| You may have seen our A10 at various BSA club meetings looked
at the non-standard colour and passed it by. If you had looked a little closer
you would have seen many modifications to fulfil it's role as probably one of
the hardest used pre-unit twins in the club. (Unless you know better - write in
if you do). Most mods are for reliability, better stopping power and ease of
maintenance. Some of you may wish to use some of the mods on your own bikes -
so read on and I will explain. The story starts with an advert in the UK BSAOC
magazine, The Star in 1988. We were looking for a set of panniers for our other
A10 for a forthcoming trip to France. In the same advert was an A10 rebuilt
motor for £800.00. Bit pricey I thought for an engine, but after buying
the panniers I enquired about said engine. Gesturing to a custom painted A10
bike in the corner, the vendor pointed out that there was a punctuation error
in the advert and that it was the bike that was for sale with a rebuilt engine.
After a short test ride and an unsuccessful attempt at price negotiation (I
want £800, not a penny more, not a penny less). We found a "hole in
the wall" (ATM), removed enough money for a deposit, and with V5 (pink
slip) and keys in hand promised to return with balance the following weekend.
Chris, my wife on our return home uttered those immortal words "well, I
suppose there goes my fitted kitchen again!!" We've since had more
pleasure with the bike that you could get from an MFI warehouse full of
kitchens. Two weeks later, riding positions set up, serviced, panniers fitted
and camping gear loaded, oh, and not forgetting the wife, we set off for France
on the BSA with my mate Pete Ball and his wife Lynne on their Trident T160V.
The trip to the Rally was uneventful but after hearing some knocking noises
from the bottom end on a run out to a lake, I was told there was nothing wrong
and not to be paranoid. The weekend went well, wine, |
food, good rides, nice scenery. Then disaster
struck returning home on the M27 between Portsmouth and Southampton. We pulled
in for petrol and by this time the knocking noise now seemed like someone was
pile driving a shaft nearby to check for seismic readings. No doubt about it by
now, the timing side bush was shot. Not knowing a very nice man (AAA) at the
time (since rectified). There was only one thing for it, ride home the
remaining 200 or so miles to Manchester very carefully. I found that at about
40 to 45 mph the knocking was less dramatic. In the early hours of the morning
we all arrived home, with no further damage. I must point out that to stay with
us to make sure we were okay at that speed on a T160 was heroic. Thanks Pete
and Lynne. A strip of the engine revealed, just as I had thought, the timing
side bush worn oval. Fortunately nothing else was amiss apart from slight wear
on the crank drive shaft splines. Unbeknown to me then, this would prove
troublesome later on. After a lot of drilling and chiselling the sludge trap
plugs were removed to reveal what can only be described as a tube full of black
material with the consistency of blackboard chalk. How oil had ever managed to
get past this to the big ends I will never know. I contacted the guy I had
bought the bike off and he said he had rebuilt the bike but couldn't remove the
sludge trap plugs so didn't bother cleaning it out. Be warned, when you have
the crank out of the engine, always clean out the sludge trap. If you can't get
them out, then remove all the burrs and dot punch marks at the side carefully
by drilling just deep enough on each one to remove the burring. Then find a
large Allen key and a drill just a little larger in diameter than the across
the flats measurement of the Allen key and drill the centre of the sludge trap
plug. Now, drive in the allen key until it goes right in to the plug then trap
it in a vice and turn the crank to screw out the sludge trap plug. Buy a set of
Allen key type sludge trap plugs from SRM and never have the trouble again.
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