Howdy,
I have a 1954 A10 plunger which I restored a few years ago (30 years ago! It should be illegal for "a few" to turn into 30). I "documented" the resto on a website which I still have hanging around at
BSA Golden Flash...which in itself hasn't been updated in almost 20 years. Ah, well. I have a blog of my automotive and bike adventures, also sporadically updated, at
Rusty Heaps, which has some BSA stuff here and there.
I haven't ridden the machine much since I restored it...keep meaning to, but it has always been a hard starter and recently a very hard starter. I think I have fixed that, though. When I first built the bike, my machinist gave me a mark on the primary side of the crank which he said was TDC or close enough to help me with my initial timing, and I used that to set the mag and that was that. Hard to start but ran pretty well once going so must be ok, right?
This winter I was working on my Austin 7 and perusing an article on timing that machine I read the line "if you set the timing very far advanced the engine will probably run well...if you can ever get it started" and a very faint bell went off in the fat-filled corners of my brain. I got the A10 manual out and read through the timing section and realized I had never actually gone through the book procedure for setting the timing.
I made myself a tool for measuring the piston position out of an old spark plug and some drill rod, grumbled and groaned, and got down to it. I was disappointed (but not surprised) that all of these years I'd been running with the timing about 30% too far advanced! Which it would sometimes start at but often not...worst when "lukewarm". I live on an island and the ferry to civilization is about 30 minutes, the perfect amount of cool-off time to make a restart basically impossible. You can only push a bike off a ferry so many times before you give up on riding it onto one, especially if it's low tide and the loading ramp to the dock looks like the Matterhorn.
Anyway, I now need to sort out the tank again as it's gone a bit rusty. I've lined it twice, first lasted about 10 years, second about the same. Last time I said "no more lining" and just did a thorough clean but that was not a brilliant plan, so going to try lining it again. Also would like to finally hook up the air cleaner but I'm convinced I have the A7 rubber, purchased decades ago, and need to source a genuine A10 version. Plus my taps are not great and I'd love to find some to original spec, which on this tank I think should be 3/8 pipe into the tank and 1/4 pipe outlets to attach the armored fuel line I have also never used but have to hand.
Anyway, I would have sworn I was a member here ages ago, long inactive, but that may have been somewhere else. I certainly was someone else!
This is the machine in question:
https://www.bsagoldenflash.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2025-10-22-15.50.53.jpgRYC 445 is its original English reg number--sold new in Somerset, where I'm reasonably certain it was put to use as a sidecar hack.
mod edit: picture added as attachment (external picture hosting not allowed on the forum, see https://www.a7a10.net/forum/index.php?topic=2545.0).
