13. Ariel Golden Arrow - Other bits & Electrics

Having got the engine back together, I could now start refitting some more bits. The first easy bit is the flywheel, which has the primary drive chain sprocket on the back of it. Nothing wrong with the old one, so a quick clean in the parts washing bath and slip it onto the left hand end of the crankshaft. There is a small woodruff  key on the shaft to stop the flywheel slipping and just a little care is needed not to disturb it when sliding on the flywheel. That done, it's time to look at the lock washer and the centre nut.
Oh Dear! the lock washer has been used several times and is beyond re-use and the nut looks like someone has used a hammer and chisel to tighten it with previously. I rang Draganfly and a replacement lock washer was posted immediately, but they had no stock of the nut. So I decided to pop it in the lathe and reface it and as you can see it looks OK. After trying the new lock washer in place, it was obvious that it sat too flat on the flywheel to be able to get a screwdriver behind it and bend it over, So taking note of where the flats were on the tightened nut, I removed it again and bent it away in the vice first. I then popped it back on and just had to tighten the nut. The problem is holding a round flywheel still while tightening the nut in the middle.
The answer came with a tool that I had bought earlier. A "Belt Wrench". This is basically a handle with a strong rubber timing belt fastened to it. You slip the belt around the flywheel and pass it back through the handle. As you tighten the nut, the belt grips the flywheel and locks the handle against the side of the flywheel. It's incredibly strong grip holds the flywheel perfectly even under high torque settings. The lock washer could then be bent over and secured against the sides of the nut. Job Done

Whilst on the left side of the engine, I decided that it was a good time to fit the final drive chain sprocket, bearing and oil seal ready for the gearbox to be fitted later. At last a stroke of luck! The same mandrel and drift that I had made for the main crankshaft bearings and oil seals also fits the gearbox final drive bearing and oil seal, so it was really simple to knock them into place and fit the retaining circlip. You can just see it on the right of the flywheel on the picture above.

Now to the right side. On the right side of the crankshaft fits the Alternator, this generates the electricity for the bike.This picture shows it before I stripped it off the bike. Nothing too difficult about refitting this, I just needed a good clean in the parts washer as it was soaked in oil and a new woodruff key and it fitted back onto the end cap with three fixings. The centre nut then needed tightening, using the same belt wrench holding the flywheel on the other side.

I could then fit the newly painted covering cap over the alternator and pass the wires through the hole in the cap with a new grommet to stop it rubbing through.

By the way, you can just spot the "Belt Wrench" in this picture!

As I now have the first sign of wiring appearing on the bike, I felt that this was a good time to take a look at the wiring loom. The man that I bought the bike from had given me a new loom that he had bought, but said that he had never been able to figure it out! I looked at the new loom and then the circuit diagram in the workshop manual and decided that, as many of the colours of the wires did not match the diagram, that it was the wrong loom for the bike. So I ordered a new one. It came in a sealed bag with a new circuit diagram, these didn't match either! I phoned Draganfly and they said "send it back and we'll send you a different one. It must have the wrong diagram in with the loom. So that's what I did. A few days later, loom number three arrived. This didn't match the new different diagram with it either!!! I then had an idea, I had made a photocopy of the first diagram that I sent back and so took another look at that one. Low and behold, that one matched the third loom (they are obviously being packed in the wrong bags by the manufacturer.  OK so now I could start.

The problem with circuit diagrams, rather than wiring diagrams is that circuit diagrams show what colour wire connects to what but the diagram does not show the end of the wire in relation to it's position on the loom or the bike. The only two wires that I could definitely identify were the rear stop and tail light wires. I made the decision to start there, connect the stop and tail light wires and then lay the loom forward on the bike and the remaining wires should line up with the things that they are supposed to connect to. Wrong, wrong, wrong!!!. Nothing lined up and the loom didn't even reach the headlight, I even had ring connectors finishing up under the rear mudguard and it was no good looking at the original wiring that I had taken off the bike as that was home made. I phoned Draganfly again and asked if they had a wiring diagram? The answer was
"No". So I decided to draw my own and send it to them with some relevant questions. I am afraid that that wasn't much help either as no one could really help me. I've found this with Ariel's, that there is much less knowledge and printed information available than when I was rebuilding my BSA A10.

I was lying in the bath, thinking about wiring the Ariel (as you do) suddenly it came to me. The two ring connectors under the rear mudguard must be the battery connectors and if they are then the whole loom needs to move forwards and
the wires for the rear light must finish just at the front of the rear mudguard and need extending over the mudguard to the rear light. When I got to the workshop, I disconnected the wiring from the rear light and moved the whole loom forward until the two ring connectors reached the battery position. Low and behold, the loom now reached the headlight and the tail light wires just poked through into the rear mudguard. Got it!!

