Ariel Owners Motorcycle Club

Being a little backward about this, as I haven't yet described my trip to France in May which didn't go too smoothly. I might save that story for 'Cheval'.
Anyway, my 350 rigid, (registered as a '44 W/NG, it's not, probably '47-'49 NG, or may have started life as a VB), was entered for this years Shere hill climb in Surrey. It is a closed road event, held on a public road, so everything entered must be road legal, and speed limits have to be adhered to. We, the Brooklands museum motorcycle team have been entering this for several years now, and take an eclectic collection of bikes, sometimes museum owned, sometimes our personal bikes, and also with a few guest riders. This year we had a 1937 AJS, a 1930 BSA B31 that you may have seen on 'Secrets of the transport museum', a mid seventies Suzuki 500 twin, a Triumph T160 flat track special and a Lambretta TV175 amongst others.
I had only finished putting my clutch back together the night before, (it had pretty much self-destructed in France), and thanks are due to Geoff Brown of the club for furnishing me with new inner and outer clutch baskets.
On the day, she fired up first kick as usual, and got me to the event with no issues, although I did think I had a slightly blowing exhaust, as it was a bit more noisy and there were fumes around the exhaust area. I didn't think too much about it, until the first run, when climbing the hill, Martin on his 250cc AJS was ahead of me, and although I knew he wasn't a speed demon, I just couldn't close the gap. At the top of Staple lane where the climb finished, I managed to overtake him on the way back down the hill, but then found on the long climb back up to Newlands corner, that again she seemed to be running out of puff.
Back in the paddock, out came the spanners and I loosened, then retightened the exhaust. No change, indeed now there was a definite twittering sound, and then looking a little closer I realised that the head joint was blowing. As two of the bolts are inside the rocker boxes, I couldn't do much about tightening things, other than a cursory check of the bolts that were accessible. Naturally, it was then I discovered that they were all pretty loose.
I elected to make one more very gentle run, and then motored the few miles home carefully. Upon stripping the top end at home later, I discovered that someone in the past had added an aluminium gasket, or sealing ring if you prefer, to the joint where it should only be lapped in.
So, later this week, I plan to lap the joint in, and hopefully things should be back to normal.
I'll keep you posted.

Started lapping in, not looking too bad already.