More on stainless mudguard

Tnecniv Edipar

Well Known and Active Forum User
Non-VOC Member
The original was Birmabright BB2. Today that SAME composition is 5251.
Used every day in my workshop, and thousands of others.
Nothing exiting about Birmabright, it`s just the name of the supplier, they could have used British Aluminium Co. - BA21, Alcoa - 510, HDA Forgings - Hiduminium -22, Alcan - GB- M57S. All producing companies of the Vincent era producing the same product under their own name.
This from me who was using all of this in the Aircraft industry at the same time as your bikes were being built.

Having checked out the various similar materials I think that 5083 (close to BB4) could be even better for this application. It's stronger and has more salt corrosion resistance.
 

clevtrev

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
Having checked out the various similar materials I think that 5083 (close to BB4) could be even better for this application. It's stronger and has more salt corrosion resistance.
If you are lucky enough to find some 1mm sheet, you would find it very difficult to roll the bead on the edge.
 

timetraveller

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VOC Member
Tens of thousands of pounds for the tooling! Sounds like a government project to me. With the various skills available within the VOC it seems likely that we have someone who knows what the tooling should look like and others who could make it. I have never seen mudguards made but if we have guys making new crankcases then surely we have to be able to make mudguards. Think positive chaps.
 

Tnecniv Edipar

Well Known and Active Forum User
Non-VOC Member
I have found a source for the sheet and I'm certain that a company can be found to roll the required sections and form the edge beads , afterall , mudguards are being made for other machines.
 

Somer

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VOC Member
The late Bud Ekins pointed out to me one time that fenders were stacked and shipped.The bottom ones have a different arch than those on the top due to weight.
 

Tom Gaynor

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VOC Member
Mudguards

About 6 or 7 years ago, a man called Alan Davis, from Poole, made a batch of front and rear Rudge Ulster mudguards. I was lucky enough to buy a pair, for £230 (which looking back now is amazingly cheap), so my Ulster "restoration" (which started in 1974 when someone gave me a cylinder head, but stalled for lack of mudguards), revived and was finished. I've just spoken to him, and unfortunately it's an experience he wouldn't wish to repeat, but he told me how he did it, and that he thought it would be much easier with ally than it was with steel. When he finished the batch his tooling was beyond further use.
The curve was made by passing the strip repeatedly through three pairs of formers, concave on the outside of each pair, convex on the inside, ending up with the right profile and the right curve. On the Ulster guards he then formed the bead by bending it over first to five degrees (an inch at a time by means of a saw-cut in the end of a piece of flat bar) then 10, 15 up to 90, then hammered it over. He said "it was tedious". Hmmm.
My competence as a sheet metal worker extends little further than operating a tin-opener without cutting myself very often, so this explanation may lack some critical detail...
What he did remark was that the formers had cost him a lot of time and effort to make, but with CNC machines they might nowadays be a great deal easier and perhaps cheaper to make. Since machines to make mudguards exist (is it auto-restorations who have one?) then presumably the easiest way to go about it would be to "make our own formers" to suit machinery that belongs to someone else.
 

timetraveller

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
If the radius of mudguards was as easy to change as just stacking them we would not all be having problems fitting the unfortunate items which are currently available. About 15 years ago when I first found out how badly Vincent spares quality had deteriorated I tried to fit a new rear ally one. Being a determined sort of a chap I ended up creasing it irrevocably where it should have fitted to the front upper fixing.

More positively, I use CAD on a regular basis and have access to first class CNC users who already make some of the parts I supply for the VOCSC and the new 8" brakes etc so you will know of the quality of their work. If someone out there can tell me what is needed I am happy to design it for nothing and get the rollers/formers or whatever made at cost. That is likely to be a few hundred pounds or even less if it is only the rollers which are required but I would need details of the machine to which they would be fitted. :)
 

Tnecniv Edipar

Well Known and Active Forum User
Non-VOC Member
I've had confirmation that the material is available , so no problem there !! Could someone just confirm the gauge or thickness of the original material , I have gone with 1.6mm .
 

Tom Gaynor

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
Of course all that folk knowledge is lost nowadays.....

In the sixties, bikes had ally mudguards. If they didn't, at least in the circles I careered about in, you were shunned. Dogs barked at you in the street. Decent people shut their doors to you. Fellow travellers turned aside. It was hell, I tell you, hell.
There was a further subdivision: there were those who bought 19" front and rear ally guards for 19" wheels, and the cognoscenti who bought an 18" front and a 19" rear.
The two classes could immediately be told apart, because the 2 x 19 mob had enough standoff between front guard and tyre to allow ice-racing tyres, or had a guard that to fit the stays was no longer a circular arc. Aarrgh!! Hideous!! See above for reaction of decent people, and add mocking laughter.
It goes without saying that I was one of the cognoscenti, because otherwise I wouldn't know this. I suspect that whoever specified Vincent stainless steel guards didn't know this either, or had no choice in the matter, because to my eyes they almost all look like ice-racers.
In the sixties we had the luxury of 17", 18", 19" and for all I know 20 and 21" front and rear ally blades: the rule was a front guard an inch smaller than the nominal tyre size. When I wanted to replicate the beautiful front guards on a Honda factory racer, I had to use a 17" blade on the 18" wheel. Such luxury is no longer available. But if we WERE going to fill this gap in the Vincent spares list, it would be a pity not to get it right this time.
 
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