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21
British Bikes / Re: Troubleshooting a JAP Special
« Last post by Rockburner on July 22, 2026, 02:38:00 PM »
So... er...  another installment.

This is how I left the engine:


I started the evening by fitting the front engine plates:


Nice and easy.


I then remembered I wanted to safety wire the sump plug


Not my finest work, but should be good.


Then I fitted the output nut


Can you say "f****** tight" on air?


So far so good - the bits I have left...


Managed to fit the needle into the carb (middle position of 3 for now)


Had to disengage the other end of the cable to do it though!  I've a nasty feeling that I may need to make/buy a new cable to be honest.


Because there's an extra ferrule at the twist-grip end to allow the cable to fit snugly into the adjuster for the quick-action twistgrip (why a quick-action?? why not!)
But with the ferrule fitted, the slide doesn't drop all the way to the bottom.
I ended up removing the extra ferrule for the time being.


I then tried the clamps on the rear engine plates again...


And took the legs off the engine...



Can you tell where this is going.....

Can you??

In the immortal statement the actress said to the bishop....


"IT'S IN!"

:D :D

Took me a only a short bit of sweating and straining, with some liberal swearing for good measure, then some fiddling about to get the engine bolts into place after they all had a good brass-brushing!
The thing is fugging heavy, and I've just remembered i was going to weight the thing before I fitted it.... ah sod it. :D


Started to re-fit all the other little bits: this is the new coil:


I wasn't happy with it sitting right over the exhaust, so after some faffing about looking for a spacer:


I fitted it on the other side of the head steady


nyloc


Primary chain


little fishy swimmy swimmy! :D



The oil pipes: eventually I want to fit transparent ones here so I can see the oil flowing, but they do tend to go foggy rather quickly... so.. maybe.



I WAS tempted to leave the exhaust off... but decided that would be childish. ;)




Carb is on too....
Note to self - those nuts are a bit of a git to fit - you need to hang the carb at the very end of the studs and work it down because the studs are so close to the body, the nuts can't be spun down if the studs are protruding all the way through, ie if the carb is "in situ" right up against the manifold..


Cable routes, again - not brilliantly happy, but we'll see - the throttle cable might be better off OVER the frame rail... then then it might bash on the tank underside... we'll see.  The slide does seem to be free to move.


The plug wire seems a bit long... that may be trimmed a bit and the old NGK cap fitted.


The coil in situ



Routing for the mag-coil loom, again TBC


Did the plug up tight


That slightly long engine bolt at the bottom left IS used, and not just for to hold the cases together - the primary chain case has a bracket that is mounted to it (IIRC).


Kill switch wiring, again, TBC.


The only things left to fit are the tank, seat and chain cover.

Then... err.. it's time to kick it, I suppose....

I tried rotating it by hand... and I CAN get it over compression by hand... soo... that could mean it's lower than I thought (or maybe I'm heavier than I look??)

I'm not sure what to think at this point... it could be an abject failure, it could fire up straight away....

22
Identify these bikes! / Re: L'il Villiers
« Last post by cardan on July 21, 2026, 09:03:50 AM »
Excellent: the new photos show that the headlamp is indeed the "prewar" VEC item with the flat back, so I can officially lean back towards "late pre war" rather than "early post war". It would be good to ask for engine and frame numbers: so far as I know the 9D number is on top of the gearbox (best viewed from the left side) pre war, then vertically on the back of the gearbox just post war, then easy to read on the right end of the gearbox from around 1947-8 or so. But I don't know where the frame number is on an Excelsior Universal/Waratah is in these years???

Leon
23
Identify these bikes! / Re: L'il Villiers
« Last post by R on July 21, 2026, 01:56:35 AM »
Hmmm, not a whole lot more info  !

https://australia.hibid.com/lot/312716531/original-waratah-barn-find--rare-sydney-made-bike

Lotta minor details are different to my 1945/46

Not sure its even worth that $500 opening bid.
But mabbe being 'rare' will make it worth it ?

24
Identify these bikes! / Re: L'il Villiers
« Last post by cardan on July 20, 2026, 09:03:28 AM »
Just pre-war or just post-war is often a difficult call. There's a "1914" single cylinder, shaft drive FN current for sale here in South Australia - it's a lovely bike but I strongly suspect it's actually 1920-build. For FN the war was pretty clear cut: Liege was overrun, the FN factory was taken over for German war work and there were no motorcycles made from 1914 until 1920. The first bikes of 1920 were pretty-much 1914 models.

Not sure what happened at Excelsior, but they did manage to build 5000+ Welbikes during the war. The Excelsior/Waratah in question has some pre-war-ish features, like the gear change and the bolt-on rear subframe, but a hint of postwar with the headlamp and (maybe) the front fork. The other well-known Australian bike of the era was the Acme (much more Australian-made than the Waratah), and it used the Sackville pressed-steel fork pre-war and the Webb post-war, so maybe there is an element of that here. Some Acmes for the early war years (1940-ish) used the "modern" "bullet" Villiers headlamp rather than the old "tobacco tin".

