PREACHING Part 3

However he was right about my old BSA's top speed so my first lesson was to find out why it wouldn't go 60 without shaking to death, shedding parts and generally begging me to find out what was ailing it or put it out of its misery.

Two factors came to my aid.

FACTOR 1
I was an apprentice and my overseer Eric rode a BSA A10 which is the A7's big brother. He rode into work in semi rural Hoddesdon from Tottenham, London, I'd guess at a 40 mile commute, maybe less. He'd been a dispatch rider during the war and he kept that old BSA in perfect nick and gave me a pillion ride home each day.

I got my morning ride in my friend Timmy's sidecar fitted to his 350 BSA, so between the two of them I was accruing some invaluable experience to build on what I'd been getting clandestinely at the Youth Club on a variety of the older lads bikes.

I cannot emphasize the importance of this enough. If you want to learn how to ride a bike and carry a passenger in safety, you need to learn how to be a good pillion, learn how the bike feels and reacts to your body language so you don't cause a crash by leaning the wrong way and so many other more subtle nuances of road craft.

FACTOR 2

Get a factory workshop manual if you can but those Haynes ones are better than nothing. Grainy b&w shots just don't compare with isometric line drawings and exploded diagrams.

The official BSA factory manual was a gem that included everything including dimensioned illustrations of special tools and fixtures you could make yourself, such as the pushrod location comb that makes fitting the head so much easier.

So with these two factors in my favour, Erics advice and the book of words, I began to give my bike the overhaul it so desperately needed although it had soldiered on dependably despite the poor condition.

Replace both chains, primary and main, decoke and valve grinding was the order of the day. I discovered the value of split collett valve spring retainers - what a clever idea!

So was Erics advice to make a chisel of plumbers solder so as not to damage the soft ally piston crowns or combustion chambers and don't disturb the carbon on the top edge of the piston if your calipers prove the bore is still within spec.

The thing about valve grinding is to be patient and methodical DO NOT try using a power drill to hurry up the process, when each valve head has a fine gray circular seating use kerosene to check the seal, if theres no trace of leakage you are good to go.

l had to get a piece of plate glass to check the clutch plates for warping and the manual said how to recork them if true which saves a bundle from replacing the plates. Also the same piece of plate glass is used to check the cylinder head for warping and to grind it true if need be.

Mine was good, the head gasket showed no signs of blow by and nowhere was there any Red Hermatite which is the trademark of the sloppy cowboy fixer and if seen always presages trouble.

It took me four weekends of work to get all these jobs done and the bike ran like new as a result.