PUB TALK

A bit more light tinkering has been done in the garage. The AJS footrest has been moved by ‘stretching’ the 7/16-inch square bar favoured by the Wolverhampton factory, using means that PUB declines to reveal, but might be guessed by readers familiar with Odgie’s favourite tools. The result is already an improvement, but will be better when the brake pedal is also moved to suit. A mirror has been added to the Fiery Francis Barnett, which had always been ridden without in the past. However, modern traffic made it a noticeable omission on the last ride, so like the other bikes it now sports at least one mirror.

For the pre-war project an alloy cylinder ‘muff’casting has been collected from a friend who offered it. This proved to be a replica item, machined to take a post-war Vincent iron liner (which will have repercussions later). That is convenient, as they are an off-the-shelf item from the VOC Spares Company (no longer co-located with AJS/Matchless, but up the road a bit).

Having acquired one of those, fitting the liner was a kitchen oven job – no problem because PUB does not require permission to use her own oven. A temperature of something over 100°C is sufficient to expand the muff by more than the six thous interference recommended (80° above room temperature x 3.75 inch diameter x 22 parts per million per degree expansion for aluminium alloys = 6.6 thous). As with bearings in crankcases, etc it is of course important