Head Full of Snakes Issue #3 is GO!

Finally! Stuart's here in Chch and we are underway with the long-awaited 3rd coming... the riso at school is going real good so far, our 3 color tests almost look too good!???

Planning to launch this sucker in Chch on the 6th of Sept... busy as FUCK til then. Will confirm launch asap...

Norton running!

Ok so I overreacted! The oil leak was actually a petrol leak. I pulled the tank off and used thread sealer on the taps and that seems to have fixed that. Jimi came round while I was doing that and so when the tank was back on we kicked it over. Started first kick again! Jimi adjusted the throttle cable and pretty quickly had it idling at just over 500rpm. Pretty sweet!

I noticed a funny noise in the primary though and when we inspected it noticed that the rotor, which sticks out further now, had hit and destroyed the timing marker that's attached to the primary cover. Bugger. Will look into that, and recess the rotor by whatever we need to to get that clear when I get the new one.

Although, by pushing the rotor out more we're getting the full 70 pounds on the nut onto it. If it's not spaced out like this will it torque up properly?

Norton update: put back together & start!

So I've just spent the last 3 days – literally 3 days, I have done nothing else (I've barely eaten!) – putting this bike back together. I've taken my time mostly and addressed every little problem along the way (apart from a couple of little things). First off I reinstalled the oil system. I had previously pulled this all out when I'd discovered the oil tank was full of some kind of alien looking shit... as well as a bit of rust. Anyway I've cleaned all that out now. There's still a small amount of surface rust in the oil tank, but I thought it'd be ok for a while at least (and, at least, I know what's in there now). I put on all new hose clamps when putting all the pipes back in so everything, theoretically, is nice and tight and hopefully 'sealed'...

Next up I finished putting the primary back together, which, after Jimi's help over the last couple of months, wasn't too hard at all. The rotor is feeling pretty good and tight, and so is the clutch basket! I managed to get a really good even space of .008" between the rotor and stator. I've struggled with this in the past, so hey fuck I musta learnt something eh!

Then I closed up the primary. A momentous occasion for the year... (or so I thought) 

Stripped my carb again and had a good fiddle around, still couldn't see anything obviously wrong. I took off the shitty hoses you can see here but couldn't get any more yet. Surprisingly hard to find?

Put carb on anyway (hoseless), and set up my throttle with a brand new throttle cable. Oiled that sucker overnight and man does it feel good now!

I employed my idiot sticker method again...

Here she is prior to being kicked over for the first time in over a year...

Slightly unbelievably it started second kick! I was surprised because I had no ignition light and the electrics seem to be playing up now, but thought I'd give her a kick and away she went. I've fucked something up though – probably the throttle cable? Although I'm pretty sure it's sweet? – because it was idling really fast and I couldn't get it to drop at all by adjusting the carb. Was idling at about 3000!

I had to go out though and so had to leave it here at this point. I guess I was happy that it was running and that it started so easily. So I parked it up in the garage, pleased that it was almost one whole thing again rather than a bunch of parts spread all over dad's garage.

BUT...

Woke up this morning to the smell of 'old bike' all through the house. Initially I thought wow, that's a good smell to have in the air again. But when I went into the garage there was a pool of oil under the bike. Fuck. It seems to becoming out of the crank-case where it meets the primary. My guess is that it's coming out the three holes where the bolts that hold the primary to the crank-case go. I wiped it away and started to seep out again quite fast. It also seems to be leaking from some of the engine bolts that do up the crank-case at the very bottom.

Norton update: rotor spacer & primary alignment

Been going nuts trying to get the Norton on the road for the summer... James 'Jimi' Woodhams has been lending more than a massive hand in getting this done, and I thought it was about time I put some sorta update on here...

Ok so last weekend Jimi and I went into school to use the lathe there and make up a decent sized spacer for my rotor. Shims weren't gonna do it! Anyway this was my first lesson in using a lathe. To be honest I didn't do fuck all except look and listen, but it was a good intro and next time I'll do some stuff while Jimi watches on and makes sure I don't take an eye out or something...

In my excitement I stupidly forgot to photograph the spacer when we were done! We rushed home and put it on... You can see it in here sitting against the sprocket there.

The rotor sits out more now so that it's better aligned with the stator, and, importantly I think, the shouldered spacer that is supposed to sit over the woodruff key does now actually sit out far enough that it does sit over the key.

 Next up was getting the primary chain aligned properly. Jimi came up with the idea to do it using measurements of the face of the clutch basket rather than the usual method of placing a straight edge across both sprockets...

Surprisingly enough it was actually ok and we didn't need to shim it at all. We then went ahead and set the tension of the primary chain. Which was tough as we'd previously added a spacer to the gearbox (between case and cradle) that has made the gearbox bloody tight! Anyway we managed to knock it back and forwards a bit and got the tension right... (I've been running it too tight previously!)

Norton update...

Saturday the sun came out and Jimmy came over – we worked on the Norton again, a bit hungover though cause we'd all been at my show at the Wunderbar the night before. Jimmy's metal-sprayed my clutch center and has started fitting it to the splines on the mainshaft. It's looking like it's gonna go on there rock-solid now. So tight we need this puller Jimmy made up to get the thing off again.

While Jimmy was working on that I pulled out my oil tank and flushed it out. Man was it full of some fucked up shit! Gonna try and clean out some of the oil lines too. What is this shit!? Grey sludge. How the hell did it get in here? Worried it's finely ground aluminium!? Any advice greatly appreciated. Jimmy also showed me how to anneal my copper washers to try and fix up some of the oil leaks. This shit was fun, I love burning stuff! Oh yeah and Malcolm was down for Bike Night and for our gig so he watched and him and Jimmy tried to figure out who was tougher...

Triumph Thruxton seat finished

My new seat is finally bloody done! It was slow going getting it to mount properly and also be strong enough after I'd cut so much away from the pan (although it's still not as small as I'd imagined I'd make it). I'll stick up some process/working shots of the whole thing at some point soon, I ended up putting aluminium 'rails' under the seat. It's a tight fit and I broke the weld on the little bracket Marty welded onto the tank for the seat to locate into. Will fix that soon, but hoping to take this bike to Dunedin this weekend. It hasn't got a warrant or rego though and I have to get a new tyre – of course there's no Bridgestone BT45s in NZ right now, so thinking about what I might put on instead.

There's still a bunch to do on this bike. I'll put an alloy front mudguard on soon, and then do something about lowering the dials. I'm also thinking about putting a slightly wider rear mudguard on it? I'm really happy with the Trident tank. Enjoying it plain at the moment, but will paint something on it at some point, and also run something (vinyl or leather) up the center of the tank. One thing that's buggin me now is the mufflers... they stick out too much and are too big. I'd like to put little short ones on it, keep the whole thing really 'thin'. Oh and I gotta paint the rear indicator brackets...

Ornamental Conifer & Corpses From Hell

Finally got in touch with Nicolai Sclater of 'Ornamental Conifer' today. He and Maxwell Paternoster (Corpses From Hell) have been doing some very cool shit lately, and since I'm going to be in London soon I thought I'd see if I could meet up with them and maybe do something for the next issue of Head Full of Snakes. The work they both did recently at El Solitario has been doing the rounds because their hand-painting on the bikes is pretty damn cool... a weird hybrid of cartoon/motorcycle gang/vintage signwriting. Often the work is quite over the top, colourful, and really visually engaging. Hopefully we can make a date while I'm in London and see where things go from there. In the meantime here's some work by Nicolai – I got these from the Ornamental Conifer blog here. You can find some of Max's stuff here and here (Corpses From Hell).