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I had previously included pieces of information about my 1954 BB Gold Star at random places in my 1962 Catalina Gold Star thread.. However, since less is written about these earlier Gold Stars than the later dime-a-dozen DBDs, I decided it deserved a thread of its own. So, I copied the BB information from that thread, edited it, added some more information, and these first few posts will summarize where things are at the moment with this bike. I'll add to the thread whenever appropriate.



The next photograph shows my BB Gold Star, with NYBSAGUY shamelessly blocking some of the picturesque background as well as some of the picturesque Catalina.



Obvious differences of it from the catalog photograph are gaiters, tank painted silver rather than partially chrome, and a short seat. Not apparent is the 'twitter' silencer on the other side. Although I have no intention of ever restoring it to as-original configuration, it is a matching-numbers machine so some future owner might. The following are present deviations from original, all of which would be pretty easy to deal with.

Incorrect (or missing) Parts
Front End:
Should have full length shrouds instead of gaiters
Should have chrome handlebars instead of current painted ones
S546/3 speedometer on it now is correct for a 1958 Clubman; should have 546/3/L

Middle:
Tank should be painted over a chrome base
Should have T10TT9 carburetor, 1-5/32" with 7° float bowl
Seat should be full length
Gearbox is unmarked, probably should be STD
Has twitter muffler; should have Burgess
Missing the voltage regulator
Center stand is from an A7 or A10

Rear End:
Dented rear fender, also crack at back edge
Should have "fat" Girling Shocks
Chain guard is fabricated from one for another machine

As an aside, I certainly didn't "need" three Gold Stars, so the thought of owing more than the 1963 Competition model I've had since the early '90s had never crossed my mind. But, a combination of my own circumstances, the bad luck of someone I knew (i.e. he died), and a chance encounter, resulted in the 1954 BB joining the Competition in my garage, followed not much later by the 1962 Catalina, as well as by a very large horde of singles parts the guy had accumulated. Although they're all Gold Stars, which means these three are 95% the same as each other, their "personalities" are completely different so it's not at all like having three of the same motorcycle.

The guy who rebuilt this matching-numbers BB enjoyed speed, so it's a reasonable assumption that it has either Clubmans or Scrambles cams. This means it likely has ~32 hp, while the Catalina has ~39 hp and Competition has ~41. However, despite the BB's ~20% deficit of hp near redline, at rpms where I actually use it the deficit is only ~10% (e.g. ~28 hp @ 5000 rpm, vs. the 31 of my Competition). If the tachometer is accurate, it's geared for redline at 111 mph. In any case, it certainly doesn't feel under-powered.

The head casting is 65-1502 (part number 65-1501) as used on BB Clubman and Road model Gold Stars. The builder's notes say the valves are 65-1632 intake (as used on the Road model) and 65-1633 exhaust (as used on the ZB34 Clubman), and that it has a 21T engine sprocket and 19T gearbox sprocket. Also, it has a 0.060"-over piston, but the CR wasn't noted, nor were the cams. Because of the present overbore, and since the BB takes a different cylinder liner than the later models, when I special-ordered a replacement liner from L.A. Sleeve for my 1949/56 'Alloy Clipper' I ordered a second one to have on hand if ever needed for the BB Gold Star.

[Summary: to be continued]

I wonder if anyone has links to road tests (US or UK) of this era of Gold Stars, particularly the ZB and BB which have been overshadowed somewhat by the DB and DBD models. In things like BMS book, Bacon and other literature I have the pre-war 500 and a couple of post war 350s and clips of the last iteration.

Although the tests were rather formulaic (not wanting to hack off their advertisers) and a lot of the machines were blueprinted (dare I say tuned) between the road test and the track sessions such contemporary data

Given that Motorcycling and Motorcycle Magazines in the UK really put out a lot of road tests does anyone have links or copies of the early 50s 500s that they can share?

