14. Ariel Golden Arrow - Time to Stand Up for Yourself

This is the moment that I have been waiting for. At last I have the exchange centre stand painted and ready and the engine mounting bolts back from the chromers. So now I can fit the stand to the engine and remove the support frame that has held the bike up for a year.

It's not too easy to paint, as I don't have a proper paint booth. So I have to do one side at a time, then turn it for both undercoats and top coats.

However it can now be fitted. A support tube passes through the centre of the stand which it actually pivots on and the the rear brake pedal shaft passes through the tube to support it and give it strength.

The stand spring then joins a wire hook around the centre of the stand to a "U" shaped pivoting bar fixed to the engine. Unfortunately, whilst I have a nice chrome "U" shaped bar and wire hook, the new stand spring that has arrived is rough and a little rusty spring steel. So I've decided to send the spring off for chroming and have joined the hook to the plate with a temporary small wire rope to hold the stand in place for the time being.

That done the bike can now be removed from the support frame and be allowed to stand on its own.  That done, the rear shock absorber mounting points are now free.

Now that The engine is in place, the rear swinging arms can be fitted, which also are mounted on the engine casing, and not on the frame as with a normal bike. This is reasonably straight forward and just requires them being slid between two lugs on the engine block with two thick nylon spacers between the swinging arm and the casing and a large bolt passed through the casing and the arm.

As the original mounting bolt is back from the chrome platers, I've been able to fit the swinging arm properly complete with new lock plate. This pivot bolt has a thread down the inside of it on the near side to accept one of the primary chain case fixing screws, so it's important that you use the original bolt and not, as I had originally intended, a stud with a dome nut on each end.

The shock absorbers have already been painted, but the mounting plates and rubbers were all still in their original condition and although you can't actually see any of them, when they are in place, I just could not put them back on as they were. So I cleaned the metal cup plates and the tubes which pass between them and resprayed them to match the bike. The rubbers, although dirty and showing signs of paint from previous owners were in usable condition and were returned to a nice clean state with some paint thinners and elbow grease. I pressed the bottom mounting rubbers into the shock absorbers using washing up liquid as a lubricant and the vice and then pressed their centre metal tubes into the rubbers by following a tapered drift through the rubber bush with the tubes.

The shock absorbers could then be fitted and the bottom fixings finished with some nice new stainless steel dome nuts.

The next stage was quite ambitious. I decided to fit the gearbox. This had been lying in a draw since the day I stripped it, however after a year much of my memory of how it went back together had gone and what made it worse, some of the gears and selectors had fallen off the assembly. This picture shows it when I first put it in the draw:

 So I washed each individual gear and shaft and the casing and then tried reassembling the jigsaw. To my surprise, it went together quite easily and was quite logical. I then offered it onto the engine casing along with a new gasket and blue sealant. It fitted perfectly, so I clamped it in place using spacers on the studs to substitute for the missing outer section of the box, which I still had to renovate.

Well I looked at it in place, and hated it! Although most of it could not be seen as it would be covered by the large right side chrome cover, it looked dirty and out of place against my nice clean aqua blasted engine casing. There was only one thing for it, it all had to come off again!.

I took it off being careful not to break the new gasket, removed every gear and shaft and then set about polishing the casing. Three hours later, I rebuilt it again and refitted it. Now I was happy.

Now it was time to look at the outer gearbox casing. Determined not to make the same mistake again, I stripped it and polished the casing before attempting to rebuild it. Fortunately the only thing that needed replacing was the kickstart return spring and that done, the outer casing could be offered in place. It fit beautifully, and I was admiring it when I realised that I had not fitted the clutch lever. After several attempts to fit the clutch adjuster on the lever shaft through the hole it the side of the outer casing, I managed to drop the nut inside the gearbox!!! **!!**.

So it all had to come off again. I fitted the clutch lever and mechanism and tried again. I should mention that in order to fit the outer casing you need to fit the kickstart pedal to the outside and wind up the return spring as the outer casing will not fit with the spring unwound.

However, there it is in place and looking good.

Next blog, it's time for the clutch.

Copyright K. Hopcroft  07.03.15 All rights reserved

You can contact me on: hopcroftscoot@gmail.com

My Other Blogs:

1961 BSA A10 Super Rocket Motorcycle:
 https://60sclassicmotorbikes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/before.html


Miniature Land Rover Defender:
http://miniaturelandrover.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/1-miniature-land-rover-defender-idea.html

1971 VW Karmann Ghia Convertible Car: 
http://karmannghiarestoration.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/1-karmann-ghia-retoration-project.html

Motorcycle Trailers / Caravans:
http://motorcycletrailersandcaravans.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/1-motorcycle-trailers-problem.html