Well I now have two bikes both road worthy at one and the same time, although the Rocket Gold Flash remains a wee bit illegal until I get it insured, MOTd and taxed in that order.
Got it out on the road for sea trails this afternoon, retarding the timing has helped to reduce the pinging, doesn't do it on hills but is still there on acceleration, judging by remarks on here maybe it's something you have to live with.
Went to the stated N3 plugs, they ended the run an excellent colour, not so much coffee, more latte, starting from cold is good, from hot not so good but it will star,t I think I just need to master a warm starting technique.
I'm pleased with the gearing, I went for just lower than standard gearing but not as low as side-car, the engine while still obviously tight is free revving and eager, but of course despite the slightly lower gearing lacks the low down torque of the Flash, I need to adjust my riding to make more use of the gears keeping it in the sweet range revving a bit faster than I do on the Flash.
The gearbox behaved itself, an odd clunk or two probably down to me but the gear lever returns to neutral now when changing down thanks to an extra gasket between the outer and inner cover.
Hellicoiling the barrels for the head bolts was interesting, got the holes drilled pretty good using my bench stand, tapping the holes was not so easy, getting the tap to start straight was the difficult bit, even turning it by hand in the bench press didn't stop it going off line, trouble was the tap I reckon, if I was doing it again I'd would ask for a set of taps that included a starting one.
I had to do all nine holes, seven of them I got really good, two are slightly off but that much out, there is plenty tolerance in the holes in the head for the bolts to allow for a very slight inaccuracy.
It was a job worth doing and very satisfying when torquing down to know they weren't going to go slack suddenly.
Front brake nice and smooth after getting the hub skimmed, rear brake needs to bed in a bit, and then I'll set about this rod conversion.
The bike handles much better than the Flash, this is down to John Deere, it was one of there forklifts (with telescopic front boom) that I used to straighten the frame, bolted it to the garage floor. put a long solid bar down through the headstock, a good rope to the fork lift boom and thanks to delicate hydraulics was able to pull until it was vertical to the swing arm, actually had to go past vertical to allow for spring in frame, wonder how many of today's bikes would stand this after fifty years.
So once I get the bike registered I'll post a picture of both of them, then probably change my avatar to the RGF and bid farewell to the Treen
