Built like a gun

Bit about my other project. It's a 1964 Royal Enfield Interceptor. It's a 750cc twin, something like the R1 of it's day(!). I've had it around 10 years now, and it's barely turned a wheel since. When I first bought it from my cousin Tony, it ran, but it needed some recommissioning. I spent a fair bit of money at the time having a proper service, the magneto rewound, new tyres and so on. I even had it MOT'd. It's been somewhat neglected for some time now, and it has to be said, in some places it's deteriorated. A year or so ago, I decided to strip it down and do something of a restoration. The state of the bike once the initial enthusiasm had waned (and time became short due to the arrival of a baby) was something like this:

I had bought quite a few odds and ends, but I hadn't got round to putting them on. The most obvious couple of points from when the bike was running was that (1) the carbs were so worn that starting the thing was a real chore and (2) the rear shocks were knackered and didn't keep the wheel off the rear mudguard if the road wasn't entirely smooth. Less obvious was that the electrics weren't really up to much (the Zener diode wasn't actually connected to anything), and the forks could really do with a rebuild. The real problem was with (2). The bike has twin Amal carbs, and as it's a twin, they are left and right handed. The left handed Amal carb is very hard to come by, and any sort of period equivalent is very expensive, and probably not much better than what I had. So I thought somewhat laterally, and looked at what was offered for other big twin bikes - I did think of going modern, something like a Yamaha TRX850, but really the effort in making it work, allied to the fact that it wouldn't really look the part put me off. Still, the idea of having some properly engineered (i.e. Japanese) [that should annoy a few purists] carbs on there made me think that I should look in that direction. It just so happens that you can get a Mikuni twin carb conversion for the Triumph Bonneville. These are about £450 here, so really not cheap. However, from the States they're a much more reasonable £235 or so. Given I had my in-laws in Florida, I sent a set there and they brought them home for me. Doing a dummy build up, they look like they will really work!

Just mocking up - so I do know they're not quite level, but overall the effect is pleasing (at least to me!) I also gain filtration, which I didn't have on the Amals!

The other thing I did was to try and take back some of the dullness that had affected the various casings. I am somewhat fannying around trying to avoid the wiring part of the puzzle (not that I hate wiring, it just requires a certain level of focus and mindset), but I did a bit of polishing. So this is before:

And this is after:

I also did the instrument binnacle:

although it's harder to see in that pic how shiny it is. It's much better than it was, that's for sure.

I also did fit the new Hagon shocks. They seem to be about 1" taller than the ones that came off. It's a while since I bought them, so I'm not sure if this was something that was intentional, but I do remember that they are uprated. They certainly were the from the top end of the Hagon range anyway:

As you can see from this pic, the forks are out of the bike. I need to find someone to recondition them. The basic idea is to get the bike working again. Hopefully reliably, so it becomes a pleasure to ride. I think I somewhat gave up with it because I knew that there was always a danger that if I ever stopped the engine (or I stalled it due to the slightly grabby clutch)  that it would not restart without a lot of faff. Kicking over this bike is an effort - and there's no electric alternative!

347 Guppy

The stroker kit arrived today. Pics are not that exciting!

Here's the crank (still in packaging):

Here's the pistons:

The crank is steel, the pistons some sort of alloy. The crank and rods are Eagle, the pistons Keith Black. I drove them over to Modus in the TVR. Worth having that big boot!

I took a few pics of the car in the drive, just because I could. The car isn't that clean, and you can see again how much brake dust the uprated brakes create:

The 'mouth' is not going to stay like that. Comments I've had are not favourable. I still don't have the ready money to get a front end respray and rid myself of the whole thing, so I'll need to think of something else. I've been told the car looks like a guppy!

Back brakes

Did a small job that I've done lots of times on other cars and it's taken hardly any time. Fitted new rear brake pads. When I fitted the Wilwood kit to the front (see previous posts), I had worried that the brakes would be too frontward biased and sought to correct this to a degree with fitting more aggressive rear pads. So I bought some Mintex 1144's.  So I thought, whip the wheels off (4 bolts a side), whip the rear callipers off (2 bolts a side) and take old pads out and put new in. For whatever reason it was not like this. For a start the old brake pads had hardly any wear, being maybe a couple of mm thinner than the new ones, so I had a sinking feeling I was wasting my time, but when I got the pads out and new in, the callipers wouldn't go over the disks. Lots of head scratching later (and more practically, working the pistons back into the calliper as much as possible) I resorted to sanding down the brake pads with a belt sander. This kept the pads level at least, but because I was trying to take off as little as possible, the pads went in and out of the callipers many times. So what should have been really quick took a very long time.

I finally got it all back together with the brakes binding slightly (well, quite a bit actually), and went out for a spin. After a while, the smell of burning brake pad calmed down a bit and the binding went away. Brakes are first class now - properly bled and virtually new all round.

Back in 2012

Again, progress much slower than expected so far this year, but some significant progress nonetheless. The car went back to Dan Taylor's (expensive habit), and came back with the brakes pressure-bled and an MOT.

I had thought that the master cylinder was on the way out - the brakes would not bleed out properly no matter how many times I tried, and the pedal remained spongy and pumped up. This had lead to somewhat unpredictable braking, which made the car less pleasurable to drive. Dan has a super duper bleeding machine which apparently cost hundreds of pounds that makes short work of bleeding. The other thing that needed doing was some adjustment to the steering and brake callipers. The brake callipers had been hitting the front wishbones on full lock (not sure how it got through the MOT last year...) and my 'fix' had been to cable tie some coolant hose to the wishbones to stop the impact doing any damage. Dan fitted some lock stops to the rack, which limit the lock, but not too much. He also relieved the callipers a small amount to retain some semblance of lock (it doesn't have a great turning circle as it is!). While it was there it went for the MOT, which it passed fine, bar from an advisory on the rear anti-roll bar drop links having some play. I was somewhat surprised as the car has done very few miles since I fitted the brand new Steve Heath drop links last year. 'Cheap Chinese rose joints' was Dan's comment. It's not a big deal to unwind the old joints and fit new, but it's galling because the links are not cheap and come with glowing recommendations from just about everywhere.

I also ordered the stroker kit for the 302. I had wanted to get this from the US - it is cheaper there, but calling the suppliers, there was an 8 week wait before they had stock. Seemed very odd because clearly the market for 302 bits must be far bigger there than here. Because I wanted to get on with it, I ordered my kit from Real Steel. This has mean that there is a slight change in plan, as my original intention was to go with a 331 cu in. kit, and I've ended up with a 347. This means the engine capacity will end up being about 5.7 litres rather than about 5.4. The reason that I wanted to go with a 331 was that in some quarters the 347 has the reputation of using too much oil as the lowest piston ring spans the hole where the piston gudgeon pin goes through. I didn't really want this, but what the hell - it's not like I drive it many many miles and using a small amount of oil is not a  big deal in my book. There's always the compensation of a bit more power anyway! The kit's not here yet, so no pics, but should be here on Tuesday, when I'll need to run it up to Modus where the engine block is so that they can do a quick dummy build to make sure all is well and the block can have final prep.

I also took the car out for a spin.Weather's been fine in the afternoons/early evening over the last few days, so the car's come off SORN and it's been legal! Amazing how many other soft-top owners are too wussy or too precious about their barnet to get the roof down!

On the downside, XJS sport seats do not fit this car. It's annoying because the seats in the car are not the best (they don't really hold you across the shoulders like a proper sports seat does), but the colour and available room for chairs means that a swap in that looks the part is difficult to find. I know that the XJS sport seats do fit TVR Wedges, but it would appear that the Chimaera is different.