classic motorcycle forum

I reckon your vice is as collectable as your bike will be.
What is the intended rolling chassis?

So, back in the sauna, err, sorry, shed.

I took a look at the Pilgrim Pump banjo unit first, to confirm what is going on with the oil feeds.
This is the feed pipe top banjo fitting:

and the bottom end:


As you can see, neither have a "channel" inside the fitting, so my thoughts are that for decent oil feed, both "male" fittings really should have a channel.

This is the outlet from the Pilgrim pump:


No channel.
So - I figured I could swap to the new banjo post I received inadvertently.


....


Have you ever known anything on this project to be that simple??



....


This is the new banjo post flapping around loose in the Pilgrim pump.


Here they are back to back.


the NEW fitting is 1/8" BSP 20tpi.
the diameter fraction is "internal".... Edwardians!
the outer diameter of the threads is 0.378, (nominally 0.383 according to Zeus)

the OLD fitting is 1/4" BSP 19tpi (wtf?? BSP is weird),
the outer diameter is 0.510 (nominally 0.518, Zeus says)

So - the fitted Pilgrim pump is a weirdo too! ffs.

Luckily I don't need to chase down yet another sodding banjo post, because the old one on the pump is fine.
The new 1/8"BSP banjo will be thrown into the box of useless bits.

I dug out a couple of copper washers for the Pilgrim pump banjo, have I mentioned in the past my opinion of felt washers...





Next job was to try the timing box with some oil in.


Dribbling some oil on the cam(s).


Fitted up with the new pushrods (I tidied up the excess epoxy a bit too, but there wasn't a lot).



STILL clickety clack. 

ffs.

So I took some time to have a damned good look at the timing chest mechanisms, and I still can't really see anything wrong at all.

The inlet follower DOES get VERY close to the casing when the cam is "off", and I was wondering if this very very slight mark was an indicator of that...


There's a possibly corresponding "nick" on the very edge of the boss that holds the camshaft in the casing :
(right in the centre of the image)


So, I took the follower I've designated as the "inlet" and shaved off a tad of a chamfer on the lugs:






I also took a sharp knife and shaved off a tad of a chamfer on the boss in the cases:


Close up:


There's now a significantly bigger gap when the follower is on the lower part of the cam.


Did it make a difference I hear you ask??



...


did it buggery. :roll:

So I carried on with the aim of making the notches in the followers to allow better oil flow to the moving parts.


Advice from the guru was to do both, but make sure they are on "different" sides so they aren't going to interfere with each other.


I'm nigh on giving up on trying to solve this damned "click-clak" sound.  It ONLY happens when the pushrods are in place and under compression from the valve-springs.  Remove that compression and the timing chest is utterly silent when it rotates.

A metric spec, but clearly not a metric thread.
I read somewhere many years ago that the early US loco's (the ones always featured in Westerns) used Imperial threadforms until US manufacturing and standards caught up.

Learning about various thread forms is one of the great entertainments of ancient machinery (not just motorcycles). In the early days of the automotive industry there were three great centres of industry, USA, UK, and Europe. Of which Europe had several major subsets, France Germany and Italy with activity elsewhere on top of this. None of these areas really spoke to each other. They couldn't, there was only surface post and ships, let alone all the different languages, even friendly and helpful communications took months so all played alone. All had the same problems. All had much the same knowledge base, machinery, metals and men to work with and all invariably came up with much the same answers to their problems but not quite hence the weird mixture we find today.
Everyone has known the need for standardising these things for over a hundred years but we haven't managed it yet and I doubt we ever will. Human beings can be remarkably contrary.
Working on an old motorcycle is just a pleasant way of learning all this history and ain't it fun.

PS
Just be glad you haven't had to dive in to metric stuff. That's another world of mystery all of its own.
   

Interesting conversation with the Guru this afternoon....

I hadn't realised it, but that banjo "post"  fitting has a counterpart in the Pilgrim pump outlet, which is BSP as standard, and the Rocker box fitting is BSC as standard.

Here's photos of the 2 parts from the supplier...





Apart from the machined channel on the upper part.... they're both nigh on identical banjo fittings.  It's quite within the bounds of probablity that the BSP pump outlet part (the lower photo) has been modernised to have the channel cut into it to improve oil flow and that photo is of an older style part, so the parts would look virtually identical when you're just picking them up and throwing them into a package.

So it's quite likely I've just been sent the wrong part...  hey ho, I can easily see a mistake like that happening, we'll see what they say at the suppliers....