Leroy goes through the engine ….
Leroy Turner got right to work on the ’64 engine as soon as he received it. He quickly determined that the engine was in reasonably good shape but had seen quite a bit of work in the past. It had .040 overbore pistons installed and after checking the clearances Leroy found that at this point in its life, it didn’t need a new rebore, only a honing.
The list of work that Leroy did on the engine was a long one and included a complete valve job, all new bearings and bushings, new rings and polishing of many internal parts as well as the external cases. Leroy found the clutch was a real mess and had to be completely rebuilt. Leroy also completely rebuilt the carburetor.
One interesting item that Leroy encountered in the rebuild was that he found the gearbox sprocket was an 18 tooth part. According to the ’64 parts manual the 18 tooth sprocket wasn’t original to the engine, even for sidecar usage. So we needed to order the correct 19 tooth sprocket from British Only. They shipped from stock and was received by Leroy in only a couple of days.
In all, it only took Leroy about two weeks to completely rebuild the engine. He transported it back to us when he drove to Arizona with his wife Josie for a visit.
We feel this engine will be a good runner for many thousands of miles before it will need a rebore to .060. That will most certainly be several years in the future.
Cleaning the other parts ….
Meanwhile, all of the other parts Barry Arthur took off the 64 TR6R were stored in baggies awaiting our attention. It was now time to sort through and clean them.
First, we set up our parts manual in our work area for easy reference during the sortation and cleaning process. Next, we set up a few different sized plastic tubs near our work sink. We put an appropriate amount of “Oil Eater” biodegradable/non-toxic cleaner degreaser in the tubs and diluted with the correct amount of water. “Oil Eater” is available at Costco at very little cost.
“0000” steel wool and inexpensive wire/nylon brushes are put near the sink. We placed two of our parts boxes nearby … one for good parts and the other for parts that need cadmium plating.
Now we were ready to start cleaning and sorting.
We put on our yellow rubber gloves to protect our hands from the severely drying effects of the degreaser and grabbed the first of the baggies.
On each baggie, Barry had written in felt pen what it contained. We flipped to the appropriate page in the parts manual and tried to match up the parts. With few exceptions, the parts are easily identified as the manual has fairly good drawings and descriptions as shown in Part 2. We usually take digital pictures of the parts from each bag, just in case there is a mix-up later on.
As we identify each part, we mark the parts manual with a green (good) annotation or a blue (needs replacing/order) annotation. The old blue parts go into the trash or swapmeet bins while the green parts go in the degreaser tubs, one baggie to a tub, with the baggie under the tub so we remember what we are working on.
As those parts soak in the degreaser, we pull another bag and start the same process with that one. At any point in time, we may have 4 or 5 tubs with soaking parts in them.
Once we feel comfortable that the degreaser has done its job, we pull the parts from the tubs and use a brush or steel wool to remove any of the residual grease in the sink under running water. We aren’t concerned about any rust at this point … only oil and grease.
After that, we immediately dry the parts off with one dry towel and set them down on another. It is amazing how quickly some of these old parts will continue to rust if the plating has worn off so you need to get them dried right away.
After every baggie is complete we put the parts in a clean baggie and label it with the page and part number from the parts manual. As we do this, we make a decision about whether the parts are “good to go” (like many of the parts in the forks) and those requiring cad plating, like most of the hardware. If it is to be plated, we annotate a “CA’’ for that part in the manual.
One note of caution … don’t be distracted and leave the parts in the degreaser tubs for a long time. It will destroy the parts quicker than you think.
During this process, we also clean the oil/grease from the rest of the other larger parts, including the fork springs and put those in the “good to go” box.
Derusting and tumbling the small parts ….
After we have completed the small parts cleaning process, our manual should have an annotation on every part that we’ve inspected and/or cleaned. We review each page of the manual and look for anything we may have missed. If there is a question about a part, we go back to the baggies showing the parts for that particular area of the bike to see if we missed something. Any parts not annotated in green or blue are a problem that we need to deal with.
When we are done working through the manual, we take the box with the “good to go” parts to the storage area we’ve set up for this particular bike. We won’t look at these parts again until it is time to take everything to Dave Wedlake for assembly.
Many of the parts in the cad box need more work. Cad plating wears off over the years and not many parts on a 40 year old bike have much plating left. Fortunately, cad plating is a fairly simple process that can be done in a batch mode. On the other hand, the EPA has serious concerns about the cad plating process so there are few platers who will to do it.
Before we send the parts out for cad plating, they need to be derusted. This is done with one of the vibrator/tumblers that we bought from Harbor Freight for about $40 each.
Into the derusting tumbler, we put abrasive rust cutting media which is also available from Harbor Freight. This media looks like little green pyramids that gently scrape off the rust from the parts. Depending on the level of rust present, the time required to tumble the rust off varies from a few hours to a few days ... that’s correct … days, so you need to be patient at times.
Put the tumbler outside if possible because it does release a small amount of rust/media dust into the air when you open up the top.
Once we put the parts in the tumbler, we obviously lose track of what parts come from which baggie. So, it is imperative that all known parts be identified in the manual before they come out of the bags. Also, since all parts are cad plated in bulk, when they come back from the plater they will be in one big box. You will need to either identify them with the digital pictures you took during the cleaning process or have someone reassembling the bike who is completely familiar with all the parts, like Dave Wedlake is.
The gauges are rebuilt …
We sent the speedometer and tachometer to Scott Thomas at Triumph Restorations in Arlington Heights, Illinois. This is the first time we have used Scott but it won’t be the last. His work is impeccable. Both gauges were rebuilt as new and it only took Scott about two weeks to get them done. Excellent work and value as can be seen in these pictures ….
Final note regarding parts …
No matter how complete they may seem, there always seem to be parts on these 40+ year old bikes that aren’t original and need to be replaced. This particular bike had only a moderate number of parts issues to deal with, which was surprising. Initially, we thought it would be much worse than it turned out. Regardless, after reviewing the parts manual we see that we will still be ordering a significant and sizable list of parts from our suppliers.
Our experience is that parts costs for US restorers continue to escalate with the weak US dollar versus the British Pound and the Euro. Availability becomes an issue as British and European suppliers lose much of their US market on those parts where there are cheaper Asian products available.
As a recent example of this, so far we haven’t been able to locate an NOS or recent production British headlamp shell for our ’64 TR6R. We’ve been told that even if we found one, its price would be at least $150. One of our suppliers tells us that most of his customers have decided to settle for an Asian made part at less than $50, even though the difference in quality is easily seen to the untrained eye. For us, while we may have opted to pay more money for the British shell, that option is not available to us anymore since evidently the British manufacturer no longer produces this part.
End of Part 4 ….Next time: Finished arts are returned from the powdercoater and the entire bike in pieces is transported from Arizona to Dave Wedlake in Oregon
