19 Ariel Golden Arrow - Exhaust & Handle Bars

At last I can fit the new exhaust pipes that my wife bought me for Christmas to my 1961 Ariel Golden Arrow. (I know it's sad! Who on earth asks for motorbike exhaust pipes as a Christmas present?) First I removed the very crude cast aluminium end cones from the new exhausts. These were not very good castings and had deep pit marks and sand casting bumps all over them. So first I put them it the lathe and spent some time smoothing them down with emery cloth and then filled all of the deep pit marks with body filler, finally rubbing them down with wet and dry until they were ready for painting. Then it was into the cardboard spray booth for several coats of high build primer.

Once dry I then made a mistake. I decided to use some "high temperature black enamel" paint that I had. This was not a a good idea. It reacted with the primer and never dried. After 48 hours it was still sticky and starting to blister. Obviously the two paints had had a chemical reaction together and this was not good. So I had to start again. I got the wet and dry out again and rubbed them both back down to bare metal again and resprayed the primer and this time, after drying, applied standard high gloss black and they look brilliant. It was then just a case of reassembling the silencers and fitting them to the bike with some nice new stainless steel exhaust clamps and they really look nice.

So, in order to finish the wiring, I need to fit the handlebars so that I can wire the dip switch and horn. One of the replacement parts that I have hated has been the plastic cap that covers the headstock nuts. This plastic cone that was damaged and beyond use presented a problem. I bought a replacement new one, but when it arrived it was in a black marbled finish. I thought that I would be able to simply paint it but after four attempts it was obvious that this was not the answer. Each time I painted it the paint flaked off and revealed the black plastic. So I decided to have a stainless steel one made.  Whilst I have the skill to turn one myself, my lathe isn't fast enough to turn stainless and the tools I have are not good enough to cut stainless. So I took it to a friend who made one for me for a bottle of wine (good deal) and all I had to do was polish it. I could then pop it in place and add the handlebar clamp and the new handlebars. I must admit that it does look so much nicer than the plastic one.

With the handlebars in place, the clutch and brake levers could be fitted and the throttle twist grip. I decided to clean up and refit the old red handlebar grips after checking various photos of Arrows and seeing that most of them had red grips. It was at this point that I also decided that I did not like the way that the front brake cable just hung loose down the front forks and decided to figure out a way of neatly securing it. The answer was to make a simple stainless steel "P" clip to fit around the front brake stabiliser arm nut. A neat and easy answer.

Back to the handlebars, I now had to make a four wire loom to carry the power to the dip switch, the main and dip return wires and the horn wire. Once made, this short loom reached from the left handlebar grip position along the bar and down into the headlight. I was about to connect the loom into the dip switch and secure it to the handlebars when I realised that I should take a look at the fly screen and how it fixes first. So you will see from the picture above that I've slipped the fly screen fixing clamps onto the handlebars so that I can work out the route and position for the dip switch wiring.

Finally, on the subject of wiring, I took another look at the wires coming from the electronic ignition over the side of the primary chain case and I still didn't like it. I know what you are thinking "Is this bloke never satisfied"? Well the answer to that is probably "no". Even when my bikes are winning trophy's I can still see all the faults. Anyway I decided to see if I could make a cover plate to hide some of this wire's path. So I made a cardboard template, traced that onto aluminium and then cut it out, bent it and polished it. What do you think?

One final touch. As you know, we no longer need to display a tax disc, but I thought that it would be a nice idea to have a tax disc that showed the original registration date of the bike in the style of the tax disc issued in 1961. I know that the more astute of you will say " if your bike was registered in 1961 then the disc will show an expiry date of 1962", but I really wanted one to show the true age of the bike. So I looked up on the internet what a 1961 tax disc should look like and then reproduced one on the computer using Corel Draw. The only difference being that I substituted the rubber stamp for the "Vintage Motorcycle Club" emblem. I then got a nice aluminium tax disc holder and fitted it on the bike. Not to everyone's taste, but I like it!


 Well that's it for now. Next time will probably be the final wiring and the fly screen fitting and possibly the first attempt to start the bike. Then all I'm waiting for is the new seat which I'm told will be at least 3 more weeks to wait.

Copyright K. Hopcroft  22.07.15 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

18. Ariel Golden Arrow - More wiring & lots of progress

So having decided that it was time to "bite the bullet" and tackle the one job I have not been looking forward to on my 1961 Ariel Golden Arrow, I set about studying the wiring, which I mentioned earlier had been subjected to a previous unsuccessful attempt at a 12 Volt conversion and electronic ignition. In which a previous owner had decided to use the wrong wiring loom, chipboard engine parts and a grinding wheel to the end of the crankshaft. Well the wrong loom has been removed, the chipboard has been discarded, along with the wrong electronic ignition kit and the crankshaft has been replaced.

