ON GUARD

They're on at last, the mudguards that is. I collected them from Arthur, Monday week ago, the pair of universal, stainless, rear, bike mudguards, aluminium stays and a pair of steel brackets that Nigel the blacksmith had fabricated, to fit under the top of each guard.

The stays were easy to fit, one set just bolt onto the back of each hub carrier and the lower stays bolt onto the back edge of the calipers, by replacing a bolt with much longer one. The guards were much to big and would need a chunk cutting off, I placed one of the guards on the wheel with what I thought was sufficient overhang at the front and determined how much to remove. A cutting disc in the angle grinder made short work of that. The steel bracket I bolted on to the vertical stay, set the mudguard onto it and marked out the drill centers.

 

With the mudguard bolted onto the top steel brace, I turned my attention to fitting the lower brace to the guard, I think the intention was to just bolt the stay onto the side of the guard, but I thought the result would be a bit flimsy. I ordered through EBay a half metre of ally strip, 1in x 1/4in and did a bit of forging, trying to match the proper blacksmith's steel one. Blowtorch a hammer and my big vice and the angle grinder and the finished result wasn't far off the pattern.

 Again centers marked and drilled and the brackets attached to guards and stay, with a angled spacer in between and I finally had a pair of rigidly attached mudguards.

I also got to fit the old bike silencers and as I hoped, on a couple of circuits of the block, the engine was now pulling well with no hesitation up the hill, great. The look is compromised, but I will leave these pipes on for the MSVA test, but after the test I will have to experiment with the Brookland cans by gradually reducing the amount of stuffing until I get the same level of power. 

However by the end of the second circuit the car started to slowdown and eventually stalled as I tried to get back up my drive. Both front brakes were smoking and the brakes were fully locked on and the car was going nowhere. I got the brakes to free up after continuously splashing water onto them to cool them and was able to continue up to my garage. The front wheels had always taken some effort to turn them by hand whilst the car had been on the trestles. I assumed that when rolling, the pads would quickly be worn down, but obviously sufficient heat was being generated to gradually expand the discs and eventually lock the brakes up. I will have to remove the pads and grind them down to provide sufficient clearance to allow the wheels to spin freely, allow an hour, but will probably take three.

MORE FIDDELING

The recent spell of good weather and the fact that she is on wheels, has allowed me to work on Marjorie outside in the sunshine.

When I launched Marjorie the long, side panels were only temporarily fitted, just in case I needed to get at anything, but once I was happy that everything seemed fine, I decided it was time to glue and rivet both side panels onto the chassis. First both panels had to come off and the chassis and the panel edges wiped down with white spirit to ensure the adhesive stuck properly. I had kept the tube of adhesive in doors to keep it warm and I was able to place two fine beads, either side of the rivet holes. The amount of glue was just right, with the minimum being expelled as the rivet gun pulled the panel and chassis together. The job was soon completed with very little mess to clean. Although I deployed my compressor and pneumatic rivet gun, for these little 3.2 rivets I found my old, hand pop riveter to be quicker.

Another job was to fit the seat belts, Arthur advised me as to what and where, and Stafford Vehicle Components provide me with a pair of static rear seat belts. It was only when I sat in the seats and adjusted the belts that I realised that long, over the shoulder straps, should cross over at the top of the back rest on way to their respective anchorage points. So it was off with the barrel back again to allow access and swap them over, it looks right now.

I said earlier that I was not happy with the engine, I hope I have identified the problem, if not yet fixed it. I had pulled out the old Moto Guzzi silencers to fit them for the MSVA test as I thought they would be quieter than the Brooklands. I chopped off two 4in lengths from each of the bikes old header pipes, to act as a reducer for the cars smaller side pipes. I got one silencer ready and popped it on in place of the Brooklands and started the engine and it actually sounded louder than my stuffed Brooklands silencer on the other side of the car.

Have I overstuffed the Brooklands? resulting into much back pressure, that might explain the loss of power as I climb a slight hill on my test runs around the block, she's fine on the level and downhill. Next job then, is to semi permanently attached the old bike silencers to the car and do a few runs around the block and see if she pulls better, if that is the case then I will have to start fishing some of that stuffing out of the Brookland silencers. Fingers crossed that it is as simple as that.

I'VE GOT IT COVERED

The hubs that is. I contacted a small firm of precision engineers, based in Sussex, they had originally modified my wheel hubs, before WheelWise laced the hubs and rims together. They quoted a week to make the three hub covers and true to their word they called me on Thursday to say they were ready, the next day I went and collected them. Superb, they fit perfectly and all I now need are the mudguards and stays and Arthur is getting that organised as I type

The other outstanding job was finding out why the speedometer wasn't working. I managed to wiggle my way in between pipes and cables, detach the cable and extract the worm drive from the gearbox, all fine there. Eventually I realised that the ferrule at the instrument end of the cable had worked loose, effectively shortening the length of the inner cable to the extent it wasn't locating in the square drive at the gearbox end.

I pushed the ferrule back on, temporally connected up the speedo and tried it out and it worked fine. I was able to do this as the reversing box has a central neutral position, with the engine running and in first gear the gearbox turned over, but drive wasn't passed onto the back wheel, allowing me to see the speedo working without leaving the garage. I fixed the speedo back into the dash and ticked another job of the task list. Just want to get the number plate to fill that space between the rear lights.