So very hard indeed to spot differences between a 1939 model bike and the first bikes delivered in 1946, when getting stuff out the door was more important than adhering to a catalogue specification. The 1946 Waratahs and the 1946 Excelsiors may have differed: if there were left-over pre-war parts in the factory I know where I'd send them! Numbers will give more clues.

Leon
25
Identify these bikes! / Re: L'il Villiers
« Last post by R on July 20, 2026, 08:26:36 AM »
Apparently its coming up for auction - NSW
These are some pre-auction publicity.
Hopefully all will be revealed.

I'd opt for prewar, not sure that external gear lever was ever postwar on Waratahs ?
Anything is possible after 80+ years though.

26
Identify these bikes! / Re: L'il Villiers
« Last post by cardan on July 20, 2026, 06:06:31 AM »
Presumably the bike is in Australia?

The transfer on the right side of the tank looks to be Waratah, and the engine/gear unit seems to be Villiers 8D/9D... Waratah first had these bikes in mid-1937, and got them back after the war in mid-1946. Post war Excelsiors had the gear change through the tank, as did Waratahs that we know about.

Let's guess late 1930s, or 1946. Looking at the headlamp, I might lean towards 1946. But, as 33d6 has taught us, the numbers will tell!

Leon
27
Identify these bikes! / Re: L'il Villiers
« Last post by R on July 20, 2026, 04:08:49 AM »
That tank decal looks to be Waratah.

So what year/model could that be ?

https://scontent.fbne5-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/740271888_1790259692332649_3312247724373031733_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_tt6&cstp=mx1537x2048&ctp=s960x960&_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=946e27&_nc_ohc=kJQxXcJtFoUQ7kNvwH8uF5T&_nc_oc=AdofLX6NK3hWDvVLAjACoCBPj-BvovfkVgqOY22OIokNN5ZpHIP5_UWYEQCrAhoRAyI&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fbne5-1.fna&_nc_gid=WIC_VlECCqNMaqjinRboCA&_nc_ss=7b289&oh=00_AQCIBQxBlIXEt4urO54Ivs6MFufhp1uL-brNhQ9Uhv8lew&oe=6A63556C
28
Identify these bikes! / L'il Villiers
« Last post by R on July 19, 2026, 07:46:45 AM »
OK, whatizit  ?

Looks a bit Waratah, but doesn't have the gearchange through the petrol tank.
And the forks look chunkier ?

Coming up for auction next month ?, so may be more details then.
Enough missing to keep the new owner awake at night ....

https://scontent.fbne5-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/748568222_1796919814999970_838114587227374269_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_tt6&cstp=mx2048x1537&ctp=s960x960&_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=946e27&_nc_ohc=hnAfGCHmubYQ7kNvwH1FWNH&_nc_oc=AdrBsc8nGpxvg45271Ats07ehamqEF7w9WnYFBDWnC35VFmd76WSt4S9ttJf2Fj-zHk&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fbne5-1.fna&_nc_gid=i98g2pvOTsLEitBXwkCJRw&_nc_ss=7b289&oh=00_AQAG6z-H2xGx6mrjqCG21_NkfOEULAvJB9j0eGGUxO1l4Q&oe=6A623580

A good tank clean may discern some remnants of a decal ??

Obviously been used for possum spotting !

29
British Bikes / Re: Troubleshooting a JAP Special
« Last post by Rex on July 17, 2026, 09:39:12 PM »
Near Selsey eh? It'll be entered  in the Goodwood FoS next year then..
30
British Bikes / Re: Troubleshooting a JAP Special
« Last post by Rockburner on July 17, 2026, 01:42:31 PM »
Well, they say you never know until you look....

So today I took a spin in down to Selsey, where I'd seen a large JAP branding on one of the small garage-type buildings.  What do you know, right by the sea there's a guy who builds and raced JAP grass-track bikes and Formula 500 cars. 

I'd spotted the place when we first moved here, but today was the first time I'd actually walked through the door.  Face to face really does make a difference. Lovely guy, very very knowledgeable and he pulled a oil union from one of his old rocker boxes and let me have it!  In turn I gave him my details with a promise that if he needs a pair of hands in a rush, I'm only 10 minutes away.

Turns out the union was still BSP, but i was able to adapt it, running a die down the thread does seem to have worked (and I needed to clean the thread in the rocker box too, obvs),  but the union has fitted beautifully now.

Seeing as I was on a roll, I fitted the oil line from the pump to the head while I was at it.

(yes it needed 3 copper washers....)



Pump end.


Then I removed the two large bolts that hold the rocker box down, and fitted the head-steady, this is why I needed the oil union before I could get much further - you can't fit/remove the oil union with that head steady in place.


My Dad never learned to weld....

(mind you, I haven't yet either! :D )



I even got as far as wiring up the Mag to see if there was any sparks!


And there were! 

but they were pretty small and weak... so it could be a shite plug, or well, we'll see...

Took the timing wheel off and put the primary gear cog in place, but haven't done anything up yet.



Next time I'm in here... it's just a case of bolting on the front engine plates, and doing that nut up TIGHT (with Loctite)....

And....

I can put it in the frame....

Well.... first I have to figure out where the bits I still have left over should have been fitted....  worryingly... one of them is a rather large diameter, but shallow, nut.  IE it seems like a specific use-case nut....  oooo-er...
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