I felt that the best place to start was the electronic ignition kit, which my daughter had bought me for Christmas, from Draganfly. This came with full instructions, which I followed to the letter and it fit beautifully first time. I was surprised to read that it works on the "Lost Spark" system. Which basically means that it sparks twice as often as it needs to. That is it sparks when the piston reaches the top of the cylinder and at the bottom. The bottom spark being wasted. This does away with the need for twin contacts. The circuit board fits where the old base plate used to fit and the rotating magnet locates on to the end of the crankshaft.  It's then just a case of connecting two wires from the board up to the coils and fitting the nice newly chromed cover cap.

I made a new two wire loom with wires of the correct colours from the old wiring loom and connected them to the circuit board and fitted the cover cap. But this then left me with a question. How to get the wires neatly up to the coils. I took a look a lots of arrows images on the web and in a lot of cases people had just taken the wires straight up and under the dummy tank and it looked terrible. However I noticed on a couple of pictures that the cable had simply gone up over the primary chain case and then disappeared under the carburettor. I figured that the only place that it could go from there was up the same sleeving that was carrying the speedo cable and the alternator wires. So I decided to go for that option. I extracted two more wires of the correct colour from the old wiring loom and soldered the ends together. I then threaded a length of stiff copper wire up the sleeving and then soldered the two wires to it and then pulled them through the sleeving. All that was left then was to joint the wires behind the chrome engine cover and connect the other ends to the HT coils.

With the coils now wired, I could finally fix the dummy tank in place. This had two problems. The first was easy to fix. Although I had re-tapped the four fixing nuts to 6mm on the bottom of the tank, I had not realised how bad these original "welded on" nuts were. When I tightened them down three of the four stripped with very little effort. Replacing them would have meant a respray, but I found that it was really easy simply to reach inside and fit another nut on top of the stripped one, which tightened down with no problem at all.

The next problem was the two internal fixing brackets. There just isn't enough room to get two hands inside and fit the nuts and bolts. I won't bore you with the details but after trying every method I could think of I finally managed it but it took an hour and a half to fit two nuts and bolts! What is so frustrating is that when you look in, you can see them clearly, you just can't reach them or see them while you are trying to reach them. If you look at the picture, you can see the two right-angled brackets sticking up between the headstock and the electronic regulator. The offending nuts and bolts are the two horizontal ones. Needless to say, once they were in, I celebrated by putting the kettle on.

I forgot to mention that before I fitted the dummy tank, I had also mounted the electronic voltage regulator. This was already on the bike when I bought it and despite it being connected to the wrong loom and electronic ignition kit, it was the a perfectly usable 12 Volt conversion electronic regulator. You will notice that I deliberately mounted it upside down. This was to allow the wires to leave the regulator in the neatest direction towards it's connections with the loom. Please note none of the wiring has been fully neatened, fixed or laced yet. This will only be done once all connections have been made and all systems have been checked and are working correctly.

The loom could now be passed through down the left hand side of the head stock towards the headlight and the headlight could be offered into place. Once offered into place it became apparent that I could simply pass a bolt through each side of the dummy tank headlight ears and into the headlight shell, but this did not seem like a good idea. Although that is how the headlight was mounted when I stripped it, it was obvious that this would distort either the pressed steel on the tank or on the headlight shell as there was a hollow space between the two pressings. I decided to make two aluminium spacers, about 12mm thick with a 8mm hole down the centre, to fit between the dummy tank ears and the headlight shell, this would give the headlight support and an easier pivot for headlamp angle adjustment.As you can see from the picture, the spacers are completely hidden inside the ears of the dummy tank. The switch wires could then be mated with the matching loom wires and the amp meter connected.

Another thing that I can now do, now that the tank is in place is fit the front brake and clutch cable, as both of them pass through grommets in the top of the tank. You must first fit the cable in the clutch lever and then pass it through the tank then on to the back of the tank and down to the gear box. A long lever is then needed to lever the gearbox clutch arm over sufficient to get the nipple on the end of the clutch cable into the clutch arm on the gear box. Once that is done. You can, at last, fit the chrome engine cover plate and then the right foot rest, side stand and right exhaust pipe (which has been returned with a new bracket welded on in the right place this time). It's hard to believe that so much could not be fitted because the dummy tank was not in place.  By the way, the front brake cable had the same problem as the clutch cable. The outer cable was 5mm too long and had to have the same careful "Dremel" treatment as mentioned on an earlier blog in order to get it to fit. The same applies, It has to be fitted to the brake lever first, then threaded through the grommet in the tank then down to the front brake.

It's time to test the electrics. The 12V battery is fully charged and connected and I turn on the side lights. The rear light comes "on", Wow! My test meter reveals that if I had connected the front side light, that would have come on too!. The brake light works! The Horn Works! The Headlight cable has power! This is looking good. Now to test for a spark. I turn on the ignition key and with the plugs out and resting on the cylinder heads I kick the engine over. Two amazing sparks "Double Wow!!" Final test, turn off the ignition key and kick it again - "no spark". Brilliant.

Well Time to get the exhausts on and the handle bars and the final bit of wiring and then maybe I can see if it will start?  Next Blog.

Copyright K. Hopcroft  15.07.15 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