Voyage of discovery

First the 2000.

Some more time spent today means I at least know where I am with the headlights.

When I started they wouldn't work on dip or main but 2 out of 4 would work on headlamp flash.

Cleaning connections at the lamps and the earths brought back full beam on 3 out of 4 (near side inner clearly gone).

After advice on the Club Triumph forum I cleaned the contacts at the light switch and the main./dip - checked for current and found power going into the switch and back out again to the dip/main switch which also works fine. Back to the lamps and there's power at the connections for dip beam so really it's down to 3 sealed beams gone (2 outer on dip and one inner on main).

As I have bought the car for a continental trip which will involve overnight drving I'll look at halogen conversions.

Then back on to BRP - here the plan is to re-shim the valve clearances, replace the crankshaft sprocket, the timing chain and tensioner followed by timing the cam in. Then it all goes back together with no problems whatsover with less rattles, more reliability and more power - yeah right!

Anyway, thanks to assistance from Bryce the other day and a new whirly gun we got the crankshaft bolt off which had been very very reluctant to let go. Actually, what also probably helped was a product got for me by Burnerboy - "shock and unlock" which we sprayed on ( it is a combination of WD40 and a freezing agent).

Today though, after working on the 2000 I removed the front timing chain cover of BRP, the rocker shaft and the camshaft so that I can get on to actually shimming the valve clearances and be ready to procede with the timing chain shennanigans. Well it wasn't as easy as that sentence makes it sound but perseverance and patience won through in the end.

Here though I think I may have found 2 sources of all the rattles. Part of the timing chain tensioner (the bit that's on a piston with something looking like a wedgeshaped hammer head) actually fell out when I removed the front cover. Now this might just be because tension had been released but, looking at this component, there are a number of areas where gouges/wear have been made in the metal of it which doesn't seem right to me - could this have just been rattling around inside the front cover instead of doing it's job?

Then at the camshaft end the sprocket is held away from the camshaf during removal by the use of a "slave" nut. When it all goes back together this slave nut isn't needed and should be removed - only I still found it in pace but with the internal thread completely stripped so it has probably been rattling around for months at the front end of the camshaft sprocket!

All of this is no doubt down to my incompetence and there's plenty more where that came from!

I decided a couple of hours was enough so called it a day as I think that being patient might just help me do a better job and I am not in a huge rush anyway.