I hate stainless steel :-)

[Michael Vane-Hunt]

Well OK, I love my stainless kitchen sink, but IMHO stainless steel does not belong on motorcycles, especially for fasteners. I can make an exception for fenders, but little else. Being as I am in the SAE metric hinterlands, I am totally dependent on the VOC spares company for whitworth, cycle thread etc. bits, and most are only available in stainless steel. My unrestored comet has nicely patina-ed nuts and bolts, when one occasionally gets lost or bodged it must be replaced with tawdry stainless steel, like Soviet era Russian replacement teeth (apologies to offended Soviet era Russians, sorry sorry sorry).
Once upon a time I had to work with the evil stuff, so this is personal. For those who are replacing perfectly good as the Phils intended proper carbon steel Vincent fasteners with stainless trash, consider making a charitable donation of your used nuts and bolts to those far from the source of all those weird and wonderful British thread types.

Everiman.Where are you located? I have used Victoria Plating to cadmium plate probably well over 1000 parts. Never lost a single piece. Speak to Jarred. You can often find BSF, Whitworth and CEI nuts and bolts on evilbay. I generally sand blast parts and anything small I wire them up with thin stainless lock wire. I believe Robert had all the cad, for a bike he did up, by Victoria Plating. Ask him if anything got lost.

 

[oexing]

Well, there are bike owners who get their nuts and bolts chromed and they like it . Some brands had it this way in certain places but really this is not the best finish as chrome is easily chipped and bolts and threads rust the more later. Good luck with plating bolts and screws - when they get too much of it on threads you will have a fight to assemble the lot . Don´t know the cause of your animosity to stainless, possibly from not having lubricated threads before assembling, or due to unsuitable machine tools for SS steel.
I strongly believe Phil Vincent would have liked all fasteners to be SS on his bikes, he hated chrome for all hassles with platers. But at that time there was no way to get that sort of screws in postwar years when UK had almost all products to export .
In case you don´t like the shiny looks of polished stainless, have it glass bead blasted, so it gets dull nickel appearance. For polished nickel look you just heat items until yellow, only trained eyes will know it is stainless.
I started using stainless in mid seventies on my first real vintage bike, a 1928 BMW 750 , not the least desire to fabricate any fasteners from anything else but stainless as threads need not be protected in other ways. It was a pain to do a handful of M 6x 0.85 Bolts while I was a schoolboy with a stoneage lathe,one gear, no metric leadscrew . But I had all my time then and got the job done laboriously. Even then Stainless screws were practically unobtainable, mainly for chemical industry or food processing, ordinary people had no easy way to find a supplier to get that stuff.
Proof of Vincent´s preference for stainless were the prewar tanks on A Types, on B Rapides early series kickstart levers were magnetic stainless. Happily I got one of these in stainless, the second will have to be chromed - I expect another war with platers, sorry to say. Obviously the stainless types were too costly for the company so they were not continued. Whenever there might come the need for chrome plated spares I try to copy these in stainless and polish them so I don´t have to face chroming .
Below the two types of kickstart levers, polished stainless and common steel . Not surprisingly I did some mods, no splines - which don´t last - but push bike/ BMW taper pin lever clamping on shaft. The clapped out footpiece was copied in ss , no more rubber but prewar Guzzi or BMW knurled design - for keeping the classic spirit of a girder fork bike , don´t care about protesters the least . . . .

Vic

 

[Magnetoman]

Stainless certainly has practical advantages. Of course, so do modern bikes. For what (little) it's worth, if I'm judging a concours, bead blasted stainless fasteners strike my eyes the same way fingernails across a chalkboard strikes my ears.

In the mid-1990s, when I sent 6 lbs. of fasteners, spindles, etc. from the forks to be cadmium plated, I looked up the prices of the various pieces to know what I should insure them for, since replacing them with stainless seemed like it would be the only realistic option if they were lost in shipping. At that time the replacements would have cost $700 ($6.50/oz.). Interestingly, at that time the cost of pure silver was just $4.50/oz.

I didn't note the bulk price of 404 stainless in 1995 but even today it's is only $0.50 per pound, so essentially all the cost of those stainless items is in the fabrication, and nearly nothing in the raw material. Today the price of silver is $25/oz., an increase of a factor of 5.5x. Without taking the time to look up current VOC prices, inflation in the UK since 1995 has been a factor of 2x. Assuming that is reflected in manufacturing costs, the same 6 lbs. would be $1400 ($13/oz.).

The only logical conclusion from these figures is you should use silver fasteners on your Vincent, not stainless…

 

[Flylow]

Well OK, I love my stainless kitchen sink, but IMHO stainless steel does not belong on motorcycles, especially for fasteners. I can make an exception for fenders, but little else. Being as I am in the SAE metric hinterlands, I am totally dependent on the VOC spares company for whitworth, cycle thread etc. bits, and most are only available in stainless steel. My unrestored comet has nicely patina-ed nuts and bolts, when one occasionally gets lost or bodged it must be replaced with tawdry stainless steel, like Soviet era Russian replacement teeth (apologies to offended Soviet era Russians, sorry sorry sorry).
Once upon a time I had to work with the evil stuff, so this is personal. For those who are replacing perfectly good as the Phils intended proper carbon steel Vincent fasteners with stainless trash, consider making a charitable donation of your used nuts and bolts to those far from the source of all those weird and wonderful British thread types.

Well written.
I whish VOC Spare would offer carbon steel fasters (instead of stainless). I would buy un-treated carbon steel over stainless any day.

 

[Bill Thomas]

Vic, You may regret that Kicker without a rubber,
Could give damage to Foot and Boot,
Cheers Bill.

 

[oexing]

Yes, Bill, I thought about that. But when you do it right with all settings of ignition as should be there should not be a big risk of kickback. A rubber could be slipped over the footpiece later if my foot hurts too much from a lot of kicking.
And Magnetoman, 50 cents per pound for stainless - sorry, never . It contains 18 percent chromium and 10 percent nickel so how could they sell that for considerably less than cheapest plain carbon steel used for corroding screws ??
And I bet you will not be able to tell from three steps distance from the bike you see beadblasted ss and not dull nickel. Sorry, most arguments are religion, like discussions about metric or imperial - or all sorts of Taliban attitudes on classic bikes. I think we should get over the idea of dealing with technical monuments that we have to conserve for next centuries for proving exactly what ? How many 100 percent original Vincents does mankind need for documentation for whatever, 1000 each, 2000 each - or more ?? If somebody really wants to know he may see next museum to find one of the undead there for taking measurements. But that will rarely happen, Google is easier to get all info they want.
My advice is - relax, we are not important, nor are the bikes from old days. Not unlike all these steam train engines in museums - you ever checked their fasteners if metric or imperial, correct hexagon sizes on them ?? Who wants to know today ? Just build your Vincent to please YOUR eyes , noone else matters, just have fun as you like them !
Below a photo of an extremely rare 600 cc four valve Horex from 1935, apart from the newly chromed tank, ex pipes, kickstart, all other shiny parts are stainless. Now have a close look at the inlet elbow holding the Vincent Amal: Yeah, you at once identified it as beadblasted stainless welded up from sections - certainly . . . . .

Vic

 

[Flo]

The only logical conclusion from these figures is you should use silver fasteners on your Vincent, not stainless…

Nice though the wording and the reasoning is, sorry this is counterfactual: Bolts are used to transfer force by the friction between two parts und the tension exerted by the fasteners. Hence from the Mechanical Properties of silver, namely Young's modulud, UTS and elastic limit, silver is not fit to be used in serious engineering components, never mind its other admirable qualities e,g, corrosion resistance and heat conductivity.! on the other hand 18/8 atainless is also not the best choice for highly loaded Fasteners!

 

[Cyborg]

Yes, for goodness sake Magnetoman, get a grip on yourself.

 

[Magnetoman]

And Magnetoman, 50 cents per pound for stainless - sorry, never .

Sorry, my fault for quickly googling the answer. Recyclers buy it for 50 cents/lb. but it sells new for $1.20/lb. Which is still somewhat less than the $25/oz. of silver

And I bet you will not be able to tell from three steps distance from the bike you see beadblasted ss and not dull nickel.

Sorry, but you're mistaken. But, maybe you misunderstood what I wrote about the appearance of blasted stainless. I have nothing whatever against someone using it, or someone who wears a toupee. But, someone who wears a cheap, ill-fitting toupee thinking that he's fooling people does generate a reaction. Bead blasted stainless on a bike entered in a concours generates that reaction.

Yes, for goodness sake Magnetoman, get a grip on yourself.

I'm trying, but the threads on my silver fasteners keep stripping so I can't get a grip.

. Hence from the Mechanical Properties of silver, namely Young's modulud, UTS and elastic limit, silver is not fit to be used in serious engineering components,

I recently accused Cyborg of making an obscure comment. It seems my humor was equally obscure.

But, on the subject of the use of silver components on motorcycles, AJS originally tried Ag heads for their Porcupine, to take advantage of the high thermal conductivity. Unfortunately, pure silver is soft, and by the time they had alloyed it enough to give it sufficient strength, the thermal conductivity of the silver alloy had dropped to no longer give it an advantage. So, they dropped the idea.

 

[oexing]

Poor boy, caring about what concours judges think . . .. Not my concern at all, they will never get to see my idea of classics as I am free to do as I like .

Vic