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41
British Bikes / Re: Troubleshooting a JAP Special
« Last post by Rex on July 23, 2026, 09:30:56 PM »
Good stuff.
I know you believe it to be the fuel filter lip, but on most recent new carbs I've bought the very thin fibre washer is too stiff to flatten and seal, but after a night of soaking and swelling, a quick tighten the following morning sorts it.
42
British Bikes / Re: Troubleshooting a JAP Special
« Last post by Rockburner on July 23, 2026, 07:20:19 PM »
And so begins the teething issues....

This damn banjo union will not stop weeping.


I have pissed about with it for a couple of hours now, and discovered something.

The bloody filter plastic has a partial lip in it!  I have a spare one and it has it too!
You should be able to just about make it out on this macro shot:


It "keys" to this area of the mating faces where the filter plastic overspills from the float-bowl body:


You can't make it out, but in this shot it's slightly skew and so sits proud a bit.


I don't know if that lip is enough to prevent a petrol-tight seal... but I do know I can't get the fecker to seal, no matter how tight I get the banjo bolt.  I was getting worried I'd strip the thread in the (new) float bowl!

It's definitely coming from the upper part of the banjo union. 


FFS

I may head over to the Ardingly AutoJumble on Sunday (if I can), the AMAL specialists are normally there so I can ask them about it in person (with the community of old bike geezers face to face tends to get you more information).

If that reveals nothing, then I'll have a go with Hylomar or something like I did with the Monobloc reservoir cover, it might help.

And I figured I'd stick the end-can on too.
(after a quick polish :D )
43
British Bikes / Re: Troubleshooting a JAP Special
« Last post by Rockburner on July 23, 2026, 07:17:19 PM »
It's a nice Thursday afternoon - I really ought to be enjoying the sunshine.

Hey ho, back to the shed.

First thing I did was have another go to see if the mag was producing sparks: It was, they're not huge, but they're there.



So I pulled down the tank, after pondering which needs to be fitted first - seat or tank. 
It's a bit easier to fit the tank first.
Here's the first problem...


Petrol hose is about 2-3 inches too short now. :(

Luckily I had grabbed Dad's filthy bag of filthy hoses last time I was at the old folks home. :D


Found some nice unused braided fuel hose, which matched what was already in use, and there's plenty of it.
I still trimmed it a short as I thought I could get away with.
(The whole bike is built up "as if" it were a race bike, lightweight, minimalist etc, so I may as well carry on that theme where I can).


Re-fitted the oil lines.


I then tried to get it spinning enough to check the oil was flowing, which proved a thankless task. I even pulled the feed off the pump to check there was flow from the tank, which there was.

So, I stood looking at it for a bit....

Then realised I may as well give it a kick, so splashed some 98Ron E5 into it...



https://youtu.be/uREKeUSCjrE

HOLY $%^&&ING SHIT!!!  IT'S ALIVE!!!!

MUWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!!

I genuinely swear to any deity you choose, that was the 2nd time I kicked it with the plug in!! :D :D :D

I will admit, the first kick was promising.... there was a "crack" of a very definite ignition, it just didn't catch.

I am SOOOOO $%^&&ing chuffed right now!!  When I stopped the video I was laughing manically and couldn't stop myself for a minute! 

  :banana-wrench:  :banana-wrench:  :banana-wrench:  :banana-wrench:  :banana-wrench:

I still can't believe it fired up so easily!!

There's still a fair bit to do before it's road-ready, but most of it is tinkering, then tuning the carb a bit and making sure it's the ignition isn't "too" advanced - but $%^&& me... I am gobsmacked.
44
British Bikes / Re: Troubleshooting a JAP Special
« Last post by Rex on July 23, 2026, 05:09:58 PM »
It's like watching one of those comedy semi-porn films of the 1970s, where you whizz through all the "do your windows need cleaning again Mrs Bloggs?" boring bits to get to the good stuff..... and there's no good stuff.
Or so I'm told... ;)
45
British Bikes / Re: Troubleshooting a JAP Special
« Last post by cardan on July 22, 2026, 11:38:33 PM »
That head has so few fins! Good luck with the start-up.

Leon
46
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....

47
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
48
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 ?

49
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
50
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.

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