Cautionary Tale

[edboy]

hello,
a canadian jim sinclair despatched in london during the 80-90s on a bsa a65 spitfire . with an srm bottom end ,he and his girlfriend kept it immaculate and clocked about 200,000 miles. i last met him around 20 years ago and i believe he was going around the world before settling back in canada.not heard from him since but i hope he and his girlfriend are well wherever they finally settled.
it was fairly obvious even then that for relable motorway speeds or high milage a needle conversion bottom end was the way to go especially as straight oils were becoming expensive and hard to find. now plain old 20/50 is becoming hard to find at the side of the road.
it could be that using straight oil  caused the sludge trap to blockup as after periods of no use it can turn to mud inside the sludge trap.
regarding dodgy rebuilds and sluge traps. why dont you send the lot to srm ? it may be cheaper in the long run.
regards edboy

[wilko]

200,000 miles! That'll be the day! Vincents with 1,000,000 miles. That'll be the day!

[metalflake11]

Buddy Holly a big influence by any chance?

[gavinoz]

w.r.t. flushing oil, one of the websites says "never use flushing oil, it will wreck your engine in seconds."
30 odd years ago I did, and it did. so don,t! Gav

[gold33]

I've been very busy lately unraveling the sins of an old fella from QLD who "restored" my machine.
After re-doing the top end (missing valve spring seats worn out valves etc.) and having his "rebuilt" magneto rebuilt I went for a nice 2500 mile ride and have been off the road ever since! Tab washers for the clutch nut are clearly hard to come by up north.

After the clutch fell off at 75MPH on the freeway the fibre drive gear on the magneto lost all its teeth and spread throughout the engine, when stripped down for a clean I discovered the con-rod bolts used are varying sized caphead screws some with washers some without and all of them a loose fit but fortunately torqued within an inch of their lives (con-rods ground to suit the varying length bolts). With the level of quality workmanship displayed on my machine I expected to find the sludge trap to be in a very poor state... but it wasn't   Since I bought the bike 4-5yrs ago I have changed the oil every 250 to 500mile using 20w50 oil for vintage engines from the supermarket, I assume these frequent oil changes are the reason she is so clean inside.

[muskrat]

That's exactly why I rebuild every 2nd hand thing (bike, car, whipper snipper) I get before putting it to serious work. The A65 is the only exception, a fresh top end and hope keeps it going.
At least it didn't have LEATHER big ends Darren. I have even seen that.
Cheers