Many little things

PMW hasn't been running anything like right as people reading this blog will know.

Well today two very nice chaps came over to help out and here they are

Andy Flexney and Paul Darbyshire working on PMW

So the guys came over and first started with cleaning up the plugs, regapping them and dismantling the carbs.  The carbs needed balancing and a general clean but otherwise were in good shape. The connection on the coil lead was a bit loose so that was tightened up and then out for a test run.

Better but still hesitating.

On investigation the plug lead to number 1 was actually broken so we replaced that with a second hand one and then fitted a shorter king lead which made sure there could be no arcing to the battery retaining clamp as we had found before.

Another test run found a slight improvement but still not right. On checking the plugs again and swapping them one by one for others we found number 6 to be very black and sooty - now why should only one be like that?

Maybe there was a problem with a valve so we decided to check all the tappet clearnaces and reset them. There were one or two rather loose but none on cylinder number 6 so that couldn't have been it.

Then the guys spotted there wasn't a nut holding the inlet manifold on towards the rear of the engine.This was because a "bridging piece" had always been missing. I had ordered another second hand one (they are made of unobtanium) so we decided to fit it but then I couldn't find it.

OK so I found a large thick washer which could do the job so we used this whilst making sure all the other fixings were in place and bolted up correctly. This in itself meant taking the carbs off and took about an hour. During all this it was noted that the carb linkage and cable wasn't allowing full throttle so some "fettling" was done on this too.

Final test drive of the day was much better with only a slight possible bit of hesitation. Now it's a case of putting some more miles on the rebuilt engine as it has still only done about 150 miles and see how we go before further fine tuning.

I have to say it sounds relaly smooth now and picks up well with a gorgeous sound to it as it revs.