Ariel Owners Motorcycle Club

This thread has veered somewhat off topic so can I briefly answer the questions raised so that we can all let Paul W get back to his 4G.

Paul,
Yes, the reamer is a quality Taylor & Jones item. Replacement blades can be sourced still at a cost exceeding £150 (from memory). I lightly touched the old ones up with a fine slipstone and they cut whitemetal at least, very well.

Nev,
No, I am not railway workshop trained. I mis-spent my youth as a volunteer on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (NYMR). To get there, I needed a motorcycle. One of the retiring signalmen sold off his stock of the Ariels he had used to go to work on. They ended up (around 1973) with two of the young NYMR volunteers - me and one John Nelson - the same person who posted earlier (and he still has his Ariels). But I still volunteer occasionally for NELPG on the NYMR. I also have a photographers pass for the NYMR - hence the photo.

Simon,
Steam engines are less subtle than Square Fours - but every bit as obstinate and, to my mind, even more rewarding when they work properly. The photo is leaving Goathland on the NYMR.

John,
On a very hot day last summer I was kneeling on top of the Q6 (the second engine in the photo) but nice and cool as I was up to my elbows in the cold water in the boiler as I removed and fitted bolts in the most awkward of positions down through the dome by feel alone with the sure and certain knowledge that if I dropped bolt or nut, we were never, ever, going to retrieve it until the next time the boiler was completely stripped - probably in 2028. So not too hot and I stay overnight in a local pub.

In the interests of confusing Simon.....

Severn Valley. Zoom in and Google!

So where did you pick up your PA speedo restoration skills Paul? Self taught?

Progress is slow and steady on the 4G engine, but as I succeeded in assembling the crankcases today, and put the coupling gears on, I feel the worst is behind me...it will be all down hill from now on...not literally I hope.

Not much clearance between bob weights and con rod on this engine, is there?

Its looking good Paul - nice work.

Whilst you are at this stage, can you glance at the front timing side bush and tell me whether the drain hole is present which runs down at 45 degrees back into the crankcase from the outside of the bush please? The engine I am working on has this drilling but my own has not. Mine is only a month earlier than the one I am working on, yours is a few months later.

Working on the NYMR in my teens taught me how to tackle most things - carefully, slowly and with all the advice you can lay your hands on. So, yes, I am self taught on PA speedos but with quite a bit of verbal advice in the early days (over 25 years ago now) from an ex Smiths employee who assisted in the job of shovelling the surplus PA speedos into the skip when Smiths decided to scrap them.

paul.jameson wrote:Its looking good Paul - nice work.

Whilst you are at this stage, can you glance at the front timing side bush and tell me whether the drain hole is present which runs down at 45 degrees back into the crankcase from the outside of the bush please? The engine I am working on has this drilling but my own has not. Mine is only a month earlier than the one I am working on, yours is a few months later.

Thanks Paul.

An interesting result to your question! The crankcases that I'm currently using do have a 45 degree drain hole at 6 oclock in the outside chamber of the front timing side bush. So I went and checked the other 2 1/2 sets of cases I have (some from Peter Batten) and all three have a 45 degree drain hole but it is at 3 oclock, not 6 oclock. Would this be a later change? i.e. Ariel decided to keep this bush partly submerged in oil? On the other hand, the oil collecting here in the outside chamber wouldn't get changed very often.... Sadly, I can't date the cases because there is no sign of an engine number on them.

Not that anybody's asking - but the drain is at 7.30 on my 1955 Mk11.

Six months since my last update . I'd like to say that progress is slow but steady, but in truth, it is slow and erratic. In my defence, back in April, a friend and I bought three oily rag 1930 Douglas S6/T6 motorcycles and we've had fun re-commissioning those and riding them. Here they are in Milton Abbas a few weeks ago:



But back to this 4G. Got all the parts back from the chrome platers in May although, due to a misunderstanding, they failed to knock out a couple of minor dents in the tank. Not a problem, they can remain; they are part of the bike's rich history after all. The rear brake lever is chromed because it was chromed when I got the bike. There are a couple of parts from a 1930 Model F in this photo:



Progress on the wheels. Lots of pre-dismantled photos taken of the spoke lacing pattern plus lots of measurements to record offset. New stainless rims, 19" x 40 front, 18" x 38 back, from Draganfly --- minor hiccup here as CWC had mis-labelled the packaging on one of them and had supplied chromed instead of s/steel. I didn't check when they arrived 18 months ago but Draganfly kindly sorted it out . I decided to do a dummy run of building the wheels, partly to check spoke lengths, offsets etc but also to see how much scratching of the red rim centre I was likely to do





Dummy wheel building was fine, so on to painting the centre of the rims using a 1K aerosol with colour REN 705, a Renault Rouge colour and as recommended by Paul Jameson. Have to say, it's a nice colour and it went on well. Before lacing, I'll be finishing off these centres with a Pro XL 2K aerosol lacquer, using a suitable ABEK2P3 mask, and once the weather cools down a bit. The gold line will be applied and lacquered once the wheels are spoked. When lacing, I'm planning to slip a small piece of heat shrink on the end of each spoke to help protect the red.

That is looking good Paul!!
Regards, Paul

Did you spray the wheelbuilding jig for practise first?

paul.jameson wrote:Did you spray the wheelbuilding jig for practise first?

No, but it does look like it!