Lee - welcome back - glad you're managing to find some time for bike-building! (There's a small pile of VCH articles in the Knowledgebase, mainly put together by Ralf Arvidsson. Unfortunately we've lost one of his photos and I think some of the last ones have got mixed up - if I knew what they were ...

Ian - the singles may have one or two additional ball valves -placed in the timing cover, as 'backups' in case of failure of one of the pump valves. (There's an Ariel Service Bulletin about these which may help further - see no. 125 in the doc repository here: http://www.arielownersmcc.com/members_o...

Get rid of the washers under the acorn nuts - make sure there are no burrs (or muck) around the banjos or the nuts. The steel nut should make its own sealing seat on the softer metal of the banjo as it's tightened. My VH has been running like this for over 10 years and doesn't leak oil (not from the...

Put two fibre washers between the boxes and the banjos (where they're not subject to compressing/turning. That leaves 3 of the old washers to put elsewhere... (You don't need any washers between the banjos and the nuts - as long as you've got yellow-metal banjos and 'unmolested' original-style acorn...

Only back on the road a month or so since rebuilding the head (long before necessary) due to a dropped valve insert..... Michael I'm a bit late on this, but I'd be interested to know how you fixed the valve insert. I've also got a head with a dropped inert, I think it's because the insert is too th...

Adam What cork are you using? I've bought several types of gasket material from several sources (autojumbles, maybe bearing suppliers or other specialists) but for an overview of what's probably fairly commonly available look here (I tried Drags first but couldn't find anything!) https://www.feked.c...

To check which barrel you have count the fins (on the barrel) - the later 'big-fin' one has an additional fin at the bottom, so 10 fins in all versus 9 fins for the earlier type barrel. The later ('52-'55) 350 used a copper head gasket on the lower joint (ie not on the spigot), might be worth trying...

Steve The offset followers are correct for a two-lobe cam (these can come in two different base-circle sizes, although the smaller one would be relatively rare and was only used for a couple of years at the start of the 1950s). So if you swap the push-rods around (longer one in the exhaust side) doe...

Errrrmmm...

If it was a non-standard colour when it left the factory I think that might have already been remarked on?
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SG

1956-on had a bigger 'dome' (higher compression ratio), earlier are lower compression. Late '40s had the oil control ring instead of the lower compression ring. (The 1955 Hepolite catalogue in the online library suggests 3 compression rings were used up to 1939). They're all pretty much interchangea...