It looks like I have a minor challenge here.

Not a challenge - a learning opportunity

Keith,

These pictures are of the original toolbox on my '49: The mount is quite close to the ridge. Possibly your pattern box is narrower than the original so maybe you could pad the rear mounts out a bit to take up the difference.

Pete

The bike is registered as 1956 not 1954. Are you sure it's 1954? The wiring is slightly different for the two years. If you know the prefix letters of the frame and engine numbers that will give the year.

Having said that, most Wipac wiring on lightweights of this era are very similar. The horn ...

Matchless G80 +060 rings are 84mm and they do come up on Ebay quite often.

I do feel for you, I have had a similar experience but they are repairable.

The big-end in the video looks to have tightened a bit. Did the engine have an oil filter? After 30,000 miles running, it could be the dreaded blocked crankshaft oilway rearing it's ugly head. Hopefully the crankcases are ...

The wear on the teeth will cause the whine, I like it, my VA whines in 3rd.

Roger,

I wouldn't normally worry about a bit of a whine from a 75 year gearbox but this one has got past that stage. When crawling up a gravelly 1-in-5 windy back lane I would describe the sound more like wailing Banshee ...

When under load 2nd gear in my CP gearbox has become embarrassingly whiny (to the extent that a rider behind me commented on it). On disassembly I found the 2nd gear cog to be very slack on the lay-shaft...
2nd Gear Layshaft Bush 1a.mp4
...and the teeth on the lay-shaft cog and on the main-shaft ...

I think you have the two gears A and B in your first picture reversed. A is the layshaft 3rd gear (23T) and B is the layshaft output gear (20T).

Pete

Terry,
I have discovered that the oil sludge trap was totally blocked
When you say the sludge trap was totally blocked, was it blocked beyond the end of the sludge trap itself i.e. did you have to poke crud out the crankshaft as well as the sludge trap tube? The big-end oil passage is over an inch ...

Terry,

The hole to the left of the oil pump is a drain between the cam chest and the timing cover. If oil spews out of there, then oil is getting into your engine from somewhere (presumably from the oil tank). Even if the big-end feed is blocked, oil from the pump will bypass the quill and empty ...