Not for the squeamish....

[Tom Walker]

Well here goes, my first effort at posting a thread...
I recently joined the club having purchased a Rapide from a friend. His step dad passed it to him, and was supposed to have done it up in the 80's and it hasn't done much since. "Done it up" clearly could mean anything, so I'm going very carefully.
Big Eddy kindly cruised down on his Vin yesterday in the freezing cold, and cast his eye over the bike, and gave me the confidence to carry on getting it ready to fire up without a total strip down. Thanks Eddy, you are a top man.
This evening I decided I just had to clean out the oil tank. I could not bring my self to put clean oil in a tank with half an inch of silver sludge in the bottom. Thats when drained.
So, doing the "right thing" I searched the forum while having my lunch, for tips on how to do this job. Well, short of taking the bike apart and cutting manholes etc there didn't seem much hope.
But hang on, if the fitting at the back that the oil flows out of can be removed, can't I just flush the crud out of that?
So I set up a gutter carefully shaped at the top to go under the tank, to take away the "flushings" (you should know I am a farmer).

Before unscrewing the oil fitting, I put a pint of petrol in the tank and shook the bike side to side for a bit. That worked well, and dipping the tank with a stick showed the crud was loosened.
All set up, I removed the fitting, and a black and silver river gushed down the gutter. I had a gallon can of petrol ready and poured it full bore into the tank..... more black and silver gushing.
It took two gallons of BPs finest till the torrent ran clear. Peering in to the tank it all looked lovely and clean. Of course I couldn't see very far in, but I'm confident all the muck is shifted.
The worrying bit is the quantity and make up of the "washings". I filtered the 2 gallons of gas, and collected 15 see sees of silver filings.
Look away now if you have a weak constitution.

I fished this bad boy out with my magnet

So its a bit of a worry, but whats done is done. How on earth all that crap got back up into the tank does confuse me, and how much damage did it do on the way??

I took out the filter, which had a fair few filings in as well, so need a new one of those.

Certainly adds power to the elbow of those advocating full flow filtration!

Cheers, Tom.

 

[davidd]

Tom,

Congratulations and good luck. Eddie deserves praise also for helping both you and the Club.

I would have given the same advice as Eddie. The sludge is usually fine in the bottom as long as it is not disturbed. You could have then disturbed it when you were removing the RFM for some reason. But, having disturbed it, which is not an unreasonable thing to do, It looks like you are doing a fine job cleaning it out. Congratulations on finding a nice original spare washer also!

You can think about a few things, but they are not strictly necessary. If you can find an in-line oil filter you can put it in the supply line as a temporary measure. You could also mount a remote spin on filter. I would not bother with either of these. I don't think that they are worth the effort. If you can clean out the UFM to your satisfaction, I would just throw a magnet inside the stock felt oil filter element. That should be enough if everything is clean.

Many of the silver specs are aluminum and you may have, or may have had, an aluminum idler in the timing chest that is or was shedding.

Finally, there is an oil chamber in the crank cases that cannot be cleaned unless you spit the cases. Thus, the oil may not run as clean as you hope. I would not worry about this. There is only so much that you can do short of a total rebuild.

I would work on getting some time riding the bike. There is always plenty to do on them, so just focus on the sensible things that will allow you to keep riding.

Best of luck,

David

 

[BigEd]

Dear Tom,
Your enthusiasm is admirable. If you check the "filings" with a magnet you may find that some of them will be aluminium. The early big idler gear in the timing cover was made of aluminium and source of the aluminium particles often found in the oil and UFM. The steel idler replacements cured that problem.

 

[Albervin]

When you take the timing cover off you may find the source of all that metal. Depending on how much of that "silver" is magnetic you could find a large alloy gear looking worse for wear or some of the steel gears looking very second hand.
You might also reflect that the filings are the product of over 40 years and all the damaged parts have been replaced sometime ago. Good luck.

 

[Albervin]

It seems we are all of a similar mind Ed and Dave. The rocker bushes could also be a source of the alloy. Next step I would undertake is check the gearbox oil. Unfortunately if you find gold or silver then it may be a strip down. Fingers crossed.

 

[Oldhaven]

Hi Tom,

That looks like a nice original Rapide. I have had to clean out my B's UFM's twice, since I did the one that came with it and another that replaced it. Long story, but the situation is that there is a sump at the rear of the oil tank and brazed above the port you drained the swarf out of is a closed top tube with a hole in it a bit above the floor of the tank. This is theoretically to prevent any sludge that settles in the tank from being picked up and recycled. You may be lucky in that if what you can see is clean below the filler neck, you might have had no concretions that could not be dissolved with petrol. I had the tank off and used a lot of nasty things like acetone and xylene and agitation to get mine clean, including letting solvents sit in the tank for a while. Mine had sat for lots of years unused, so what was in there had had time to turn into fossil remains again. Anyway, it sounds like you had good luck, but if you want to be sure you can get a small inexpensive borescope like USB camera on a cable with an LED light on Amazon or Ebay that will get you back into the really squeamish areas of the tank. Here is a really poor picture of mine. the larger diameter tube is what is above the fitting you used, the other is the return tube.

 

[Tom Walker]

Well thanks for all the help here. I just went out to shed and tried the magnet test on the filings, Eddy,and 99% is ali, so relief all round.
Will have to wait for the new filter, but plenty to do anyway.
Will drain g box tomorrow David and let you know the result.
Loving the big ol Vin, cant wait to fire the beast up!
Cheers Tom.

 

[Oldhaven]

Slight mind slip. The small tube is not the return line. That is in the center of the tank bottom. It is the chain oiler. I blocked mine off since there is no way to control the output in a B oil tank.

 

[greg brillus]

You are actually better off running a length of pipe out to the rear axle, blanking off the chain oiler is a BIG mistake, remember it's main function is the tank breather outlet. The only way the tank can breath otherwise is the tiny pinhole in the filler cap, which I feel is not large enough especially at elevated speeds. I have a "B" tank and I run both the engine breather and oil tank breather "T" pieced together with a 3/8 bore flexible pipe out to the rear axle, works just fine.

 

[Bill Thomas]

Morning Tom, Don't forget how old this bike is, All the problems that the bike has had, May have been mended ??, Just that the Tank has never been Cleaned !. Maybe change the Filter a lot in the first 2000 miles, To keep an eye on things.
See how you get on with the bike for a bit, Then maybe have a look in the Timing case, The Alloy Idler is not good to have in there.
Good Luck, Bill.