4. BSA A10 More Stripping

Removing the rear swinging arm assembly on the BSA required first removing the rear brake actuating rod, which passes through the tube that the swinging arm pivots on. This comes out fairly easily and allows access to the swinging arm tube itself.

 Removing the swinging arm pivot tube proved to be more of a task. Once I removed the large nut on the right side of the A10 and the fixing bolt on the left side of the bike, the tube should push out through the frame from right to left. However after 51 years it was  very stuck and simply hitting the end of the tube would have resulted in damaging the threads or even distorting the tube. I decided to get to work on my lathe and make a special drift that would fit down the tube with a shoulder to sit on the outer edge of the tube. This made and placed in the pivot tube I hit the drift and still nothing happened. In the end I had to get a friend to hold the frame on the left side, while I hit the drift with a lump hammer. With each blow the tube moved about 1mm and after about 20 minutes the tube finally parted company with the frame without any damage. Inspection of the swinging arm revealed that the silent block bushes had seen better days and so new ones were ordered . In the mean time I took the swinging arm to a friend who had a large hydraulic press to remove the original bushes.
The next job was to strip the front forks. I removed the old headlight nacelle and fork shrouds along with the front mudguard. None of these were to be used again and I will probably sell them when I can get around to it. I then removed the steering damper and top and bottom yokes. Once the yokes were removed, the headstock bearings could be inspected. These are loose ball races and have to be removed carefully to ensure that you don't loose any of the individual ball bearings. Upon counting the balls, there should have been 20 in each race, however my bike had 18 in one race and 17 in the other, more bodging.


With the frame and engine now completely stripped I made a decision to stop work on the engine and concentrate on the frame, so that when the engine was finally rebuilt the frame would be ready to receive it.

I took the frame and all other black painted items to a shot blaster to have them returned to bare metal and from there they went to a local paint shop, that specialises in bike paintwork. It took 6 weeks before, in February 2012, the frame finally came home with it's new coat of "two-pack" black paint.

The new headstock bearings and silent block bushes arrived and this allowed the reassembly of the top and bottom yokes and, after my friend had pressed in the new bushes, the refitting of the rear swinging arm. I had, by this point, decided to replace all fixings with stainless steel and that included the swinging arm pivot tube, which I had spent so much time carefully removing.

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 Copyright K. Hopcroft 23.07.12 All rights reserved
 You can contact me on: hopcroftscoot@gmail.com

My Other Blogs:

1961 Ariel Arrow Super Sport Motorcycle :
http://60sclassicmotorbikes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/1961-aerial-golden-arrow-restoration.html

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

1971 VW Karman 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