W/E 19th January

Smoke filled garage see’s the Atlas up and running

Hurrah the Atlas is back! Not quite back on the road because some fine tuning is required to stop the popping and banging in the silencer but it runs and appears to be oil tight.

Last weekend was frustrating because I couldn’t get the sprag to bite – the ring gear is too worn to work with standard rollers so I am on the hunt for a reasonably priced supply of 10.3 x 10 mm rollers. One idea is to cut down drill bits or to get the sprag spigot reduced so I can maybe get 11mm rollers. Anyways let’s see…

The other angle was to get the Zane 650 sprag working again. I’d taken this off because it had started slipping but somewhere in the past I’d got another bearing with a secondhand Ducati 600 starter gear wheel. Frustration kicked in however when I couldn’t find the needle bearing it sits on so I put a call out for a secondhand one.

In fact I put a call out for a few things – M7 brass exhaust nuts from http://www.ecas2cvparts.co.uk/ and spring washers meant for a Vespa off ebay + some M12 dowty washers for the Atlas (see later). I determined to try and anticipate or sort things without procrastination (yeah, yeah).

So the Zane needle bearing arrived and the sprag duly fitted. First off the engine turned but the sprag didn’t move the engine. My first thought was the starter was going backwards so I ran off to google and read various woes of similarly inflicted home mechanics. It was only later in the day after I’d done a bit of thinking that I realised I’d put the sprag bearing in the wrong way round…Sprag ‘righted’ she fired up quite easily – especially as I hooked her up to the RGS battery. It certainly makes the point that the bike benefits from extra punch and I will look into options.

The other hassle to be sorted before the bike would start was to stop it leaking out of the cylinder head where the oil feed enters on the nearside of the engine. I was concerned that the thread on this junction wasn’t as good as it should be but the light torque wasn’t wholly to blame and removal of the banjo bolt showed the washers either side to be ‘dowty’ washers i.e. a rubber seal on the inside edge. I found some on the spare motor and it seems to be oil tight – although at the moment the garage fills with smoke on account of the excess oil that’d got onto the exhaust.

So with the Atlas headed in the right direction I turned my attention to the RGS and started to strip bits off it.

RGS begins its journey to get back on the road

I paced myself and got all the fairing panels off along with the exhaust system. As with the RGA lots of road salt damage. What I decided however was that things were beginning to get out of hand with regards to organisation so once I’d taken off the initial bits I decided to start putting bits into boxes. What an excellent idea – two boxes full of Atlas parts, three for the RGA and two so far for the RGS. I also squirreled away sidepanels and fairings by hanging them from the rafters. At last I am starting to see the garage floor again!

Laverda parts stacked high!

So the year has taken a giant leap forward – I will soon be able to be back riding a Laverda on the road!

Nick 🙂