Here you can see the new mounting system for the Rising Star's oil tank. You'll notice the anti-vibration rubber mountings between the oil tank's bungs and the new supports. This is what will form the top part of the new system, whereas there will be another support for the bottom of the tank coming soon.
Work is underway on the Rising Star and here's what I can report.
First of all, uncle Fester was curious about one thing and so we put the bike on a couple of weighing scales. With a full tank of gas and the oil tank topped up, the Rising Star comes in at a svelte 165Kg (or 363lbs for you non-metric reprobates), which is approximately 30Kg/66lbs lighter than a stock A50.
He's concerned about the oil tank being rather heavy, so the new arrangement will include rubber mountings and a new bracket to support the oil tank from underneath, including a new threaded bung that's welded to the underside of the oil tank. You can see it being fabricated here:
This means the tank will be supported at three points, and rubber mounted to absorb vibration. I will share more details on the specifics of the new system once it's completed, but for now I can tell you that finding the correct rubber mountings was itself a bit of a quest, which resulted in Fester now having a wide range of items in various sizes and ratings: contact him if you need some!
One thing I had not noticed, is that there seems to be a leak from rear of the gas tank. This is bad news as the repair involves welding, which is never to be approached lightly on a gas tank. We dunked it into a large container full of water and blew compressed air into one of the open taps: a tell-tale stream of tiny bubbles suddenly appeared from the rearmost corner of the tank, where the retaining bracket is welded. This is not an easy repair as there is limited room for manoeuvre and the sheet metal itself is quite thin. More on that soon.
The front brake shoes looked glazed/hardened all over, some coarse sandpaper seems to have revived them and luckily the hub is fine. Again, more on this once it's back on the road.
As you can see from the title of this post, there are many different names to indicate that mechanical device used to mix air and liquid fuel to provide an atomized spray into a engine's intake.
All are accepted spellings and all describe the same thing. Similarly, the two carburetters (that's the spelling I typically use, as it's what Amal has traditionally used) you see below are called by different names, but they are the same thing.
All photos below have the used Amal on the left and the new Wassell on the right, for comparison.
When Wassell originally launched this product about a decade ago, there was a collective gasp as - surely! - this must be a flagrant copyright infringement. So many people, from the average biker to respected members of the trade were up in arms and angrily proclaimed "we will never use these!" and various abuse directed at Wassell. However, there was one clue we should have all paid attention to: they were advertised in mainstream publications, in print and online, showing very clearly the brand "Wassell" where one would typically find "Amal" cast into the body. I don't think that if whoever holds the rights to the Amal name and products had a valid patent or other right to it, that they would have just let it happen.
These are not "pirate parts" as some people call them (yet sell them!). These are not cheap Chinese knock-offs, which we should always avoid. These are a nicely made version of the Amal Mk1 Concentric.
Sure, I found some brass swarf and "dust" on some of the threads, some debris in the pilot circuit (which is very easy to clean out though, thanks to the removable pilot jet). The upper edge of the float bowl seems a little bit uneven but is reasonably flat and doesn't leak, and the float height was set correctly. The slide isn't finished very nicely, but works smoothly. The main jet was a little bit chewed up, whereas the needle jet looks very nicely made. The needle looks fine and measures the same as a genuine item (in terms of diameter above the taper), but it is probably slightly shorter (admittedly I did not measure this, I might do that in the future). It should go without saying that you should always disassemble a new carburetter, inspect it and thoroughly clean it before use, so I don't find any of the above to be a particular fault.
Here's a nice little detail, they've added a washer as a retainer for the float plunger:
All of the defects I mentioned earlier are shown in more detail in the following shots:
As a closing thought let me ask you: what's original anymore, these days? All the names that gravitate around classic motoring have passed hands so many times, changed location, died and resurrected so many times... that at best what one can hope for is some original drawings and tooling to still be around. These Wassell carburetters are fine and I'll report back once I've had a chance to ride the Rising Star a bit and see how it does.
