classic motorcycle forum

They are very definitely compression olives. They are not the usual soldered on brass jobbies as Leon suggests. They are one of the reasons the system was found untrustworthy. Theoretically they are limited use items and can only be dismantled and replaced very few times before they are too crushed to reuse. Good luck with that with your average Short Arms/Long Pocket rider. Both olives AND pipe should be replaced every time they are removed. Never happens of course.
Sorry I can’t remember the thread, straight, not tapered BSP rings a bell. Easy enough to try a few standard BSP fittings. I’d start with 1/4’’ BSP.
The most important to keep tight is the line from engine to oil tank. The system relies on this line to pressurise the tank to push the oil up to the sight feed where it falls by gravity down to the engine. Both lines need to be tight but a faintly slack pressurising line is rapidly catastrophic.
Laying the lines properly is equally important.. The last SOS I saw had the delivery line rise upwards from the sight feed to be neatly tucked away under the tank before eventually dropping to the engine. Good luck getting that one to work reliably.
All in all the Villiers system can work well but the only safe way you can tell its working properly is to visually check the oil level every time you stop to see how much is being used. And it needs to use a lot. There is no viewing bubble as found in later era Japanese bikes and that brings its own minor complications. Dipstick anyone ?
As you may gather I am not a fan. Petroil may not be elegant but it is reliable.

I have a friend who is completing the build on a very special SOS 197 super sport and is having problems identifying the thread sizes and the auto lube pipe fittings for the connections into the crank case and barrel. Can anyone help in identifying the parts needed, we understand it would have been a standard type olive compression fitting onto a copper pipe, but we don’t know any sizes.  Your help would be greatly appreciated. 

Out the exhaust pipe?

Hopefully as an almost-invisible blue haze. Get it wrong and it's dripping out the exhaust, and covering your boots and trousers and the back half of the bike as it spews out from every conceivable joint.

The presence of the built-in return pump makes your engine "dry sump" rather than "total loss" (or "wet  sump" as Haycraft rather misleadingly calls it in his Book of the JAP Engine). In principle the oil goes back to the oil tank after it's had a lap through the engine.

There were many JAP oiling systems, but 1932 was the first year of dry sump: first with a double-acting Pilgrim, then after with a built-in double acting JAP pump built in. I guess the racy engines were a bit weird. What year's you engine?

You'll be able to see the oil going into to the engine through the window on top of the Pilgrim pump. Make sure you understand where it goes next: as it goes into the end of the timing-side main shaft there is often a seal of some kind (e.g. a sprung brass quill) which can be missing, and then an oilway should be drilled all the way to the big end. Use your oil can to give a good squirt of oil into the main shaft - it should come out of the big end bearing. If not, double check with your JAP engine man. (I bet he checked!) The big end will die first without oil, so it pays to be certain.

Have fun!

Leon

Edit: OK, I've been back through the thread (not much of it!!!!) and found photos on p7 that show the oil layout. There's no return pump per-se? Just the oil pushed through the flappers into the small chamber underneath, with the neck at the back where the oil exits. Onto the dirt track originally, but better just dump it into a catch bottle for the road. What a waste of good oil!

Nice.

I know nothing about these modern (!) JAP engines, but from 1914 JAP started using the "oil box" under the timing chest as part of the oiling system, which was powered by crankcase compression/vacuum. Are the four little round things flapper valves that power the oil circulation? How does the oil get to the big end?

The oiling system in veteran/vintage JAP engines works well, but I've seen more than one engine where owners have tried to "help" oiling by drilling extra holes that in fact stop the oiling system from working properly. Although the engines are "total loss", properly set up essentially no oil should end up on the road.

Leon

The oil is fed in fro mthe side of the timing case by a double Pilgrim pump (with another pump inboard of it, which is a return pump  - long story), the feed from the Pilgrim that goes into the engine is (iirc) fed down timing-side crank shaft, and into the cases (whether it's fed direcly to the big end or not, I'm not sure, I'd have to refer to my Fenner).  The other feed from the Pilgrim goes up to the rocker box where it's gravity fed onto the rocker-shafts and elsewhere.

Eventually all the oil end up in the sump where it's fed by piston pressure into the oil-trap chest and (as designed) out to atmosphere via the "flapper" valves in the photo (there's little metal discs inside those silvery circles that move freely (when clean....).

On this engine the oil that gets through the flapper discs is then routed into a return pump that feesd back up to the oil tank.  I think this was a modification that came out of Formula 500 racing where the original design of the engine: total loss, wasn't really acceptable on tarmac race tracks (while being absolutely not a problem for shale).  These engines were the best available for Formula 500 racing before the Manx Norton 500 single came along: good spread of torque, simple to work on, and reliable (or so I've read!)


If your older engines are total loss, but no oil is getting to the road.... where is it going?

Wicks don't always seem to be fitted to mags, same as the little felt effort that used to be in distributors years ago.
 As the post above says, a tiny bit of grease on the face cam or cam ring is more than enough.