Scully's BSA

While it's not the style that I'm shooting for, it's still gorgeous, and has a lot of the vintage qualities that I'm shooting for with my bike.  Brass accents, Deco-style straight lines, and a hand-made quality that reeks of character.

It's basically a similar bike to start with - a 1965 A65 with a hardtail conversion.  The motor polishing is absolutely incredible.  I love the antique details, like the copper tension knobs, and the front end definitely works for this bike.  It's definitely a beautiful 1930's homage bike with everything done just right.

It was made by Jesse Bassett out of North Olmsted, Ohio, in his shop called Gasbox Customs.  Chop Cult did a story on it:  http://www.chopcult.com/news/articles/scullys-bsa.html

22 Minutes

I was going to write a big instructional tutorial about how to achieve a professional paint job using spray cans, but then I remembered that I have friends who paint for a living, and why would I want to put them out of work?

If you ARE going to do your own painting, here's a couple of tidbits:

1) Prep your surface.  Do it again.  Do it again.

2) Spray the paint in a straight line, about 18 inches from your surface.

3) Spray a LOT of coats thinly, every 22 minutes.

4) Start spraying before you get to your part and finish after you've passed it.  Only hit the part with the middle 50% of a spray line.

5) Don't listen to me, I'm not a pro.

Cylinder Pt.1

When people think about motors, they think about pistons and spark plugs and carburetors.  The same applies when they visit the zoo.  The lions get all the attention - so much so that nobody thinks about how awesome the cage is.  People trust it, and forget about it.

With the BSA, the "cage" is a cast iron (rusts in 20 minutes), heavy as f**k, finned piece of frustrating motor meat.  Here's what I've had to do so far:

My old +0.020 cylinders were warped, so I got a new/used one ($90). They required being acid dipped to remove all old impurities ($35).  They required being bored out to a perfect +0.020 measurement to match the AWESOME hepolite +20 pistons ($90).  They required a full rub down with a scotch pad and a thorough cleaning with baby wipes.  They required a homemade ceramic paint job ($10).

All in all, it was $225 to replace the cylinders to a beauty.  My other option was to use my existing cylinders, bore them out and get new +40 pistons and rings.  It sounds like it might have been easier to do do it that way, but a) I would have spent $90 for a bore anyway.  b) new QUALITY pistons are about $400.  c) New +40 rings are $100.  d) I'd still have to refinish everything.

SO, had I used my original cylinder, I'd have spent $600.  I fixed it for $225.  I'm smart.

 

Little bits make all the difference.

This part is of almost no significance.  It's non-essential.  It's mostly hidden.  Yet, it's the difference between a good build and a great one.  Let me back up a touch to explain:

When a bike is in it's 40's, it has gone through a gambit of personalities, and a lot of different owners.  In the beginning it was an object of joy and admiration.  Somewhere in the middle, it probably got laid down, broken in some parts, serviced by an idiot, and eventually stuck into a corner of somebody's garage.  In the end, it rots away forgotten, until a nostalgic jackass decides to resurrect it.

In all of that time, there's 1 thing that happens, again and again and again - BROKEN STUDS IN CASES!  Every bike I've ever bought (dozens and dozens of them) has had this same issue.  Some dingus has overtightened the stud on the exhaust, the stud on the intake, etc, and it's broken off inside the case.  Sometimes it's a simple matter of PB Blaster and a lot of elbow grease.  Sometimes, however, you just have to drill it out and hope for the best.  That's the last case scenario.

In this case, it was the mounting screws for the tachometer cable to the engine.  One was broken off inside.  It was a lost cause.  It happens.  It took 3 hours to get the machining right, to drill and tap it to perfection, at a new 1/4-20 size.  We moved less than a gram of metal, less than 5 millimeters...

...and it made all the difference.

Top End Pt.2

Big strides were made in the garage last night, the best of which was the complete rebuild of the valves and top end.  Nice.

It's not hard, but it's not easy, either.  The parts go together fairly obviously, and you can see the process in any haynes manual, so I'm not going to jabber on about it.  However, there IS a step that was new to me - lapping in the new valves.  (Yes, Roy, I know how dumb that makes me sound.)

After all of our fidgeting with the head, we've badly tarnished the aluminum, so it's going back to polish again.  After that, it's ready to install.  Awesome.

Polishing Pt. 1

They say the difference between an award winning bike and 2nd place is two things: a patient girlfriend and the extra hours of polishing metal.

With the BSA engine, there's basically 2 big aluminum mirrors on either side that have to be perfect.  Unfortunately one of them is right behind the kick (kick-start only, by the way).  That means that there's a whole lot of guys that tried to hill climb this beast wearing metal tipped boots, scarring the metal again and again and again...

On the left, you can see what the piece looked like "before".  After 4 hours of rigorous work with the sander, it's now smoother than when it came from the factory.  However, that's only 1/3rd of the total polishing work that goes into this 1 piece.  There are 3 pieces total in JUST the engine covers.  30-36 total hours of polishing and I'm just starting.  Crap.

 

P.S. The above 4 hours of polishing were done with 80 grit sandpaper over 3 evenings, since after about an hour of using the electric sander, the tendons in my hand were flexing involuntarily. 

 

P.S. This marks the end on the "dry" sanding.  400 grit, single direction, looks like brushed aircraft aluminum.

 

From here on out, it's a game of polishing compounds and buffing to a mirror finish.

Top End Pt.1

The best part about old iron, aluminum and steel is that you get to work with old fashioned methods and a whole lot of fire.  Case in point: valves.  After all these years, the best material for valve guides is bronze.  You're using a torch to super heat metal to get the old guides out, and new guides in, you're tooling away with brass shavings falling by the wayside, doing things by feel with hand tools...  It's transcendent of time.

This week, we reamed the valve guides to perfection, then added a few sexy bevels to induce oil flow.  It's all about the sexy bevels.  Sadly, the exhaust valves didn't seat very well, so the top end had to go back in to the machine shop for a valve job.  And that's as far as we could go on that.

Also, I picked up the cylinder from the stripper, and dropped that off to be bored out as well, so I'll have everything ready to rock next week.  Hopefully.

So, there were only baby steps happening, but we're inching ever closer to having something assembled.  If there's any question about the cro-magnon, guttural awesomeness to working on vintage iron, look at this top end again, and tell me it doesn't look like a caveman's skull: