The KH Project MK II

[Vincent.vanGinneke]

Engine looks familiar

[Paul Slootheer]

I guess you mean the 'green' barrels? Yes they where surplus. The primairy came with the bike and are NOS.
Engine wise there has a lot to be done and still searching camfollowers...

This NOS footrest support must be a 1953 item in Wedgwood blue...

[Paul Slootheer]

It did take some time, but at last I did find these ones for the early barrels...

[Paul Slootheer]

It almost did take me 4 weeks to get rid of the polyester resin put into this KH petrol tank long time ago. There was a very thick layer on the bottom of the tank. In some places it was almost half a inch! I was a bit supprised to find out the tank did'nt started to leak at one point, so I suppose they just put it in because of rust...

[Paul Slootheer]

Made some small progress on the 1951 Anstey KH. Did the frame, rear mudguard and front forks and finaly also the wheels. New wheel bearings, spokes and wheelrims. Nice butted spokes for the drive side on the rear. I choose to make the front wheel also a 19'' item because of the much wider choice of tyres. All looks quite nice in my opinion.

[simon.holyfield]

Those Devon rims look good. Happy with them?

[Paul Slootheer]

Simon the rims from Devon are quite nice. I did choose the British Chrome ones. As far as I can see the dimple pattern looks the same as on the original Dunlop rims. However they are a bit more expensive as the ones from CWC.

[Paul Slootheer]

Allright, let's go with the engine... Today I did make a start with the crankshaft. At first I took off the flywheel, because it is in need of a 0.20 regrind. Cleaning out one sludgetrap shows howmuch came out! The totaly blocked off bigend journal must have caused a broken conrod at least...

[nevhunter]

If that crank has the oil holes coming out in the inside with a single hole it might be a good idea to drill some others in a better place. Feeding oil to a bearing where the pressure is highest due to load ( Centrifugal in this instance) means the oil flow will be impeded or not at all. Later ones were in a different place. I did a theory of lubrication and plain bearing design at a good UNI as a callow youth and they covered all this and specifically stated the ARIEL twin had the oil holes in the wrong place. If the oil holes are situated in the proper place you don't need high pressure to feed the oil. In the wrong place, hundreds of PSI won't guarantee a feed and it can actually REMOVE oil from the bearing when working hard. Nev

[Paul Slootheer]

Nev, I think it’s safe to say that every design does have it’s strong and weak points. The timing side journal still looks quite nice, however the drive side journal looks quite bad... Problems with insufficient oil supply to the Ariel 500 twin bigends usually starts at the drive side bigend, that is quite interesting! I agree there might be a design flaw in the 500 twin oil hole, which Ariel later did change for a reason. In the old situation both the holes are placed opposite where sludge is slowly building up in the cavity during mileage, on it’s own not a bad idea I guess. I think the problem of oil starvation also starts where the two sludge traps who are connected by a channel with small diameter (I think it is to small). When sludge is building up and rises above the level of the channel the oil supply to the drive side bigend gets blocked and a broken conrod or worse might be the result.
The Ariel 500 twin crankshaft design unfortunately incorporates limitations to make the channel bigger in diameter, prob. because of the risk of breaking? (see photograph) A micro oilfilter in the return line might the only way to fight sludge and blocked oilways!
The approache of the Norton is different, but likely at a price... They choose for a build-up crank with sludge traps which are able to hold quite some sludge.