GregT

Wet and murky on QE2 drive this am. MX5 going the other way with park lights on - and light pods up. There was a ring of LED's around the main light glass - but red. I was under the impression no forward facing red lights were allowed.

Apparently there was a marine version of the Singer Vogue/Hillman Hunter engine. But the three bearing bottom end says early version and the alloy head says later. The marine conversion certainly looks factory - but twin carbs suggests someone's tweaked a car origin engine for their boat use.

Steel is a much safer bet when there is an abrupt change of section as in the pic. If there was room to radius the change ali would do. Doh ! Mispost regarding caliper adapters. Overtaken by later posts.

Can't see a Labour politician owning a Pantera. A few of the guys have become local body politicians. One currently Mayor of ChCh.

Very curious who the original owner was. Has he been approached for a verification it was previously registered ? If he has any photos it may tell you the original rego.

FWIW, my experience has been that on current fuels once a plug is fouled you can't bring it back. Solvent, abrasive blast or heat, none work. Not like the old days where solvent worked 99% of the time.

Ours came with Punto rims fitted - with the biggest pile of badly made spacers i've ever seen. There was also a set of OE Campagnolos - with one bent and most kerbed a little. Got the bent one straightened and the others cleaned up and painted. Sold it with them on. Handled much better without all the spacers. Campags do come up now and again - and there's at least one outfit here who can cut/weld widen them.

Visited Simon at Goodparts today. Inspired by you, he's tendered for and got a late 1800 Wing. He's going to offer the engine and electrics as a package for a car transplant....

Even with loctite that final drive nut is going to come loose. They're noted for it. I'd machine it narrower so the nylon locking material is actually on the shaft. Nice job overall. You've kept the essential character of the bike.

There have been a number of V8's created from motorcycle fours for use in speedway etc. The top ends on that look like current best practise Suzuki/Kawasaki/BMW on a special crankcase. Wouldn't be too hard to do given the number of V8's that have been built.

The subject of goldwings came up on a motorcycle forum. I'm told that when the 1000 came out Honda UK sponsored one in a roadrace sidecar outfit. It got shelved as they couldn't solve oil surge problems - it kept doing crank bearings. Given your flat floor sump, i'd be tempted to look at some baffles to keep oil around the pickup. And a pressure gauge in easy view. If I've missed you doing a solution to this, carry on.

Ok, next time my wife is trying to give me a bollocking, I'll mention your name as a volunteer target for her abuse In the meantime look at the thread on LD powered Bedford.

It always was. They did good work though. Very good on Smiths gauges, esp chronometric tachos and speedos. At some point they carried a form of small gearbox which could be spliced into speedo drive cables to correct any differences. Had one put in the LD converted Bedford which was an annoyance as up till then it had under recorded mileage which was great for RUC. Wif insisted after she got pulled for speeding.

Parrotts. They had an in-ground roller setup which I think was usable powered or car driven. Don't know if they moved it when they shifted premises. As the business changed hands at the time.

The mysterious off idle hesitation in ours was fixed with a distributor rebuild. Incl the correct number of springs...

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.