The bike came with a 930 Concentric from a B50 that I configured with a 106 needle, needle on top groove, 260 main, 3½ slide, and air screw ⅞ turn out. However, originally the 1954 Road and Scrambles models would have had a 1-5/32" TT. I have such a TT on the shelf so someday could make the switch to it, but a Monobloc might be a better choice. The 1955 Scrambler used a 1-5/32" Monobloc and I already have a 1⅛" Monobloc set up with the Scrambler's book-value jetting waiting in the wings in case I ever decide to use it. Unfortunately, having to make a decision between the current Concentric, a TT, or a Monobloc makes keeping the present carburetor an easy (lazy) default choice, especially since the Concentric works very well, so I make no predictions on when, if ever, I'll swap carburetors.

The BB came with a standard exhaust pipe and a 'twitter' silencer, both of which are still on it. I subsequently bought a Burgess-shaped silencer as it originally used, but I won't make that swap until I'm in a mood to deal with adjusting the jetting. The fact the jetting is perfect now adds to the lack of urgency in wanting to mess with the exhaust. Earlier I noted that I have no intention of restoring it to original condition, but I prefer the looks of a Burgess silencer for this machine.

It has a 19" rear rim and my Catalina 18", but the fatter tire on the latter gives the two of them nearly the same OD so, because the bikes have the same sprockets,[*] the overall gearing in 4th is essentially the same. The Competition has a smaller rear sprocket so is geared somewhat lower. The BB's gearbox doesn't have a code stamped on it, but the ratios feel like STD.

[*] After a 1200-mile ride across Texas with scrambles gearing, I changed the Catalina's engine and gearbox sprockets to give it the higher gearing of a Clubman, which that ride convinced me is more appropriate for the wide-open spaces of the West. I also gave it an ASCT gearbox, which has a very low 1st gear (but the rest are the same as an SCT) so it's ready for low-speed dirt roads as well.

I rebuilt the magneto, but not the dyno portion of the Magdyno, timed the engine at the book value of 40.5±0.2°, and wired the bike for LED bulbs powered by a rechargeable NiMH battery pack in the toolbox. I rebuilt the clutch according to the description in another thread and set the clutch pressure at an easy-to-operate14 ft.lbs. using the tool and technique described in that thread.

[Summary: to be continued]

It isn't a link, but if someone else has early issues of 'Cycle' magazine and the inclination to scan them, the following is the road test of a ZB:

'Test: BSA Gold Star Track Racer', February 1951

At first blush, there doesn't seem to be much technical information about pre-DBD Gold Stars. But, as the photograph of the bespoke manuals in my previous post shows, there's quite a bit more than you might imagine. However, it requires a deep-dive into a lot of literature in order to unearth it, and effort to compile the information into a readily-accessible form

Thankfully Brooklands Books has done some of that "deep diving" for us and reprinted some BSA road tests. These scans for a 1949 350cc GS are from their "BSA Singles Gold Portfolio 1945-63". They're actually quite informative. You can find one on eBay for $15 or less.

Thanks, just the sort of things I was looking for, I have a couple of the Brooklands books but not Goldie tests.

Those "Gold Portfolio" books are quite useful. They aren't comprehensive, but do have quite a good range of old magazine articles.

When I got my Competition Gold Star in the early '90s I started assembling a bespoke shop manual from relevant content in every manual, brochure, dealer bulletin, book, and magazine article I could find. By "relevant," I mean DBD-specific material since, obviously, I never would own more than one Gold Star, let alone an early one. That DBD manual is in two 3" binders, with a third binder for the various carburetors used over the years. Unfortunately, twenty-some years later I somehow found myself with a non-DBD, so I had to go back through all my literature to locate information I had previously ignored as irrelevant. Sigh…

To make the new manual self-contained, in addition to material specific to the BB (and ZB -- hey, although I'll "never" own a ZB Gold Star, better safe than sorry…), I duplicated all the information in the DBD manual that applied to the earlier models. As the next photograph shows, the ZB/BB manual, in two 2½" binders, has approximately the same number of pages (~700) as the DBD manual, with the 'Carburetor' binder shared by both.



The builder of my BB wrote in his notebook that he couldn't solve the problem of too much oil coming from the breather, so he ran a long hose from the timing cover along the inside of the rear mudguard to as far back on the bike as possible. However, a stock BB doesn't have a breather on the timing case, so the breather he was referring to was one he had added himself. The tube exiting the timing cover to the left of the tachometer drive in the next photograph is the breather he added.



