Ariel Owners MotorCycle Club

Further to our chat earlier, your photo of the inside of your timing chest tells me that you are missing what C W Waller calls "the all-important flange" around the hole for the magneto shaft. Hopefully someone can provide a photo of this which should make all clear to you.

This still sounds like a carb problem to me, although I did have some spectacular problems with the coil ignition on my own 1948 4G from time to time. As one last check on the Solex carb, have you undone the 4 screws which hold the float chamber section to the rest of the carb? This joint is vertica...

I shall be interested to hear how you get on with this. Square Fours tend to run somewhat hotter than water cooled car engines to the detriment of rubber around the cylinder head area. The Mini type O rings on the valve stems of my 1948 4G did not live long, but then oil down the valve guides was no...

Pete, The fork stanchions on the 1946-48 forks are positioned closer together than on the 1949-onward forks. This requires a longer front spindle, amongst other changes. Without a set of early yokes to compare, I can't be certain what the difference in spacing is, but I think it is either 1/8" ...

The handlebar drawing for the 1" handlebars (D9/186) has slightly different slotting arrangements for 1933 and 1934. But it also has a note to the effect that the handlebar used for the 1934 VH is identical to the standard bars - but without the slot and hole needed for the straight pull thrott...

There should be a return spring around the outside of the cam spindle housing on the brake plate. Unfortunately, I had one break recently on the RH500 and found that they do not seem to be in production at present but I managed to modify a slightly different one to suit. Try both Draganfly and Singl...

I went to the paint shop with the info from the Drags catalogue and they made me a tin of paint up straight away.

If we are talking about the original screws in the original badges, the screws are soldered to the badge holes to prevent them unscrewing. Heat is the only way to remove them. I use a blowlamp then scrap the badge (and screw). You might manage to remove them with an old fashioned copper tip solderin...

Y6444 is a 1933 to 1935 frame. If you read the blurb on the Bonhams site you will see that they were advised that the frame on that bike is a later type. So the sprint special probably has the correct frame with the number transferred to the other bike.

No.