Hi Ian, welcome to the Club. I will assume that things like tyres, their pressures and spoke tensions are all ok now. Modern inner tubes seem to maintain their pressure much better than the old tubes so checking tyre pressures once a month is probably sufficient. Incidentally, I find that modern tyres need to be about 8 to10 p.s.i. harder than the pressures in the books you have. Running them at the original pressures makes the bike squirm when cornering and this is a good way to find out if the pressures have dropped without you noticing. I find that lots of the checks can be carried out every time the bike is ridden without making them a separate job.
1) Pull in the clutch and push down the kick starter. This ensures that you are in neutral and that there are no strange noises from the gearbox. It also ensures that the clutch is freeing properly and is not going to be dragging in traffic and overheating.
2) Whenever you start the bike after it has been stood for a few days or longer turn it over four or five times with the kick starter and with the valve lifter held in. This will start to get the oil flowing and ensure that there are no new noises from the engine or primary drive.
3) Next check compression on both cylinders by letting go of the valve lifter and gently easing over the engine on the kick starter. This checks that the valves are seating properly. You are probably going to be using unleaded fuel and if you do not have hardened valve seats they will start and ‘pocket’ which reduces tappet clearance. This will eventually lead to the valves being held off their seats. I found that that the exhaust valves suffered more than the inlets. If you do find the compression is not what it was then, because of the clever Vincent design, it is only a few minutes work before you start the ride to slacken off the offending tappets. You should be able to stand on the kick starter without the engine turning easily.
4) After you have started the engine, and if it is either a ‘B’ or a ‘C’, look inside the oil tank filler cap and make sure that the oil is going round. This takes seconds. If it is a ‘D’ then you have to get off the saddle to do this so it is a little more difficult.
5) Look behind once the engine has started and if there is a lot of smoke then probably one or more of the valve guides are getting slack. Not a panic job but one to be borne in mind for future reference.
Go out and enjoy.
Please note that all the above checks rely on you listening as the engine is turned or started. They rapidly become second nature. In my experience Vincents are not prone to having nuts and bolts come undone due to vibration so the weekly checking with a spanner that was required on some other bikes of the same era is not necessary. Brake cables etc are also very robust but until you have more experience with the bike it would be as well to check that no cables (clutch, brake or throttle) are fraying. Occasionally when getting on to the bike and before starting it hold on the front brake and thrust manfully against the rear of the fuel tank. Any slack in the head bearings or eccentrics will show up as a clunk. You will soon find out if the bike is using lots of oil. If it is, then you might have to check the oil level more frequently, but until you are sure that the oil is not settling into the sump via a worn oil pump do not fill up the oil tank or you will find that it overflows once the oil which has disappeared into the sump gets pumped back into the oil tank. This can be a very messy occurrence.
Other people might make other suggestions but the above take almost no time and become part of the start up routine. If the engine sounds more like a bag of nails than normal once it is started then probably the tappets need adjusting. Older cams and followers use to cause this to be a regular routine check but modern Stellited cams and followers do not wear. If the tappets do become noisy then you should be looking elsewhere for a problem.
Good luck
