A job I had been putting off for a while involved pulling the instrument panel off again. It involves fiddling around behind the headlamp, a particularly inaccessible area, and removing the handlebar clamp. It had to be done though, the indicator relay bracket was threatening to fret through some wires and the ammeter was popping out - not to mention the fact that I couldn't get the screws in to fasten the thing to the nacelle. One of the problems with removing the dashboard is that you have to lift the handlebar clamp completely off. This is because the dashboard has been repaired where ..read more

 A nice February morning saw an opportunity for an 18 mile round trip to Holt, via the coast. I filled it up before I left, and calculations show it's still doing 50 mpg. This is Cley church: The Square Four has been on the road with me for 10 years now. She's looking fine, if a bit grubby! It's going well, though it seems to pink about when you crack the throttle open ..read more

 Here it is, burbling away at the top of the road looking marvellous: The brakes are a little better but still don't inspire much confidence. I have adjusted them again but it's likely that we will re-line them when the wheels come off again. I've also corrected a slight misalignment in the rear wheel. Keen eyes will note it's still wearing the temporary fuel tank in this picture - it's time to make a fuel line. These are the bits we need - some 1/4" fuel pipe, two ferrules, fittings for each end of the line and the little swage we made years ago from two bits of 1/2" square bar: Fi ..read more

Changing or replacing the fork oil on these later Ariels should be a breeze with their neat drain plugs and filler caps and I was approaching this job with all the confidence of the naïve... The stainless filler caps came (I think) from Acme and need a bit of a polish - I have given this a few minutes on a 150 grit wheel and you can still see some machining marks, so we will need something more aggressive. These are 1/2" CEI and fit with a fibre washer underneath: For some reason that I don't currently understand, there is a further 1/2" CEI plug underneath these top screws, which closes on ..read more

 With the fuel cap fitting properly, we can fit the tank trim. This is a long strip of chromed brass which covers up two weld seams and the tank mounting. I have two - a very poor original one, and a shiny chrome one I bought cheaply on eBay which doesn't fit very well. This is the dodgy one. The strip is made with a simple fold at the rear; it hooks under a bar welded to the back of the tank: Once you have it under there, it helps if you push the seat all the way forward in it's mounting lugs and bolt it up tight. This holds the shiny chrome strip in position and will stop it coming ou ..read more

It looks like a detail, maybe even a sign of obsession, but choosing the right thread is actually really important. I've been working on the forks this week - you may have noticed - and one of the bolts I removed was conspicuously coarse - it was a 3/8" BSW bolt, 1 3/4" long: the front wheel spindle clamp bolt. British Standard Whitworth threads are coarse (20 threads per inch) and consequently strong for their size. What they are not good at is staying tight when subject to vibration. You use them in alloy, but you will find that virtually all the other threads on a bike of this vintage are ..read more

Another little job today - fork drain plugs. These are just 2BA cheese head screws cut down to about 1/4" and provided with fibre washers: To give them a better chance of retaining some fork oil, I've loaded them with Loctite 577 thread sealant.  The other thing that I need to remember is that I need to find 7.5 fl oz of SAE 30 oil to put in each fork leg. Also in the news today - the right hand tank knee rubber is now on, I've tightened some more bolts and I've scraped enough paint off to allow the petrol tank cap to fit ..read more

 The tank trims and rubbers were not a job I had been looking forward to. The trims were a bit mangled - they are thin aluminium, available new but very expensive and of course as I have said multiple times, I won't be a 'cheque book' restorer - and I knew they would have to be 'manipulated' to get them back on. They fit around and underneath the welded plates that retain the rubbers, bending down into a depression on the tank (the bit I had cut out and rewelded) with a beaded edge laying flat (!) on the tank, around the knee rubber. Like this: It doesn't look too bad does it! I remov ..read more

 Lots and lots of little jobs today. I've put the front wheel back together and back in the bike, noticing that the centre stand is off the deck when the front wheel is high enough to come out - I used the scissor lift to get the bike high enough; that centre stand is going to have to come off again. There's a separate post on the work I've done on the fuel tank, but there are some other bits to talk about here. These 2 BA screws hold the front engine plate cover in place - I must find a better way of holding small screws for trimming: Doesn't that look nice: By the way, I used a sma ..read more

 Moving on to the front brake, it's time to unearth the mysteries of the full width hub. This is the view from the parts book: It looks like the brass bearing retainer used in the half width hub is still there but now has a sheet steel ring riveted to it retaining a small felt grease seal. This one has been a bit butchered and the steel ring is loose: The one on the other side is still in place. That tube passes through the bearing and acts as a centralising mount for the brake plate: As might be expected, there's a thin coating of rust on the drum, easily cleaned with various abr ..read more