1928 Black Ariel for the Cannonball

[cmfalco]

Since it reaches a wider audience than the AOMCC Forum I've been posting details of my rebuild of my 1928 Ariel Model C on BritBike Forum where to date it has obtained over 128k views and 1000 replies:

http://www.britbike.com/forums/ubbthrea ... Post691207
(note: above link replaces the faulty one noted in the following email)

The reason for this post is, thirteen months after I started to tear it down to the last nut and bolt, all but a few details are done and I fired up the Ariel for the first time this week (on the first kick!). I'm about to start a series of shake-down runs of ever-increasing length to make sure it is as ready as it can be for the Cannonball.

Since I'm the only one who will be on an Ariel you can easily spot me on the list of Cannonball riders

http://motorcyclecannonball.com/riders/

but if you want to save time skimming the list I'm #123 (I couldn't have the first entry number so I picked the last, which also happens to be as easy to remember as, um, 123...).

Since I was unable to find much of the information elsewhere, in the course of my rebuild I extensively documented dimensions, weights, spring constants, etc. Because that information should be useful to other Black Ariel owners in the future, when I'm happy I have nothing more to add to the document (now 7 pages) I'll upload it as a pdf where the moderator can copy it to 'Library' if he wishes. Also, starting from what seemed to be essentially no information at all, I managed to slowly piece together a 'shop manual' for the Ariel using material I found in a wide variety of sources, organized in sections ('Head, Valves & Rockers', 'Clutch', 'Forks', etc.). That 'manual' is now 2-3/4" thick (~680 pages) in two 3-ring binders so I probably won't upload it... I'll have it along on the Cannonball, of course, but fingers crossed I won't have to open it during those two weeks.

[david.anderson]

try this link instead, as the first one is not quite right.
http://www.britbike.com/forums/ubbthrea ... Post691207
Charles
Nice work and glad to hear it is running. Please keep us posted on your progress in the cannonball.
David

[cmfalco]

David,

Thanks for catching the problem with that link. It "looked" OK but clearly something went wrong in my cut/paste that caused an error.
Charles

[keith.hodgenia]

Good luck on the rally.

[Simon.Gardiner]

CMF - very well done, hope the ride goes well!

SG

[cmfalco]

Good luck on the rally.

hope the ride goes well!

Thanks very much. It very well may be the only "blueprinted" 1928 Ariel in existence so I have high hopes. In any case, other than relining the brakes, I did all the work myself so if it breaks (as opposed to brakes) I will have no one to blame but myself.

[david.anderson]

Charles.
Just a casual comment. Brenton Roy who lives in Adelaide rode his 28 Ariel to Ballina on the NSW North Coast to attend a rally and then he rode the return trip to Adelaide. A return journey of over 4000km. He experienced primary chain and engine sprocket problems on the journey and needed some machine shop work done in Broken Hill. From memory the problem may have been lack of oiling to the engine shock absorber, so that may be something to keep in mind.
I hope it goes well for you
David

[john.mitchell]

Don't forget Cheval in all this, Charles. We have a lot of members who are not in this group and who will surely be interested in this exploit.
John

[cmfalco]

From memory the problem may have been lack of oiling to the engine shock absorber, so that may be something to keep in mind.

Thanks for mentioning that. Ariel's instructions call for oiling the shock absorber "when attending to the primary chain," and further note that on later models a grease fitting has been added and grease should be added every 400 to 500 miles. Since we will cover an average of nearly 300 miles per day, basically that means greasing/oiling that sprocket has to be part of my evening maintenance ritual.

The friction drag of the freshly-honed, unoiled cylinder wall is enough that the shock absorber slips. As Ariel notes "the spring is not adjustable for tension," so I machined an Al spacer to preload it (but not so thick as to bind if it needs to rotate).

Don't forget Cheval in all this, Charles. We have a lot of members who are not in this group and who will surely be interested in this exploit.

The issue for me is that my text for my BritBike thread on the rebuild is up to 207 single-spaced pages, with another 1429 photographs documenting all aspects of it, so it isn't a straightforward matter of editing existing text to fit the size of a Cheval article (or even a few articles). I would have to write the Cheval article(s) from scratch, but I'll see what I can do.