers soak up energy that is produced when a shock load occurs from hard acceleration or braking" 

from toxicmotorracing.com


Jon's Honda C50 in a state of undress.



 Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks.


Don's BMW K1200RS was suffering an oil leak from the left hand front fork.  Someone with limited mechanical skills had tried to replace it but had butchered the replacement in the process.  Graham helped Don by fitting a replacement seal.  He had never fitted a seal with the forks still in situ. However good old YouTube suggested it could be done, and so he gave it a try and learnt a new trick in the process.  Luckily, Don had bought a rather nifty fork seal removal tool with him, which meant that there didn't need to be a great deal of space around the fork to level the old seal out.  Improvising with a slide from a bearing installer, Graham was able to drive the new seal without it getting damaged. Because it wasn't possible to tell how much oil was in the fork, the oil needed to be drained from both fork legs.  This was, in theory, a simple job requiring just the wheel spindle and a drain bolt in each fork leg to be removed. The bolt in the left-hand fork leg came out without an issue.  Then sod's law stepped in.  The drain plug in the bottom of the right-hand  fork leg was so tight that the tip of the allen key broke off in the bolt before the bolt started coming undone.  This was overcome with careful use of a syringe, allowing most of the oil to be sucked out of the right-hand fork leg.   Club Mechanic Phil then used his incredible memory and located the Fork Oil Level tool that enabled us to match the oil level in both fork legs.  Different weights or quantities of oil in a pair of forks can cause some severe and quite dangerous handling problems as forks will respond to bumps at different speeds.

Don and his beloved BMW  K1200RS


Finally starting on February 10th 2024 after its major rebuild...

After 2 years of sometimes head-scratching work, the bike was successfully started. It was an amazing moment for the club, especially for the members who have worked hard alongside AJ and Jack to achieve this.