Since later models added a breather at that location, albeit a timed one, having one wasn't necessarily a bad idea. So, rather than plug the hole and return it to stock configuration, I thought I might have a solution to this problem. As a test, I assembled a "temporary" oil separator from PVC pipe that I filled with Cu mesh from a kitchen scrubbing pad. The Cu mesh is an obstacle course for the oil-laden vapor while at the same time presenting little restriction to air flow. Then, seven years ago, I "temporarily" zip-tied it in place under the seat where it can't be seen.

The hose from the breather enters at the low end of the separator, which is mounted at a slight tilt, and my hope was the oil vapor would condense back into liquid on the Cu mesh and the liquid would then run down through the breather hose and back into the timing cover. However, in case any oil made it through the maze of the mesh, I routed a hose from the outlet of the separator to take any liquid oil down to the bottom of the frame.

The proof of concept worked great, with never a drip under the outlet hose. Since the "temporary" PVC separator proved the concept. I then welded a permanent version from a 3½" length of thin wall 1⅜" Al tubing, filled with the same type of Cu scrubbing pad mesh, and with proper fittings at either end for the inlet and outlet.



I planned to make an appropriate bracket and mount it to the frame to replace the PVC version, but at that point discovered several pinhole leaks in the thin-wall tubing so I "temporarily" set it aside until I addressed the pinholes. That was, um, seven years ago…

[Summary: to be continued]

Great thread, MM. Looking forward to more.

K

Although a photograph in my post yesterday shows a tachometer drive, my BB came with a "plain" timing cover, i.e. not machined for a tachometer, which meant I had to modify it, which that photograph shows that I did. I have a half-dozen timing covers, but the ones with the necessary holes for a tachometer drive are for later models, which have a different oil feed for the crankshaft. Having mentioned oil, it might be interesting, for me, at least, to digress at this point into a discussion of timing covers and crankshaft oil feeds, so I will.

Models starting with the DB have a "nose" on the end of the crankshaft, that rotates in a seal in the timing cover, whereas the BB has a pipe on the timing cover that inserts into the slightly larger hole in the crankshaft. On the left of the next composite is the timing-side shaft on a Phil Pearson DBD crankshaft showing its extended "nose," and on the right is the shorter end of a B33 shaft



The DBD timing cover at the top of the next photograph can be seen to have seals for the two camshafts (although they are missing from this cover) as well as a seal in which the "nose" of the crankshaft rotates, while the ZB/BB cover at the bottom also has the two camshaft seals but, instead of a seal for the crankshaft, it has a 1"-long pipe that inserts its full length into the end of the crankshaft.



The OD of the pipe is 0.217" (ID=5/32"), and the ID of the hole in the crankshaft is ¼", so there's a gap of 0.016" between them. This results in an annular area that is 24% of the area of the ¼" hole, through which some of the oil could escape "backwards" toward the timing cover rather than continuing on into the crankshaft. However, a spinning crankshaft makes this a dynamic problem so I'd hesitate to try to estimate the fraction of oil that actually might take that escape route. No matter, luckily a roller-bearing crankshaft doesn't need much oil, and doesn't need it supplied under pressure. So, despite the lack of any sort of seal between the pipe and crankshaft on the ZB and BB Gold Stars, there is adequate oil flow to the big end, as evidence by the fact the big end bearings on these engines are able to survive. The next composite of the timing-side half of a disassembled B33 crankshaft shows the path the oil takes to the hollow crankpin.



The red line on the blue tape shows where the 1"-long pipe in the timing cover ends. From there, a sufficient amount of oil then has to make its way to the angled hole drilled in the flywheel, at which point centripetal force takes over, flings the oil to the hollow crankpin, and from there out the holes in the crankpin to lubricate the rollers. However, high sustained rpm must have proven problematic because, with the arrival of the CB, BSA redesigned the oil feed to include a seal.

Leaving oil aside for now, and returning to rpm, the next photograph shows a jig for making the necessary three holes (one large central hole and two small tapped holes for the mounting screws) for a tachometer drive in a "plain" timing cover. I determined the locations for the holes by installing a DBD timing cover in the jig and measuring their positions with the mill's DRO.



The bolts at the top left and right hold short cylinders that extend below the plate to register it with one of the mill table's slots, the four vertical posts are for mounting the timing cover upside-down on the jig, the round/tapered-bottom hole at 0,0 is used to zero the DRO, and the other holes and missing piece at the lower right do nothing. After clamping the jig to the mill and zeroing the DRO, it's just a matter of attaching the timing cover to the posts, drilling the three holes at the indicated coordinates, then flipping the cover over and facing the surface against which the tachometer drive will be bolted.

This jig made short work of modifying the BB's timing cover (ignoring, of course, time spent on the jig itself…). Although I've only modified one timing cover with this jig, I've also used it when removing gouge marks in a DBD cover caused by the timed breather, so the time spent preparing the jig has been amortized over no less than two covers in the past seven years.

As an aside, although the tachometer itself doesn't care what goes on under the timing cover, the drive mechanism the BB uses is different than that used on later bikes, where the drive mechanism also serves as a timed breather. The casting at the "tachometer end" of the DBD timing cover, that can be seen in an earlier photograph in this post, is thicker than that of the ZB/BB cover because it serves as the plain bearing for that timed breather. Instead, on a BB the drive comes from a ~1.4"-tall "nut" that clamps the magneto gear at one end and has a fork at the other end that meshes with the tachometer gearbox.

The components specified for a 1954 BB34 Gold Star include an R.C.83 tachometer and 70549/4 gearbox, both of which I used since it was as easy to add the "correct" items as it would have been to add "incorrect" ones.



[Summary: to be continued]

MM,

Thanks for the detailed thread on the BB. Embarrassingly I have had one for quite a few years and have yet to ride it. Been messing with it and then I see something shiny and have to come back to it. This could be the year!!

L.A.kevin helped me secure the bike many years ago and I've done my usual bouncing around between projects and hobbies.

Watching with interest and thank you again for starting this thread.

Brian B

My notes don't show what speedometer was on the bike when I got it (perhaps the present one), but on it now is a nearly-correct S.546/3. I may swap it someday for the correct S.546/3/L that I have on a shelf, if I ever get around to rebuilding it.



Again, although I'm not interested in a concours restoration of this machine, I still prefer to use proper components whenever possible.

The bike, in the form described thus far, worked very well, including on a trouble-free ~1200-mile ride across Texas. Well, almost trouble-free. It wept oil from the rocker box joint, which was cured by tightening the bolts slightly, the speedometer started acting up toward the end of that ride, and the gearbox sometimes had difficulty going from 2nd into 3rd without first requiring it to be moved further, into 4th, and then into 3rd. I'll return to the speedometer and gearbox later in this thread.

A colleague from Italy visited a few years ago, and on a ride up the neighboring mountain he had a low-speed crash on the BB when my Matchless G80 seized. As a result, the back corner of the seat was slightly torn. I filled in the tears with black 'Shoe Goo', which clearly didn't return it to as-new condition, but it will do on a bike intended to be ridden.





As with the damage to the seat, the paint damage was on the left side of the tank. The tank had two chips in the paint, exposing red primer, and I filled those chips with Testors metallic silver enamel.





Like the seat, the repaired paint isn't perfect, but it will do. The photograph doesn't do justice to the color match, which is pretty good, although not perfect (e.g. the repair at the lower right actually is the same silver as the other one, not brown). Also, I hadn't sanded the repaired spots at the time of the photograph to eliminate the three-dimensionality which made them stand out more than they eventually would.

[Summary: to be continued]

shoe goo!

great for patching cheap korean chest waders too

When I loaded my Ducati Monster for the trip to Yellowstone a few months ago I saw that the rubber holding one of the turn signals had broken, leaving the signal dangling from the wire. Shoo Goo came to the rescue. I treated it to new turn signals after the trip, but sometimes bailing wire, duct tape, pop rivets ... and Shoe Goo ... are the best and most appropriate solutions at a given time.

Off line Boomer pointed out that the switch in oil feed for the crankshaft came after the CB, not the BB. I looked into it and the precise timing of the switch is somewhat fuzzy (although more research could bring it into focus). Golland shows the early and later oil feeds in 'Goldie'.



