Part 3, it's getting there

Continuing on with the work, I managed to get it pretty well cleaned up and damaged parts replaced.

The motor was as mentioned before, covered in grime, oil and about 20 odd years of caked on whatever as it sat unloved.

As cleaning grote by hand is tedious and MESSY, needless to say I didn't take pictures during that phase. You can refer back to the beginning scribblings to get an idea what it looked like when I first started this.

The actual cleaning is messy and time consuming but to make it easier on myself I used a toothbrush (an old one my dear), some wire wool and Autosol, carb cleaner or WD40 in combination. The results were pretty good, even in the hard to get to places such as between the fins on the cylinder barrel on on the head itself.

Judging by the amount that I saw and had to deal with, there might be a leak somewhere between the cylinder and the head. But I decided against an engine strip down as I wanted to see if the wee beastie would run and also to see, after it was all cleaned up and running, if I could detect the source.

It was amazing the places all this gunge could get to; all over the back of the engine, the rear mudguard, the swingarm pivot, the rear hub, the frame rails, and the oil tank.

It all eventually was cleaned up and parts that needed replacing got replaced. A couple things that were replaced were the drive chain which was covered in rust and I suspect the rust had gotten down into the rollers and pins, the overflow pipe from the oil tank was missing so a length of clear tubing was cut to size and added.

I at this time also installed a chainguard as well. The original had gone walkabout years ago for some reason and I discovered that chainguards for B25 Starfires were as rare a frog lips, even on eBay. So I improvised by installing one off a BSA B50 in it's place. The mounting brackets had to be re-positioned a little and some fasteners from my oddment tin were used, but in the end it worked out OK and really doesn't look out of place.

To finish off the engine work, the carb was cleaned up, a brand new silencer was ordered from Lightnening Spares in Sale, Cheshire along with all the rubber bits for the footrests and the gear lever and kick starter.

Here's a picture of it still on the bench just to show what it looks like at present:

And no, I know what you're thinking, the pan of oil underneath isn't coz it's leaking oil. It's after I drained the crankcase and any run-off from using cleaning fluids.

Part 2

A lot of the work that has been done already, and it was pretty much just clean-up of all the grunge that was covering the bike.

And as this was a tedious as well as dirty task, no pictures were taken except for a few times. But in the meaantime, I'll list what I did to make the wee Starfire look more like a motorcycle instead of a field to plant spuds.

Starting at the front end, I remove the front wheel and then the front fender/mudguard. I cleaned the fender/mudguard up and other than an old scrape at the front end, it was in good nick. I sanded the braces down, primed them with some spray paint and then used some black paint from rattle cans.

After that I took the wheel and brakes apart and gave them a good cleaning. The inside of the brake drum I attacked with some sandpaper to get rid of the very light surface rust that was there as well as to rough up the brake lining on the shoes.

With a small wirebrush attachment for the Dremel, I managed to clean up the ribbed hub so it looked a little more presntable than a travelling rust farm. The spokes and wheel got the WD40/Solvol/wirewool treatment.

The wheel hub beaings I drifted out and took to the local bearing warehouse to get replaced. They were actually in great condition, but I felt that after sitting for roughly twenty (20) years a new set was called for.

Aftr dealing with all that, a bigger job came to hand....the forks. Those actually weren't as hard as I thought. After loosening the pinch bolts & top nuts and giving th etop each leg a good wack with a lump hammer and bit of wood, each leg dropped out.

As I didn't have all the tools needed, I didn't replace the seals in the stanchions, but did do everything else that could be done.

The headlight brackets along with the upper and lower crowns were sanded, primed and repainted, the boots were replaced due to dry rot and all the bearings were replaced as well.

The biggest hurdle was getting the stanchions back into the trees and secured. This would be alot easier on two counts; 1) if the fork damping springs were internal instead of external and 2) I had the fork-leg puller upper tool  used to pull the legs up into place.

As th elocation of the damper springs couldn't changed, I was forced to deal with the tool issue which wasn't that hard after all.

I got a pair of fork top nuts, some threaded rod and an asssortment of nuts, bolts and large washers and proceeded to fabricate my own puller upper tool.

I did need a little assistance from Frank Ceeko who drilleed a hole down the center of the nut with his drill press and then using his bench grinder we ground off the flats on the nut so it would fit down through the fork crown.

Then by putting everything together and then screwing into the top of the fork tube, I was able to draw everything up into place. Yeah buddy!!!!

With all that done, and put back together it was time to work on the engine area. That comes in Part 3, which is next.

The work begins....Part 1

As you can see from the last post, I've figured out how to stick piccies on here so all going well, I'll be putting them on here to show what the wee Starfire looked like at the start, progressing up to the finished, and running (hopefully) item.

Anyway, here we go...

When I bought her, she looked in a right state. She was 99% there, but looking kinda manky from some possible oil leaks or needing a good cleaning.

Here she is from both sides:

As you can see, not looking her best. Also included in the picture is one of the active, roaming alarms that are at Thrash 'em Motorcycles. The others aren't shown to keep ne'er do wells from knowing their whereabouts.

A couple of other shots of the wee one in a less than glorious state:

As can be seen from both shots, there is a fairly good amount of grease and grim everywhere, along with some corrosion. And for some reason that's beyond my comprehension, the chainguard is missing, but then it does give a really good view of the condition of the chain itself.

The petcock taps on both the main and reserve sides were gummed up to the point that they would not budge. After liberal soakings in WD40, they finally can be moved, but still with a small amount of stiffness in both which may be a good thing overall.

The following shots are of the engine area to give an idea of how badly they looked:

Gawd what a mess this all is!!!!!!!!! I have no idea why the sidecovers were painted black, they just were. This took a lot a large packet of wire wool, WD40, Solvol AND a huge vat of elbow grease, some green srubbing pads and water to remove the paint from the panels.

I know some people will say that they prefer to leave the patina of age on a bike as it shows character and all, and to a small extent I go along with that.

However in this case, the patina, along with the oil, grease and other muck had to come off. I figured all this may very well be covering small cracks or breaks and they'll never see the light of day if hidden away. Plus, with any leaks that there may be, it'd be easier to spot them if the areas were clean as well as making it easier for me to do work if I didn't get covered in a layer of grime each time I got close enough with a spanner.