Progress!!!

It's been a while, three months I believe, but that's the nature of rebuilds when your life dosen't depend on it.  It took what seemed like forever to get on with the head and I didn't really want to get started on something else in the meanwhile as that's the route to project creep with me.

Come on Daddy, clear this up and get on with it!

 It would seem that there is no-one in Herault who is prepared to take on blast cleaning of old motorbike engine parts.  That's an area big enough to not want to be bothered driving beyond for the sake of a clean up.  

Herault is number 34 at the bottom on the coast of the Med.  Loads of open country and almost no services for the erstwhile motorbike restorer.

In the end the way you know is the best / quickest / easiest, so I went and dragged the head all the way back to Blighty.

Criterion Engineers Ltd are advertised in the Velo club magazine and website and as far as I can tell that's the extent of their marketing.  Nonetheless, it turned out to be a remarkably trouble free way to go.  As I work for a firm based not far from them in Swindon and I have to go there from time to time, I called up Criterion Engineers Ltd, arranged to drop the head and rocker box off and collected it again a few weeks later.  Whilst I was there I saw evidence of some very sound, well developed engineering techniques going on, mostly concerning Velocettes.  When it came time to pick it up they were going to be out, so the head assembly was left in a coal bunker outside with the invoice.  I simply picked it up and popped a cheque for a pretty reasonable £153 through the letter box.  Very civilised stuff, particularly when followed by an excellent lunch with a pint at the nearby Royal Oak . 

So that's a blast over, new hardened valve seats, new valve guides, a new exhaust spigot and the dodgy threads sorted out and helicoiled.  It looks so nice that I couldn't resist placing the parts together to see what they'd look like.

Oooooh, aaaaaah......

There's a happy final note too.  When it came to grinding the new valves in I blued them up to start off so that I could see how much work I had to do.  The light smear of blue on the valve face left a perfect unbroken ring on the seat.  I know it's logical given that the new seats and guides were put in at the same time, but all the same, nice work Criterion Engineers Ltd.