Cross Heads

In an earlier post I mentioned that I finally bought the JIS cross head screw drivers.

To clarify the difference (to myself) once and for all I tried to find the JIS specification on-line but could not find it.

Anyway, the most common cross heads, in my life are:

But unfortunately the most common screw drivers (as for most people) are Phillips and Pozidriv. This has resulted in a lot of damaged screws. Where to get replacement JIS screws or at least similar looking Phillips, I don't know.

Earlier I have replaced the screws with Unbrako / Allen head bolts but that just don't seem right. For one of the Honda engines I used flanged JIS bolts (smaller head size and finer thread pitch for the larger bolts) but they were not easy to find either.

Hopefully I can soon start refurbishing used bolts when I get my home Zinc plating kit working.

FARGO

Last summer I "found" an old Fargo Town Wagon in Canada that I "fell in love with".



I was allmost attempted to buy it, regardless of the state.

This is what it should look like. The only difference is taht my Fargo was a delivery van. I.e. no windows or seats in the rear. (Town Panel?)



Like this

Next problem

Maybe these motors were popular in Holland?



The cylinder had some shelf wear...



After some light filing and honing it's better.



New piston rings adjusted.



The next problem is that the magneto seems to be faulty. Visually I detected one broken wire in the primary winding but the secondary windig also has a open circuit and that's bad... I have not decided if I should put any effort and money into rewinding the magneto.

More Junk

Maybe I should start to build something instead of just piling junk.

Yesterdays "find".

Winter tyres not included

Mosquito

For some reason I have not had any "go" lately. But yesterday I visited a Swap Meet and sice I always try to find at least one item to buy I bought some piston rings.

I have had an old Mosquito autocycle engine laying around, for about 30 years, that need two new piston rings.



Unfortunately these rings seems to be made from unobtanium so finally I bougt some that I maybe could modify to fit. The new rings, I was told, are for some Villiers engine.


Above the original

The new rings are cut 90 degrees but that is not a problem. They are also 35.5 mm compared to the original 35.0 mm but that is easily adjusted by filing.

Screwdrivers

As a reaction to the recommendation from the Classic Honda Racing blog, I ordered a couple of original Honda Tools.

My Honda dealer did not recognize the given parts number KL1696 as a Honda parts number... But when I got it, the number was there.

In my Honda Tool Catalog from 1969 the parts no's are:
07776-99961 Cross Head Driver No2
07776-99962 Cross Head Driver No3

What I finally ended up ordering were:
07603-0050101 "driver no.2"
07603-0050201 "driver no.3"

When I picked them up the seller told me that I was the first customer in, at least, 6 years that had placed an order for original Honda tools...

Chemistry 2012

The original zink plating experiment has evolved. To get the right chemicals (mainly the zink brightener) I surrended and bought them from Caswell.
I'm in the process of building the essential zinkplating rig at the moment. My intention was to start today but I did not have enough copper wires to complete it, maybe tomorrow.

This far I have made the rig for zinkplating the fork springs for the Fleetwood front fork (except the main zink anodes). In the picture below, at least the center anode...

Dechromed

1/3 of the way. A lot of parts that have been dechromed.

Some are going to be rechromed and some are going to be zink-plated. I will have to decide, depending on the quality of the goods and how much elbow grease I want to put in.

Antenna

After the second digital reciever broke in a couple of years I started to suspect that a too weak signal from my home made antenna caused the reciever to work "hard" (nothing that I know about electronics supports that assumtion but anyway).

Home made antenna, ver 1.0

Just a coax cable. I removed the shielding 40cm from the outer end.

Started a project building a fractal antenna from bits and pieces.
Studied the channel frequencies to find a good average lengt (for the channels I mostly watch) for the antenna.



Home made antenna, ver 2.0


It works (and why would it not). Maybe I should take a more scientific approach and measure if there is a noticable improvement in signal strenght? Maybe later.