OK, so that meant that there must be another loom that fits under the rear mudguard and connects to the rear lamp and the stop light switch and to the end of the main loom. I looked in the parts book and there was nothing, so I rang Draganfly and they said that they didn't do another loom, so the only thing to do was make one.

So with some lengths of different coloured wire and some heat-shrink sleeving, I made a "Y" shaped loom and connected it up. Brilliant, it fits and all the wires now branch off in the right places.

As you can see from the picture, the rear shock absorbers are now in place, but more about that in the next blog.

Copyright K. Hopcroft  22.02.15 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

12. Ariel Golden Arrow - Engine Rebuild

Having hung the engine block in place on the top mounting stainless steel stud fitted with dome nuts, I used the remaining pieces of threaded stud to support the back of the engine in the frame whilst I waited for the proper engine mounting bolts to come back from the chromers.

Rebuilding the engine could now commence and first was the renovated exchange crankshaft form Draganfly. This fits into the block in two pieces. However, before you can fit it, you first need to fit the central main bearing and the two "back to back" crankshaft oil seals. At first glance this looked easy. Simply knock them in! But I soon realised that I could not get a hammer deep inside the engine casing and so had to devise an alternative method.

The answer was that I had to turn a steel mandrel, just slightly smaller than the bearing with a central boss to pass through the centre hole of the bearing. I then made a long drift with a shoulder on the end to fit in the mandrel's hole that was long enough to stick out of the engine casing so that I could hit it with a hammer. This was time consuming but well worth it and the drift and mandrel worked perfectly for both the bearing and the two oil seals, which by the way, both fit on the right side of the engine.

Now the crankshaft could be offered in.
The left hand half goes in first and you need to extend the con rod out as far as it will go from the crankshaft and then hook it into the casing allowing the con rod to go up into the cylinder space, while easing the centre spindle into the main bearing.

Once in place, the right half of the crankshaft goes in from the other side, repeating the process. This is made slightly more difficult as there is a locating ridge on the right crank to make sure it locates in the right orientation with the left crank. The two halves then push together on a taper and a central bolt, down the middle of the crankshaft tightens to pull the two halves solidly together. This central bolt has an Allen key head and is deep inside the crankshaft.

You will recall from a previous blog that I had already bought a suitable Allen key for this job, to enable me to strip the crank, however it became obvious that I couldn't use a right-angle Allen key on my torque wrench to ensure that this essential bolt was the correct tightness. So I had to get another long Allen key and saw the bend off it. (Sawing an Allen key is not easy, it's very hard!). That done I could now fit a socket over the end of the straight Allen key and use my torque wrench on the socket. Done! It fits and rotates smoothly.

Now for the end caps. Fitted with new bearings and oil seals, I started with the left end cap. These end caps have to go in a particular way round, as they have a cutout on the back to clear the piston as it goes down into the crank case. A generous helping of blue sealant, on both sides of the gasket and the left end cap was gently knocked into place. It was whilst securing the end cap with it's six fixings that I discovered another problem. You will recall that in my earlier blog, I mentioned that the primary chain tensioner lug appeared to have been welded on. Well it was now obvious that I could not get a good fixing bolt into the hole adjacent to the lug as the welding was too large and offered no flat surface for the bolt head to seat on. When I stripped the engine it had a small Philips screw in the hole and I had thought that I would replace it with a proper bolt when I did the rebuild. Now I could see that this was not so straight forward. The answer came with my trusty Dremel. I carefully ground away excess weld with the Dremel until a good open and flat surface was clear enough for the bolt head, I then ran an 8mm tap through the hole to cut a new thread and finally fitted a new stainless Allen key button headed bolt and it tightened down perfectly.

Now for the right side. Same procedure, new bearing, oil seal and gasket. I don't really know what went wrong with this procedure, but as you can see from the picture, once the right end cap was tightened down, it was obvious that the gasket had split around one of the fixing bolts. There was nothing for it but to strip it again as I could not chance losing crankcase compression. Once the cap had been removed again I could see that the gasket was broken and, as I didn't have another one, I had to order it and wait. But eventually it came And the new gasket, fitted in exactly the same way, did not split.

The new pistons could now be fitted to the con rods and then it was time to fit the cast iron cylinders. I'd already had a similar problem when I rebuilt my BSA A10, so I was expecting that I would probably have to make a piston ring compressor in order to get the barrels to fit, and I was right. It's not too difficult, just a thin aluminium strip bent around the piston with a clamping bolt to tighten it just enough to compress the rings, without gripping the piston. That in place, the cylinders slipped over the pistons, with new gaskets underneath and the heads could now be fitted with new gaskets and torqued down with the newly chromed cylinder head bolts and washers. A quick turn of the crankshaft, to see that everything still moves smoothly and two old spark plugs screwed into the holes just to stop anything accidentally being dropped inside. Lovely!

Copyright K. Hopcroft  21.02.15 All rights reserved
You can contact me on: hopcroftscoot@gmail.com
 My Other Blogs:

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