He explains that the switch came about because of experiments with a plain big end bearing, which required a pressure feed, not because of problems known at that point with the early oil feed system. However, even though they abandoned the idea of changing to a plain bearing, they kept the new oil feed because they discovered it improved the racing life of the roller bearing.

Interestingly, Golland says this happened "around 1955," rather than explicitly stating when the switch took place. Unfortunately, the parts manual doesn't help because it shows the CB cover with holes for a tachometer and BB without, so that alone would account for the different part numbers. The first DB was shipped in March 1955, overlapping with the last CB shipped in July 1955, so it probably happened with the DB. However, Golland's "around 1955" could even mean the earliest DBs came with the pipe feed, or the final CBs came with the pressure feed. More research is needed to nail down when the switch was made.

As an aside, unlike the Phil Pearson crank, where the extended nose is machined as part of the shaft, the above drawing shows the nose is a separate part pressed into the shaft. This indicates it would be easy to convert a BB crankshaft and timing cover to pressure feed, if so desired. Does anyone happen to have a factory DBD crankshaft on the bench to see if later shafts are machined to eliminate the pressed-in nose?

Yes! I just had a look… but even under de magnifier i can NOT see that it is a seperate item…

(In the end it is only visible examination of a used part, so never 100% proof)

The crank i had a look at is from a november 1960 delivered dbd34 clubman trim , so a ‘61 model

Like many questions about the details of Gold Stars, each answer often seems to raise two more questions. Prior to being modified with a "nose," the drawing in Golland's book implies that at least the initial the DB (or final CB) timing-side shafts might have been identical to those of a BB (which is another question…). So, the question is, at what point was the stock of modified two-piece BB-type shafts used up and the switch made to one-piece shafts?

MM: John Gardner's book "BSA Gold Star Super Profile" has the oil seal timing cover coming in 1955 with the DB 500 engine.

Gordo

Here is a Shoe Goo story. About 20 years ago Dr. Rob Tuluie was running Doug Henry’s Yamaha Super Motard team I helped out a few times. I changed the tires on the bike. We had three sets of spokes wheels. Rob had taken all the wheels and carefully put Shoe Goo on each spoke nipple around seal it off. We ran the tires tubeless and it worked. It took a good while to carefully seal all those spokes. I also changed the tires in a trailer out of site so the other teams would not know we were running tubeless wheels. Made changing tires easy.

Shoo Goo -- boldly steps where RTV fears to tread.

Thanks for finding that. I've corrected my earlier post from CB to DB.

The headlamp bezel was bent and scraped when my friend crashed, although the glass survived.



I simply swapped the bezel for another I happened to have. Both headlamp mounting ears on the forks were bent but they were easy to bend back into position.

The mount for the speedometer was bent upwards and paint scraped off quite a bit of the outside of the housing, but the glass survived. Since the speedometer had been acting wonky at speeds above ~50 mph I used the opportunity to remove the mechanism and use spray degreaser on the old grease inside, removing most of it. This wasn't the first time the speedometer had been apart as evidenced by red silicone serving as a gasket. I then re-oiled the mechanism using Starrett 'Tool and Instrument Oil' and sprayed the case with gloss black from a rattle can without any subsequent color sanding or polishing, not taking pains to do anything like a perfect job.



In contrast, the mount for the tachometer wasn't bent in the accident and the paint was untouched, but the glass was broken. I degreased and oiled the tachometer like I had done with the speedometer, and replaced the glass with a piece cannibalized from another Chronometric unit.

[Summary: to be continued]

I knew Rob Tuluie back in his grad school days in Austin. We rode our commandos around lake Travis one night and capped it off with Junior Brown at some honky tonk.

K

Did he do his Highway Patrol song?

Special Tools: Part I

Much of the work on any Gold Star, from ZB through DBD, first requires removing either the primary or timing cover, and that sometimes can be difficult, especially with the timing cover. Although BSA thoughtfully incorporated two projections on the timing cover, they forgot to provide anything near either of them to pry against, and there's no room to gently tap with a rubber mallet unless the engine is out of the bike with the magneto removed. Because of this, the next photograph shows the tool I made for gently removing even a very stubborn timing cover.



