The new Project

[david.anderson]

Paul
good work. Out of interest did you keep a tally of the hours involved in making the alternator. From memory Bennett suggested about 150 hours. It took me a bit more than that although I did at one point alter the design in my head, made a component only to realise after completion it was wrong so I had to start that bit again. Drawing up first would have shown the error. 300watts is great and the alternator balances at idle with a 60w halogen globe and handlebar heaters.
David

[paul.jameson]

The original petrol tank was reduced to blobs of aluminium stuck between the fins of the cylinder head in the fire. After various problems with getting a new one made, I bought the one which had been a prototype, as per the first photo.

You will note a strip of wood glued to the underside of the tank which, together with the rest of the tank, makes the correct shape for the tank. Having bought the tank, I got a local craftsman to entend the underside of the tank in the shape of the two bits of wood so as to make the tank the correct shape. Or at least that was the plan. Cleaning the tank up to weld the new sections in place revealed a large amount of filler making up the final shape, including two protrusions at the front end which give the circular shape against the chrome of the main frame member. So after Luke had done his bit I bought a large pot of body filler and set to work. It took a lot of work but the eventual shape is somewhere near correct.

Mounting of the tank is by means of a glorified rubber band at the rear which goes onto a hook and by an alloy plate mounted on the top of the oil filter at the front. Given that the tank came with two bits of wood on the bottom, it was necessary to make and locate the front mounting bosses for Luke to weld on. this works well enough although it is very tight on the front spark plugs. To get them out I have to drop the oil filter off first. The centre of the alloy strip bears against an adjustable bolt coming down from the main frame member. It took me some time to find a suitable rubber to go over the 5/16" bolt but eventually I found a suitable item from the bottom of a walking stick.

The oil cooler is not from a Triumph Trident as you might think but is a standard Serck item which I purchased new directly from Serck almost 4 years ago now. The reflectors which fit the ends almost perfectly come in threes, mounted in a rubber backing, and were used on trailers, caravans, etc in the early 1970s. I got a set off Ebay for under £10, new old stock, earlier in the year. The oil cooler connections came from another oil cooler bought from Jerry Mortimore who in turn had got it from Healeys for his Mk II many years ago. Having Jerry's cooler made finding the correct reflectors a huge amount easier.

[paul.jameson]

One headache was the rear brake cable where it connected to the brake pedal. Part of the original cable remained attached to the rear brake pedal and this demonstrated that the only way to make it would have been to run the cable inner through the bracket which retains the cable outer before soldering the nipple on the end. Clearly, this would make it impossible to change cables at the side of the road.

The routing of the cable vertically upwards from the pedal is similar to that used on the two prototypes but the production bikes before mine used a system where the cable inner was anchored to the rear footrest bolt and the rear brake pedal worked on the cable outer. An unusual system but it worked quite well. The bracket anchoring the cable outer on my bike is a less than elegant piece of work and one which snagged the rear chainguard all too easily. The chainguard was damaged when I got the bike and I assumed the damage had bee done in the fire but assembly (after re-chroming the chainguard) proved that the bend I had removed had been caused by the brake cable bracket. Use of a hacksaw and file resolved this issue.

I devised a system for holding the end of the cable inner which meant I could use a nipple on the end small enough to go through the hole in the cable outer bracket. The small nipple goes into a larger nipple at right angles which in turn sits inside the clevis arrangement. a couple of spacers were used and the whole lot took several attempts until I finally got the sizes right.

Then I found that once the brake lever was depressed, it wouldn't return by itself. A return spring was needed. Fortunately, there was a bracket on the rear brake pedal I could drill and use for one end of a spring mounting. The other end goes into a piece of stainless strip. This strip is mounted at one end onto the swinging arm spindle. At the lower end I had to make up a special double ended bolt to replace the primary chaincase screw but extended at the top to provide an anchor for the strip. I was rather proud of being able to use for the return spring a standard Ariel brake shoe return spring, as used from the 1920s through to the end of Arrow production in 1965.

[JohnnyBeckett]

HI That brake cable look like a right challenged to get right but now you have got it done and made a nice job of it

[robjameson]

Dad,

As always, you have done an excellent job, I look forward to seeing it in the flesh!

Regarding the tank badges, I assume they are vinyl?

I have fitted hundreds of vinyl badges to bikes, and they are a total bastard regardless of age.

My advise would be to stick the centre down first and move outwards in a circular motion, have a hairdryer or heat gun close by and if the sticker feels like it is going to crease or a little brittle, gently waft the heat gun over the sticker.

I forget how many norton badges ended up curled up in a ball and stuck to a toolbox/apprentice as I did this wrong!

Rob

[paul.jameson]

Son,

You've got the job.