If there is any ver 2.x it will probably have a backplane...

EDIT: Checking the signal strenght and picture quality: Very good 98/98% for Channels 23 & 42 (490/642MHz), good 80/96% for Channel 50 (706MHz) and not so good 45/50% for channel 56 (754MHz). At least it's a big improvement compaired to the earlier antenna.

Did it again

This time working on the frame. Started thinking about other things while hammering ...

The major misshap was not hitting myself on the thumb. The problem was the damage caused by the cold chisel richosheting in the shop afterwards.

Cheap battery

Today one of the battery packs for my cordless drill went for lunch and never came back.

Luckily for me I have a stash of cheap replacement batteries for a cheapo cordless drill for these avents, just in case.

Instead of buying expensive replacement packs I make a quite simple opereration of changing the cells.









Replaced and soldered, not the prettiest soldering but it works.

D.I.D it!

One time only...


The cold weather only had one positive aspect, the rims did not get hot to handle.
On the other hand this probably affected the function of the polishing compund in a negative way. I'll have to do it all ove again with a finer coumpound later.

Anyway, I made some short cuts by not grinding with fine grit paper, that shows. But on the other hand they are old rims, full of nicks and dents. You have to draw the line somewhere...

Doldrums

Due to my lack of stamina and cramps in my grindig hand I have limited the visits in the shed to one hour a day. My thumb is numb...

This is one of the resons why the rims aren't ready yet. The factor that I'll have to do the last polishing outdoors might slow things down too, it's -5 degres Celsius at the moment, it's dark and the wind is over 10m/s. Maybe tomorrow.

Cirtic acid

I think it's a very good home remedy for the average Joe's workshop. Not a very strong acid and very easy to get, just 'borrow' from the kitchen.

I have now used it for zink plating, refurbishing of Amal carbs for my Norton and lately a rusty camshaft.

I just had to try it, but because of the New Years party and other things I forgot...
Anyway after a couple of days I removed the camshaft from the acid. And this is how it looked before polishing the surfaces.



I just put one end in the acid, this is how the other end looks like.

New Rods

Because of the storm last night and the following power failure, there has not been much action in the shed today.

At least the car still had some power so I went and bought new connecting rods for one engine.

Rims

Today I started all over again, the crack in the rim was not welded through so it had to be re-done.
At the same time I had all the largest nicks filled in.


The front rim also welded but not grinded.

There where two large holes for rim locks that I did not want.
Below, welded and grinded using small file and sand paper. One small spot in the weld...


Hopefully the rims will turn out as good as the Borrani rim that I polished several years ago. Still have not had any use for the wheel.


And if I dont find anything else to do, there are more rims waiting

Chemistry 101

Sooner than later I'll buy an DIY electroplating set, Caswell for example.
But I thought I should try it myself first...

Using an old coffee brewer, Citric acid, Zinc sheet metal and a modified battery charger (made it a constant 1 amp source).

I started with a spacer to the rear wheel.


The result.

Well a rather thick coating on the outside, nothng on the inside. Don't think I could have done much better with a "semi pofessional set" - or could I?



And after some brushing

Time Capsule

Went to my local parts dealer to buy a couple of spoke sets for my CB125 project.
The guy behind the counter told me that they had opened "the door, you know" and found a camshaft for a CB450.
"The Door" is the door to a room in the cellar that supposedly was shut in the mid 70:s when the room was flooded or at least water damaged, and never opend until late 2011.

Probably why the camshaft was rusty.

The camshaft is a bit interesting since I guess it's the same model (or similar) to those which was used in the Precision Machining 450 in the early 70:s, described in an article in Cycle World on Honda (1968-1971 edition as I remember it)

Most complicated

piece I have made in my lathe, this far, is the new stopper out of aluminium, for my drill (instead of the old plastic one).

Painted, sort of...

... because when I checked the spray can, afterwards, it was engine paint.