It's always a bit of a challenge putting something together that you didn't take apart and although this is about the simplest engine I have ever worked on there are a couple of gotchas. It's progressing well though, even though I have had to take a couple of steps back.
The first problem was of my own making, I had forgotten to fit the clutch pushrod, which required the clutch to be removed and reinstalled. The pushrod is on two halves with a ball bearing between the two, fortunately I have a box of various sized ones, a 3.5 mm item did the job nicely. Unusually the shorter pushrod has a mushroom end that can only be inserted from the clutch side, hence the need for disassembly. The clutch needed a wee bit of adjustment but now works well, it's only a single plate with 4 quite light springs, I hope it's up to the job as the engine is clearly not standard.
The gudgeon pin circlips I got from ebay don't fit so I doubt I will get this finished before Christmas now, I can't fit the piston without them and so can't finish putting the engine together - very annoying. I have pressed in the gudgeon pin and I have a new set of 3 rings ready to go on , I guess I will just have to be patient.
I had bought some new m6 x 65mm cheesehead screws to match the originals, the two halves of the crankcase are now properly joined together.
The chain that goes from the crank to the clutch sprocket was rusted badly, it was in the same box as the gear shafts and so had got water on it. Fortunately I had a spare one I had bought for a job ages ago that got cancelled, I had to shorten it but that was easy enough.
The engine is fitted with a rather weird piston out of a racing Itom - the most popular racing 50 of the time. It's not totally clear which way round it fits in the bore so I have made an educated guess, it will either run or it won't. I suspect the barrel is from an Itom too, I strongly suspect this bike may be a lot quicker than I thought, the Itoms were the fastest of the 50s by a long way. In fact the first Lady to race in the Isle of Man TT was Beryl Swain, she started out on a Maserati just like mine and then switched to Itom. She was fast but the men she kept beating didn't like that much, women were quickly banned for many years.
Anyway, the rest will have to wait for a while, Christmas post will hold things up and there is nowhere that I know if to get the correct circlips locally. My first big bike was a Kawasaki KH250 and that had been rebuilt before I got it, a circlip jumped out of that and destroyed the engine so I m always very careful about such things. So for now it's back to the Triumph.......
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