NO POINT OF REFERENCE

I took the fork stanchions to work and rolled them across the surface table in the tool-room; both of them had an interesting sine-wave shape. This went some way to explaining the constantly weeping fork seals (I thought) and was obviously the result of a past accident. I checked the yokes for straightness; and decided to straighten them as best I could in a vice with the aid of Thor, god of hammers.

The swinging arm bearings seemed to be OK; changing them would be difficult, so I left them in place. The seat cover was torn in a couple of places and looked tatty with the hand-painted BSA on the tail; under the cover the foam pad was fine. The pressed steel base was split in a number of places, probably because most of the rubber buffers it was supposed to sit on had gone missing. One of the technicians at work (who was also a classic bike fan) offered to weld the seat base and did a really good job on it.

By this time SRM had sent a comprehensive list of all the things that they believed should be done to the engine. Some procedures weren’t entirely