GregT

I get my lead acid bike batteries from Don at Pit Lane out in the country. He's still got stock of genuine Yuasa.

Most of the dual voltage chargers simply switch in a resistance to drop the output as needed. I see a Utube vid of a 12v bulb being used as a resistance. Just try bulbs till you get an outut just over 6v, Watch and check to avoid overcharging.

I had an uncle who farmed there up to the 70's I think. Spent a couple of holidays there in the 60's

Chop strand is unpleasant to use. The bike/kart repacking mat is much nicer.

If you're still going to pack the muffler, rather than fiberglass try what I use on racebike mufflers. Kart shops sell a muffler repack material which is a woven material in sheets about 500X500. It's quite thin so I think would fit between the perf tubes. I usually use stainless wire to hold it onto a perf core. It seems to have a long life in 4 strokes. The 2T karts saturate it in oil which is why they repack.

Have you got the cover for the cylinder head ? That at least should be polished. It's the one thing that makes the ramair versions stand out.

Good recovery on both the problems. For some reason the X1/9's seem to have 2 or 3 jesus nuts. which if they come loose do serious damage. That shaft damage was most likely caused by the nut loosening. I found on ours the guy who fixed a rear suspension balljoint hadn't adequately tightened the nut on the end of the axle/hub carrier. Discovered it on a test drive and limped it back before anything major fell off. Wheel could go in and out 2 inches when i got back. Good design doesn't leave things up to how tight a nut is done up.

Not really - but the bean counters love them as you sell more parts.

It's not optimum - but it does work. The flat 6 won't have a lot of overlapping vacuum so distribution should be good enough. From experience with a 36/36 Weber on a hot 202, the volume of the main log of the manifold is fairly critical. Too small and the ends starve. Too big and response goes away.

Palmside in ChCh would be worth an email.

Ettore knew what he was doing. Even if most of his stuff is fiendishly difficult to reproduce. The chassis forgings where tube meets rail are state of the art for the period. Welding at the time wasn't trusted - with good reason. Looking forward to seeing the clutch parts done. The Bugatti clutch is a clever semi-centrifugal device. Keep up the good work.

I saw the run of JAP's for 500cc cars. Before assembly. Dark brown chromate on the crankcase satings. Wasn't told who did it.

As you're in Auckland I'd give Ken MacIntosh a ring. A large proportion of Manx Norton engine castings are Magnesium so he'd know who's got chromate in the area. I've seen bits come out of Auto Restorations here in ChCh which have been chromate treated so it's available. Some years back I was trying to do a restoration on castings which had been done with a greenish chromate. Much investigation revealed it was an obsolete NATO treatment. Black/brown seem to be all that's available.

Remembered a problem which cropped up with mine. Unless yours has been modded or is a CF2, you'll have drum brakes all round. I found that even well balanced fronts showed signs of being out of balance. Narrowed the problem down to the drums. The worst one had the OD 5mm off center from the drum inner. Very poor castings. Used a mates big lathe to machine the od concentric and never had a problem again. I was told the accepted fix was to go to a place which could balance wheels in place on the vehicle. in the 80's there was one place in ChCh. No idea if any still do it.

Mine was short w/b. I'm not sure a PC diff is what you'd want now. From memory it was about 3.5:1 which really did limit me to 13in wheels. 14's or 15's are a much better size now - 15's in particular as there are a lot of Jap vans on that size. See what it's got in it now, get it running well and make the decision on diff ratios based on what you've got in front of you.

Vin plate on mine was stamped Waterloo diesels. That company doesn't exist now. Possibly went out of business mid/late 90's

Have you found the compliance plate yet ? Curious if it's another one of Waterloo Diesels jobs.

Interesting. The cam blanks I was told have a very low reject rate. Maybe a specialist foundry.

Some time back, talking to my local camshaft regrinder - who has a contract with Cosworth USA for "import" cams - I was told that 90% of the cast iron blanks come from Turkey. I'm wondering if the fairly recent quakes there have affected the supply to the point where manufacturers are now using alternatives to CI.

I bought mine as a 2l petrol converted to a camper. Ripped out the bunks etc but kept the lining and the PC Cresta diff. After one extremely expensive trip to Teretonga where we had a headwind all the way and had blown our fuel budget by Gore it got the LD28 conversion. An outfit in Waterloo Rd ChCh did it. They were doing one LD conversion a week at that time. When I went to pick it up I was met by a mate from speedway who'd already driven it and raved about how quick it was compared to the others they'd done. Told them what the diff was. It would cruise at 115k with two bikes on board. Never did find out absolute top whack as over 120k it was still accelerating - but very slowly. Went to most NZ race circuits in the following 5 years Puke to Teretonga. Had to keep it on 13in rims as 14's would have geared it too tall. Bit hard on rear tyres - rolled one off the rim running fast and empty once. Rust killed it ultimately. Far as i know it's now a mobile shed on a farm around Waddington. The wife loved it. She dragged off a Porsche once. Nail it hard and the left front got very light. From my experience I'd look hard at a taller diff than standard. But also fit bigger rims. They've got enough torque to pull something taller.

Sprint car and midget full width axles simply have a shrunk on flange for the final drive. It'd be easy enough to scotch key your setup if you wanted belt and braces.

Exhaust box....An empty tube - say 4inOD 1.6mm wall. Across the back of the car. Your two sides discharging into it straight in 90deg to CL. Discharge pipes from each end. 1 1/2in OD. Length inside box to be perf tube same 1 1/2in OD. Close/blank off the inner ends of this and make them overlap with a figure 8 support in the center of the box. 90 deg bends outside the main tube for the discharge pipes to point them out the back. This will work - and not be too noisy.

Yeah. Looks like it may be the bolt on the end of the crank which fails. That's judging by the pics as i can't open the parts fische. In my experience those are usually a dry loctite coated HT bolt which is often put in on the line using a pneumatic tool. Very easy to overtorque I'd think. I once had a GS1000 in the shop which had never been opened from new. I finished up using a 2ft long bar with another 3ft piece of tube over that to get the alternator retaining bolt on the crank end undone. 12mm fine thread and way overtightened. I'd doubt if there's any offset on the bores. Very rare on flat engines.

Talk to WWS about respoking in a heavier gauge spoke. If you're going to do more of this riding.

There's an old trick for endurance races/runs where you wire each pair of spokes together where they cross. If you do break one it's not going to get caught up in anything and do damage.