Dad

[dave.pitt]

Paul

That's absolutely brilliant. What a lovely bike.
Very glad you got a replacement Healey.
Oh boy, that's gorgeous.
You'll enjoy keeping that clean!

[paul.jameson]

Exhausts were a problem. Although the originals came with the bike, they were all damaged in the fire. The pair on the right side had got so hot in the fire that the silencers had gone oval instead of round. On the left side, each pipe had a big dint close to the cylinder head. My guess is that the dints were caused when the bike fell over as the holding down straps burnt through on the right side which was the side where the fire was fiercest. As the pipes are welded to the silencers, a complete new set of exhausts seemed like a plan.

I was very keen for the bike to sound right so I had to find someone able to take one of the existing silencers apart and then replicate its internals exactly. Custom Fabrications at Attleborough near Norwich did the job for me, aided by the old exhausts to use as patterns and three rusty NOS pipes. These I had borrowed, along with a fourth pipe but examination showed that the fourth pipe incorporated a bend going the wrong way - easily done on such contorted pipes. So the megaphones were made and the pipes roughly bent before I took the bike over there in Geoff Brown's van. (Thanks again Geoff). Final adjustments were made, megaphones were welded to pipes and brackets added. The silencing internals were made and fitted the following week, after which the pipes were sent to me.

To save money, I decided to polish them myself prior to chroming.

Note the polishing shop here consists of the polishing mop temporarily bolted to Madam's potting table in the garden and fed by a cable out of the workshop window. A quick trial polishing session revealed that the pipes in particular, where they had been heated to be bent, needed attention with 400 grit emery before the polishing mop was applied. So I bought a load of suitable discs from "The Polishing Shop" and set to work with the angle grinder. I quickly found that the only way to hold the exhaust so that I could apply the angle grinder was in the vice of my woodworking bench. A day's hard work later, the exhausts were ready for the polishing mop. Then I noticed that a fine layer of black magnetic dust had settled upon everything in the workshop, including the lathe, the mill, the bikes and Madam's 1927 Standard car. This was not my finest hour. Six weeks later I am still cleaning up. But the exhausts got polished and then went to S & T plating at Yate for chroming. I was very happy with the eventual outcome but, even with me doing the polishing, total costs of the exhausts were just short of £1400.

[ray.tolman]

Hi Paul.
Research, application of knowledge and mechanical competence. What more can be said?
Truly professional work on both the Healey and 37RH.
Your work is an inspiration for us all.
Thank you so much for sharing, Paul.
Ray

[paul.jameson]

One of my posts on page 2 of this account talks about the fitting of the swinging arm bearings. Having made the top hat bushes and worked out how to fit the bearings I was able to fit the swinging arm temporarily to the engine plates. With the gearbox in place, that enabled me to work out the chain line for the rear hub.

The first job was to make spacers to centralise the hub. This isn't as easy as it sounds because the hub incorporates a rubber shock absorber which is squeezed slightly to fit. You don't want this loose, nor do you want to spring the swinging arm legs outwards so a certain amount of trial and error was needed. The swinging arm legs are not symmetrical by the way with the one on the right angled further outwards than the one on the left.

I knew the hubs were Grimeca and was lucky enough to buy one brand new form RGM Norton via Ebay. This was almost the last of a batch they had made in the 1980s and was powder coated black. Over the years in storage though, the powder coating had largely come loose so it had to be removed. Naturally, those bits which hadn't come loose were an absolute swine to remove. The hub lacked only one thing - the brake operating lever. Maybe it was fashionable to break these whilst falling off your Norton. I managed to buy no fewer than 3 incompatible brake operating levers before finally buying a complete spare brake plate from the USA which happened to have the lever fitted. Some careful measurements from the gearbox sprocket and engine plates enabled me to determine how much to machine off the drive end of the hub for a correct chain line. Then I could make the sprocket fit by enlarging the hole in its centre by a boring bar in the lathe.

Quite what the spoke lengths should be or the head angles were a little uncertain, as was the angle for the hole in the dimple on the rim. Having found a formula on the internet for bicycle spokes I had some idea what was needed but decided to ask the experts at Central Wheel Company. The man on the counter took one look at the hub and said "You need a rim and spokes for an early 1970s Ducati." So that was how I found out the original fitment for the rear hub.

I had bought the front wheel complete at a Stafford Show but the spokes were corroded so I took one out to find its dimensions so that Central Wheel could make me a set. To my surprise, the ever helpful man on the counter told me that a new rim was completely unnecessary and that the old one would polish up well. He was entirely right and deserves great credit for giving such a good impression of the company. I fully recommend Central Wheel Company as a result.

As ever, I built the wheels myself and I am pleased to say that they trued up well enough.