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The bearings arrived for front and rear wheel and I was able to get them fitted before setting about final truing of the wheels.



I heated the hubs with a hot air gun and the bearings tapped in easily and snugged up against the central bearing spacer.



There isn't room in my small workshop for a permanent wheel truing rig so I improvise with my Black & Decker workmate and a spare swing arm.



For a pointer, I use a magnet and whatever works. Sometimes its useful to use something that you can easily see, like a piece of white card. If you use the pointer against the chrome you get a 'double image' giving you twice the size of the runout gap.



There were plenty of other little jobs to do, such as riveting up my freshly chromed brake linkages and getting the brake pivots lubed. I almost forgot the little felt seals fro the brake pivots but they were found and went it.




The tires have arrived but i just need to get hold of tubes and rim tapes before I can fit them.

Interestingly, I did have some problems with rear spokes protruding through the nipples on teh rear wheel only. I tried doing the re-adjustment as DJM mentioned but my 'long spokes' were pretty random. In the end I had to cut off about 6 ends by about 3 threads.

G

Another step towards getting the bike up on its wheels. Rim tapes and tubes arrived so I was able to get tyres on....



Brake linkages are all rivetted up and ready to go.



I just have to finish off the speedo drive and fit some grease nipples for the brake cams. Hopfully the project will be on its wheels by the weekend.



G

Excellent job Graham! The wheels, hubs and brakes look like new. I wish I had the patience to polish my brake plates to reflect like yours do. The tyres look very authentic. What make are they?

Gordon

Gordon

They look better in the photos than in reality. Tyres are Maxxis (Chen Shin) front and Mitas rear. Not the best choice for confidence on the road but I wanted to get the early 60s look with this project.

G

mcconnellfrance wrote:Excellent job Graham! The wheels, hubs and brakes look like new. I wish I had the patience to polish my brake plates to reflect like yours do. The tyres look very authentic. What make are they?

Gordon

Just noticed I put the front brake arm on back-to-front. Easy to fix that.....

G

A big day today in the saga of the 1961 CB72. The wheels went in and I got the fenders fitted. I put the tank on just to take this picture. The bike is still a long way from needing a tank.



It was nice just to review some of the unique features of these early bikes. Here is the speedo drive which looks very odd compared with the later models.



The tacho drive casting is a little more minimalist than later models.



Several features make the back end unique. The brake stay is aluminum, the brake plate has the torque arm at a completle different angle and the rear spindle is hollow. All these details mean different parts from later bikes. Brake plate came from Gordon Brown and the matching hub came from Alan Curtis. Hollow spindles came from Alan W. Thank you gentlemen....



Rear light is unique to early models which necessitates a different light / license plate bracket. Silver is the correct color for early bikes.



Early front fenders have only one rivet at the edge. Early ones are aluminum but this one is not. It came off a '61 bike though. There are always exceptions. The rivets are copper / bronze.



Steering damper parts are completely different. The spring has 6 points intead of 8 and the damper plates are unique.



And the controversial SLS front brake. A strange decision that was quickly corrected on later bikes.



The list goes on and on. More details tomorrow.....

G

Hi G, stunning! Would this be a bike that has the chrome fork lock cover without the pivoting door? Thanks, Chase