FLASH BACK!

When it came to rebuilding the engine, the vast number of bikes sold in the US (over 500,000) meant there was no shortage of ‘How To’ videos on YouTube. I made notes and realised I’d wasted money on a piston ring compressor – fitting the barrels can be accomplished with nothing more sophisticated than a lollipop stick! The worst part of the rebuild turned out to be removing the ancient baked-on gaskets. This really is an accursed job with no obvious shortcuts if you want to preserve the mating surfaces.

I saved time and money by not splitting the camchain, since it is possible to wriggle the camshaft out once the end bearings are removed. The stuck starter motor was caused by the commutator breaking up, so a replacement was ordered.

For a child of the Airfix era, reassembly was pretty straightforward, just like a big kit. Everything seemed to go logically and soon I had the big lump hovering on the engine stand ready to be mated up to the freshly-painted frame. The expensively restored tubes were protected with bicycle inner tubing and the engine was gently introduced from the right side. Careful joggling of the table height and the engine rotation