CLEVER COGS
Working on classic bikes is a process of continuous problem solving. With modern bikes you buy a part and fit it – job done! Where’s the challenge in that? By contrast, dismantling a classic bike is like an archaeological excavation. You never know what you will find. Evidence of past misdeeds are common, committed because of penury or incompetence. Read on, dear reader, to discover my tale of derring do!
Nearly six years ago I bought my Gold Star. It is a 1957 DBD34 in American configuration with high bars and lots of chrome. It was imported to New Zealand in the 1990s by a ‘Triumph man’ and, consequently, saw little use. When I acquired it, it had less than 15,000 miles on the clock.
I had owned a number of other BSAs and then owned a beautiful little rigid B33, but I quickly found that I lost interest in riding any other bike than my new Goldie, so I sold the B33. I decided that my Goldie would be my one and only classic bike. With this decision, however, came the realisation that my Goldie would need to be as practicable a mount as possible to fill all my riding needs, from rallying to everyday use. So I developed a list of issues that needed addressing (which is still growing, by the way).
Some were simply unavoidable items of urgent maintenance. In the first few weeks I noticed oil weeping from the forks due to the breakdown of the seals caused by pitting of the stanchions, leading to my first major maintenance project. Others were more subtle, like the carburetion problems which made riding at low revs a jerky and ragged experience. I have previously written about the saga of overcoming that issue (see RC211).
While riding to