Basically, it's just a lever. The portion at the left of the tool presses against the engine case, the curve in the middle matches that of the timing cover and fits under the forward most projection previously mentioned, and the rubber "foot" at the right screws out to lever the timing cover off against whatever death grip the adhesive holding it has. Typically, the cover only has to be lifted a mm before it can be pulled off the rest of the way by hand.

This tool in position for use is shown in the next photograph, although with the projection at the front of the timing cover hidden behind the speedometer cable (the projections at both ends of the cover can be seen in a photograph in a post made a few days ago).



The primary cover presents different difficulties for removal, and the tool I made to address this requires several photographs to explain. The first photograph shows the tool in place, with one end of the horizontal rod threaded onto the stud behind the cylinder, and the other end of the rod having a ¼" clearance hole for the ¼-20 hex bolt that's near the top of the tool.



The cap screw below the hex bolt clamps the inner and outer sections of the tool together via a spacer between them. This can be better seen in another photograph later in this post.

The next photograph is an end-on view of the tool when it is in place on a timing cover.



It actually should be rotated slightly counter-clockwise to align the hex bolt with the rod portion of the tool, since the stud behind the cylinder is forward of the center of the opening in the primary case. The inner portion of the tool that is seen peeking through the 'V'-shaped gap is rigidly clamped to the outer portion via a spacer, but the tool would be free to flop around if there was nothing to hold it to the cover itself. To clamp it to the cover, the second cap screw at the 4:00 position on the tool goes through a clearance hole in the separate rectangular block that's at~45°, into a threaded hole in the inner portion. Tightening this cap screw simultaneously pulls the inner portion of the tool against the inner surface of the primary case, while the cap screw pushes the rectangular block against the outer surface of the case, clamping the tool. At this point tightening the ¼-20 hex bolt pushes against the rod to push the primary cover off. Like with the timing cover, it only requires lifting the primary cover a mm or so before it can be removed the rest of the way by hand.

The next photograph is another view that shows the components of this tool, with the portion of the primary cover against which it clamps in red.



The shape of the inner piece of the tool allows it to be "rocked" into place through the hole in the cover, and the slots milled in it help to center it against the raised circular surface surrounding the inner side of the hole. Because the hole in the primary cover tilts inward by ~15° from vertical the outer piece of the tool sits at that angle when installed, so the tapped hole for the ¼-20 hex bolt is at the same angle to make the bolt horizontal for pushing against the rod that is attached to the engine stud.

As an aside, after having cobbled this tool together by trial-and-error some years ago and determining it works well, I intended to fabricate a prettier version of it, but have yet to get around to doing so. Also, I hadn't used it for a few years and it took me the better part of 15 minutes to figure out how it worked in order to set it up for the above photographs. Since I'll probably forget before I need it again again, I've now printed a composite of several of the photographs and put it in the baggie that holds the components of the tool.

Any adhesive on either cover that hasn't dried rock-hard will yield to long-term pressure so, if a cover refuses to budge, I recommend leaving it overnight with the appropriate tool applying pressure. However, be sure to have something soft underneath because you're likely to find the cover on the floor in the morning.

[Summary: to be continued]

The inner primary cover has two locating pegs in it for registering the primary cover, as shown in the next photograph of a similar A10 engine.



These locating pegs makes the use of the following tool problematic in all but an extreme case of someone having used a super-strong cement to hold the cover.



Still, this tool is probably a better choice than the alternative of a large hammer. The rounded surface on the bottom of the tool sits on the footpeg, the tapered "ramp" welded to the top approximately matches the shape of the bottom of the primary case, and the ring is used along with an engine hoist to pull the primary case a fraction of a mm upwards until the adhesive holding it releases its grip. The ring obviously has a breaking strength much higher than needed, but I already had it so it's what I used.

Special Tools: Part II

BSA Service Sheets 711, 711A and 711B contain relatively few factory-supplied special tools for use on Gold Stars (or other singles).



In addition to those factory tools, the following photograph shows more than twenty other special tools that I fabricated using the machinery discussed elsewhere, and that are needed for serious work on a BB Gold Star (a number of them also are useful for a ZB/CB/DB/DBD as well as a B31/B33 and M20/M21, but not included are tools and jigs that are DBD-specific).



