AJS & Matchless Owners Club

http://archives.jampot.dk/Technical/Ser ... 55_no2.pdf
This suggests AMC were aware the snatching was causing bearing damage in May 1955.
So its no surprise they did not make a big issue of the change to fitting the rubber inserts.

Thanks all, had now discovered that the bearing lockring holds the plate but now wife's computer has crashed so more urgent tasks have taken over!

OK, while wife's data is restoring......

I've unscrewed the bearing adjuster lock ring as far as it will go but it is butting up against the underside of the speedo drive which is a smaller internal diameter. On reading the manual, I need to unscrew the speedo drive which also forms the adjuster sleeve. Is this correct?

Looking inside the brake drum there are a number of hexagon bolt heads (5 or 6) which I assume are the ends of the driving pins. If I unscrewed these will the drum come off or will I just have uselessly spinning bolts?

Not a QD wheel. What your looking at in the brake drum is the heads of the through bolts that fix the drum to the hub. After you've removed the alloy cover plate you'll find the nuts and washers in between the ribs of the hub.

Are they bolts or nuts?

Rob Harknett wrote: I had a 1955 bike almost new, slow running was a pig, the bike snatched a lot, like a clonking noise.
When I questioned this with my dealer, as to why I got his noise ( I was only 17 and my prewar bikes I had never made that noise )
Anyway the dealer told me the wheel was new in 1955 but was changed because of the snatching noise, nothing I could do about it unless I wanted the new parts with the rubber inserts. You may note in the 1956 parts list frames after 46593 had different drive pins. Perhaps this is when the change was made.

I had the same problem with my 55 G3 but quickly established it was wear in the drive pins. The first trick is to turn them all through 90 degrees.
AMC then brought out a fix which consists of an oversize pin consisting of a bolt and sleeved bush. These apparently came in a number of oversizes and the fit sought was front to back in the hole as this is where the wear occurs. To fit you have to open up top and bottom with a file. I've done 3,000 miles on my G11CS (wrongly fitted with the earlier 55 QD wheel) and quite a few thousand more than that on the G3 which is currently fitted with a G80 engine. No snatch to date.

Clive, although I got snatch on my 55/G3LS after about 2 1/2 years from new, I had done about 60,000 miles.

Rob Harknett wrote: I got snatch on my 55/G3LS after about 2 1/2 years from new

You could have got it from day one with an Alfa Romeo.

ajscomboman wrote:Not a QD wheel. What your looking at in the brake drum is the heads of the through bolts that fix the drum to the hub. After you've removed the alloy cover plate you'll find the nuts and washers in between the ribs of the hub.

Spot on - it is a non QD wheel (as also previously suggested by Rob) and I have now successfully dismantled it. Is this correct for a 1957 frame (originally G9 I believe) or should it have a QD version?

I have already bought a rim and spokes on the basis of a 1957 model and am assuming (correctly?) that these will still be correct.

The wheel is a bit of a pain to remove (although my days of doing such things by the roadside are gone) as the brake plate is trapped by the mudguard fixing on the torque stay so the brake plate and shoes remain attached to the bike. I await with interest the struggle to reassemble......

The dummy spindle on the brake side has no nut and is merely a spacer.

I must say I'm not terribly impressed by having to remove the bearing adjuster and thus lose the adjustment when removing the brake drum, although most other parts of the AMC design are excellent.

I'd be inclined to look for a QD hub and all the other parts required, there's plenty around. As far as I'm aware you cant convert your existing hub as the bolt centres are different.