Rebuilds and Mods

The list of things I did to Yellow Peril is quite extensive – by the time the bike did its last miles with me I’d replaced almost all of the Philips screws with Allan heads, and all the key ones had been coated with locktite. The Timing cover screws had been replaced as I’ve mentioned with special screws with a plastic insert which did a fine job of holding the points in place, a considerable relief let me tell you. 

 

In addition, I’d replaced the seals on all the shocks, and when a Haynes manual says some force may be required, what it actually means is a bloody great mallet and a lot of cursing, or more sensibly, don’t try this at home folks! 

That was just some of the small stuff I did. I’d also coated the downpipes in Zinc (not the nice plating either) because did I mention the finish wasn’t great? and chemically blacked them myself which was in reality some sort of high temperature spray called chemical blacking. 

I’d rebuilt the top end twice. Every 12k miles,  although the second rebuild was minor by comparison, reground the valves (twice), decoked the head, found that the tappets and camshaft were too soft on the first rebuild and with dads never failing help stoned them clean and had them case hardened. 

I'd also replaced the cam chain tensioner. I should probably have fitted needle roller bearings to the cam, but given what happened to the bike it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t. 

There’s more, most of it being small stuff like more locktite on many key bolts (which I didn't replace with something better, new and better headlight bulbs, plus all the usual exigencies of bike maintenance back then – not forgetting boiling the chain regularly in grease and causing a massive stink in whatever place I was in, which wound everyone around me up, especially mum who was a saint about the whole thing. Did I mention replacing the cam chain tensioner? The list went on and on and included replacing wiring, and as I've said already plug caps, those being the simplest thing I did.

In the end, I did get the bike working reliably, but on balance, while I learned a lot it so wasn’t worth it. I think back then it was something you just accepted if you were going to put any sort of miles on a bike!