1. Hollow tube with hole for bolt at one end for extracting the camshaft spindles.
2. Sprag socket for nut that holds the engine sprocket.
3. Sprag socket for nut that holds the gearbox sprocket.
4. Head steering race extractor.
5. Socket for sleeve nut on steering stem.
6. Cranked spanners for access to some of the almost-inaccessible cylinder base Fasteners. The open-end spanner is used in combination with the forked socket that slips over it, and a torque wrench.
7. Timing disk with hardware for mounting on the crankshaft.
8. Timing cover removal tool (described in previous post).
9. Clamp for removing inspection nut on primary cover.
10. Primary cover removal tool (described in previous post).
11. Two straight edges, one having a hole for mounting a dial indicator, for aligning the engine and clutch sprockets.
12. Tool for drawing a new valve guide into the head perpendicular to valve seat.
13. Primary cover removal tool (described above).
14. Sleeve for timing-side shaft on crankshaft to make it the same diameter as drive-side shaft, for mounting crankshaft on balancing wheels.
15. Wheel lock-ring sprag socket.
16. Tool for helping install a new sleeve in the cylinder muff.
17. Go/no-go gauge for lower fork legs.
18. torque plates.
19. Plate for mounting gearbox in a vise for boring hole for the actuating lever shaft.
20. Two types of tools with square holes for removing tappets from engine case; a long bar, and a socket.
21. –Not Shown– Inner and outer clutch plates bolted together, for locking the engine.
22. –Not Shown– Jig for aligning crankshaft halves when pressing them together.
23.–nn. Also not shown are the special tools and jigs for rebuilding the 6-spring clutch.

In addition to everything in this thread thus far, also applicable to BB Gold Stars is the description of engine work (cylinder sleeve, lower end, rocker box, valve guides and seat cutting) that starts roughly here in the 1949/56 'Alloy Clipper' thread, the bottom-end rebuilding thread, everything in the 6-spring clutch thread, everything in the gearbox rebuilding description in the 1957 Spitfire Scrambler thread, the Magdyno rebuilding Appendix in the Bosch ZEV rebuilding thread, and the information on forks that starts roughly here in the 'Alloy Clipper' thread. Together, this information makes for a pretty complete shop manual for BB Gold Stars.

---------- End of summary of information about my BB Gold Star up to a few months ago ------

Recently, after having had the leaky Al oil separator mentioned in an earlier post staring at me for seven years, I was finally overcome by guilt. Since trying to locate and weld tiny leaks in a thin-wall tube could have turned into a Whac-A-Mole® project, instead I poured some Glyptol into it and pressurized the housing to force the Glyptol into the pinholes to block them. The Glyptol doesn't have to seal against pressure, only not dissolve in oil, so this fix should, um, fix it. Yes, I could have done this seven years ago, but I didn't. Anyway, one of the pinholes that is now plugged by the Glyptol can be seen in the center of the next photograph.



Since after all this time the Al separator now is oil-tight, I'm finally free of the guilt I've carried with me for seven years. However, despite the Glyptol having removed the sense of urgency I previously felt to finish this, any day now I'll unbolt the seat and swap the Al one for the "temporary" PVC version I installed seven years ago. Yes indeed, any day now…

Toward the end of a 1200-mile ride across Texas in 2017, at random times when shifting up from 2nd, the gearbox hit a false neutral and, when that happened, the only way to get to 3rd was to give it another click into 4th, then a click back down to 3rd. After that trip I screwed the selector plunger in all the way, compressing it ~¼" further than it had been, and it seemed that might have cured the problem. However, since then I've again hit that false neutral a few times. Luckily, I have a higher-spec STD.T on the shelf (higher-spec, that is, assuming the present unmarked gearbox is a lowly STD rather than a vastly-superior STD.T) as part of the horde of parts that came from the same source as the BB and Catalina.



I plan to rebuild the STD.T and swap it for the gearbox currently in the BB, all of which only would take one day in the garage (removing and refurbishing the present gearbox would take the same time). Yes indeed, I have the best intentions to do that any day now…

The BB doesn't have anything wrong with it at the moment, and isn't parked on a lift for upgrades, so there might not be anything for me to add to this thread for a while.