Misc: Everything Else Complete Restoration of a Black Shadow

Magnetoman

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Thank you for that suggestion. Several "critical" last minute details in the runup to the exhibition opening in Brisbane kept me out of the garage longer than I had expected so I'm about a week behind where I had hoped to be in finishing a BSA project. However, I still have hopes of finishing the BSA by my original plan of Christmas.

When the BSA is done I'll turn my attention to whatever happens to be the next project, which might or might not be the Vincent. In the sense that any of this makes sense, it makes most sense to finish the major refurbishing of my 1928 Ariel which has been sitting patiently waiting for me to install a new valve seat since finishing the Cannonball over two years ago. Oh, and rebuild its leaky gearbox and disassemble the engine to fix the large crankshaft end float that developed.
 

timetraveller

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Texas John's reference to an index is worthy of note. A good index makes any publication more useful. Over twenty years ago I wrote an astrophysical text book and this was before modern word processing programs like WORD. Creating the index by hand was a time consuming pain. The ease with which a better index can be created now has to be experienced and although I would not presume to offer advice as to how to do the work you propose, at least during the creation of the individual chapters an index for each one might help to save time and repetition.
 

Magnetoman

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A good index makes any publication more useful. Over twenty years ago I wrote an astrophysical text book ...
There's no doubt an index would be useful, but producing one is a lot easier said than done, and especially if trying to produce it in parallel with doing the actual restoration. The 1928 Ariel restoration I have on another site is a reasonable model for what to expect with the Vincent since I had that bike down to the last nut and bolt when I rebuilt it. That restoration thread runs to 84 pages of 25 posts/page (2100 posts, of which probably three-quarters are mine), and there's no reason to expect a Vincent rebuild would be any shorter.

As a test, I just got 45 hits when I searched that Ariel thread for 'stellite'. I made my own pushrods as well as re-faced the rockers after I returned from the Cannonball so some of those hits could lead someone else to useful information. However, to know which of those hits would be useful to have in an Index, and which wouldn't be, would take quite a bit of effort. As an example of something not useful, in answer to a question I was asked I wrote that although I could use Stellite on the oil pump plunger, it wasn't necessary in this application. Again, that was 45 hits on what was a fairly specialized word in that long thread.

Related to this, I have no doubt my rebuild of that Ariel is the most thoroughly-documented rebuild of a 1928 Ariel "published" in at least the past two centuries, if not longer. So, some months ago I thought I might turn it into a "shop manual" in case there was one other person on earth possibly interested in the information. However, I only got as far as creating a document with my posts that's 109,713 words and 278 single-spaced pages. Unlike a book, my Ariel rebuild didn't proceed in a linear fashion (e.g. Birth of a Star, Life of a Star, Death of a Star, The End), and as a result reorganizing that document into something like an Ariel shop manual would take a lot more time than I would like to spend. And that's not counting the time it would take to index it when done.

Anyway, while I completely agree with you that a good index makes a publication more useful, I'm fairly certain I won't undertake to create one while I'm rebuilding my Vincent.
 

timetraveller

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Please understand that I am not trying to encourage you to go in any particular direction. I suspect that you have a much better organised way of working than I have but the difference in doing an index by hand and letting the work processing software do it totally remarkable. It is so trivial these days that the biggest problem is editing the index to get rid of things you do not want. It will take the machine about a second to make an index of each section and if you do that on the first section you finish and find it a waste of time then at least you know that it is not worth proceeding. Sorry if I seem to be trying to tell you what to do. That is not my intention.
 

Magnetoman

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the difference in doing an index by hand and letting the work processing software do it totally remarkable.
I completely agree. But the difference between using a word processor to help create an index, and not doing an index at all, is even more remarkable...
 

timetraveller

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Yes Tim. Exactly the same for me. I needed to look something up a few months and and immediately thought that Know Thy Beast would be an easy way to find the information. It really is a good source. I turned to the back and 'oh dear!'. I then had to go to the table of contents at the front and try to work out under what heading the item would have been listed. From Magneto man's description of some of his previous work it sounds as though what he writes is exhaustive and very thorough. How to find a particular item might be difficult. However, it is his project and time which is involved. If he makes the data available in a machine readable format then someone else might be able to create indices for the various sections or even an index for the whole collection.
 

Spqreddie

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View attachment 37630
This is the motor from a Shadow that will be built as a Lighting style hot rod. I think it has the factory paint but can not say for sure. Is this consistent with other stock cases?
I have some NOS muffs and the paint on them seem to be fairly thinner than the paint on the cases.
From your picture seems like Shadow cases were brushed before to be painted? may be for having a better surface for the paint?
Here 7993, I thought the previous owner had tried to take off the paint mechanically with a brush, but under your paint it seems to see the same fine vertical markings.
As well, now that i look again at the photo of 7993, the edges of the numbers don't seems to have sings of the "brushing" so they must have been stamped after, so the brushing must have been a factory preparation before painting and stamping.
Sorry, may be obvious to many, but just realizing this now!
BS 7993 (3).jpg
 

Simon Dinsdale

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From your picture seems like Shadow cases were brushed before to be painted? may be for having a better surface for the paint?
Here 7993, I thought the previous owner had tried to take off the paint mechanically with a brush, but under your paint it seems to see the same fine vertical markings.
As well, now that i look again at the photo of 7993, the edges of the numbers don't seems to have sings of the "brushing" so they must have been stamped after, so the brushing must have been a factory preparation before painting and stamping.
Sorry, may be obvious to many, but just realizing this now!
Yes the markings are factory done and are just them cleaning up the rough sand cast cases prior to painting as due to the nature of sand castings the finish on some cases was rough. I suspect these couldn't be used on an unpainted engine due to appearance and so used on Shadows so nothing was rejected due to casting appearance. Most probably done with a hand held rotary grinder or sanding attachment. The early Shadows, especially series B & early C were not cleaned up at all and so if you look at one of them you can see the rough casting through the paint.

So could you go as far and say the better finish sand cast cases went into Rapides and the rejects into Shadows which the paint & preparations would allow to be used? know Marcus thinks so.
 
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