Well it's been a long time between posts and the old cantankerous beast (don't call it the old girl anymore) is still not quite on the road but the end should be near. Oh, I've said that before haven't I :roll: So I ended up sourcing a whole replacement box from the UK. You may remember the welding on the old box which was around the mainshaft bearing ? Well I heated up the case and removed the bearing when I had it back apart.
There is crappy welding in here as well as not being even and a few hairline cracks still around the edges. This case now lives under my bench and maybe one day I will see if someone very skilled with alloy can fix it all up.
The new box arrived, was promptly dismantled, and a new set of bearings and bushes were sourced from Mcintosh in NZ. A couple of the bushes needed some machining to fit properly and at the same time I had the bottom mounting hole drilled out and fitted with top hat bushes that meet in the middle. This has removed the slight wear that was in the bottom lug as well as made a nice snug fit between frame mounts. This box had the two correct external linkage arms and I made up a rod to join the two. Assembly took me quite a few goes trying to get the end float just right using different thickness washers. The thrust washer has been replaced with a flat needle roller bearing that has washers of different thickness either side. This was a suggestion from Ken at Mcintosh. He was very helpful and spent quite a bit of time on the phone with me on a couple of occasions giving advice. Much appreciated. Although the box is now back together and working beautifully when turned by hand it is weeping oil where the outer cover meets the case at the bottom. I just used that silicon gasket maker stuff but I think I will put a very thin paper gasket there as well which means I'll probably have to play with end float again. But maybe after I get to ride it I'll do this.
Turns out the clutch backing plate had a warp in it as well and is of the thinner earlier type. I have ordered a second hand thicker one from the NOC as well as later model clutch spring studs that have nuts to hold springs in place rather than little set screws. The small set screws and studs have a habit of stripping and one of mine was indeed pretty poor. These studs are interchangeable between early and later clutches. I'm hoping this stuff is there on my return from work in 3 weeks.
Now primary chaincases. :roll: I should start a thread where people can post pictures of thier chaincase outers and inners when they know they have the correct one for the model and year. The one I have currently is not correct and off a later model bike and was basically bodged up to fit. I can live with this but thought I would like the correct one for my bike if it appeared somewhere. Enter ebay once again. I purchased one from the UK supposedly for rigid framed models 16H,1,18,ES2 etc. All the ones I see, seem to mention all these models. Well I can tell you right now that a 1938 ES2 has it's own chaincase that is unique to this model and is listed as such in the parts manual. In fact, there are four different one's listed for 1938 alone for the various models. Of course I didn't discover this until I had it sandblasted and spent a great deal of time and effort restoring and painting it. The inner seemed to fit ok when I tried it without gearbox. Once gearbox was back in though, I realised it wasn't going on far enough. The hole at the front where crankshaft comes through is actually recessed back towards the motor about 1/2" which in turn puts the rest of the chaincase 1/2" further out. Couldn't get it on far enough for the clutch or large cover nut for outer to take. All the holes still line up though. I don't see the point in altering this one when I already have a bodged up one, so under the bench it goes. When examining different photo's and pictures I've noticed the rib patterns in the inner cases are slightly different between models of case.
In the meantime I have also had the brakes relined after sourcing some second hand shoes that still had spring lugs on as these were broken off and bodged up as well. The brake place then went and promptly broke one off :x I tell ya, nothing is ever easy ! Fitted new rear drum/sprocket, and have new sprocket for gearbox as well. Oh yea, the reason I had the front drum apart in the first place was I was standing looking at the bike from dead ahead sitting up at my level on this new bike stand I bought, (best thing I ever did), and what's that ? A bloody bow in the wheel. :shock: You've got to be kidding me. Who would go to all the trouble to powdercoat a bowed rim :roll: I really don't know how I hadn't noticed it before, it was that bad. Needless to say I sent this off to bloke who specialises in old bike wheels to let him sort it out. I must be running out of patience.
I also got some new rubbers for the rubber mounted handlebars, that had no rubber but bodged up with old steel tubing :roll: and promptly fitted them and couldn't really work out how to stop bars rotating. Even when done up tight you could push on them and they would move. I then discovered through a bit of research that the bars that were rubber mounted actually had a bracket brazed to them that attaches to top of forks. A quick phone call to Ken again to see if he had any of these brackets and he had a jig for this very thing. I'll have one of those thanks. I also had to have a sleeve turned up for under the twist grip as the handlebars reduced from 1" to 15/16" for the throttle. The bloke had just wrapped masking tape around the bar to fill up the space to 1". :roll: Triumph handlebars I discovered, but I like the shape to much to change.
Anyway, I could go on further with other little bodged up details including engine number :x but will cease to bore you. I thought I would let you know what was happening as I received so much input from you guy's so far and you probably wondered where I'd gone and what had happened. I will update again hopefully with a ride report. Until then BEWARE THE BIKE BOUGHT FROM PICTURES :lol:
