AJS & Matchless Owners Club

Hi Colin,
love the photos, thanks for posting them. What fluid are you using in your Ultra Sonic cleaner? I use tap water with a squirt of washing up liquid in mine.
Cheers, Dave.

For dirt / grime removal just tap water and a bit of dish soap (non-chlorinated). For the bright work, I replace the solution with half a teaspoon of washing soda (baked baking soda) and distilled water. I add a small bit of aluminum sheet to the cleaner so that the harder metals being cleaned have something to steal electrons from and that leaves everything nice a bright. I also use a few grades of wire brush (nylon, brass and steel) to get the extra hard stuff off.

One thing not noted here was when I reinstalled the mixing chamber core, I left it in the freezer for about half an hour to get nice and cold, then I warmed up the entire mixing body (which was bear) with a heat gun, got it nice and warm and then the two pieces slid together without any effort, once they equalized temperature, it was nice and tight and correctly aligned.

Had some more free time today so I decided to fix the clearhooters dipper / horn switch which came with my bike, Sadly, I didn't think to snap a picture of it right before, but there's probably some photo of it on one of the bike pictures, oh well

Anyways, this is what I started with, oil, rust, dirt, and broken baktelite, the outer shell wasn't too bad, and the switches themselves were in good shape



The inner core was a different story


The toggle mechanism on the dipper switch was pretty hard up with a rusty spring, and rusty linkage



So I made this



Pretty, right?

And then I applied my favorite tool, chemistry


Within minutes the rust was gone, leaving only black iron



The rust was deposited on the donor metal:


And the end result after a bit degreasing, brass brushing, and glue

whilst a small part of the overall restoration I bet it was very satisfying restoring that switch - its the little things -thanks for posting.

cfaber wrote: And then I applied my favorite tool, chemistry
Within minutes the rust was gone, leaving only black iron
The rust was deposited on the donor metal:

Hmmm....... impressive!

What did you use as an electrolyte and what is the polarity?

I can see that one wire is connected to the parts - is the other wire just stripped off and dunked in the tank?

Jim

Hi Jim,

I use a washing soda in distilled water solution with a 12v battery supplying the speed up. The anode is a large iron nail (positive) and the parts themselves make up the the cathode (negative)

Thanks I will give it a try

Jim

Spent most of my day yesterday off doing pretty much nothing, but toward the end of the day I decided to clean up the (apparently rare) Lucas rear brake switch


The inside was in great shape, just a bit dirty, but surprisingly no rust


After some degreaser and some brush work




Also this morning the post lady was here early and delivered some of the stuff I need to rebuild the wiring harness



I had to over-buy and ended up with about 99.5' more yellow wire than I needed. The rest of the wire should be here in the next few days, but with buying in bulk, I may end up building a few harnesses and selling them off to cover my supplies cost.

With family in town, I haven't had much time to do anything interesting with the bike, however the wonderful chaps over at Nisonger instruments was busy at work on my Smiths. They completed the work and took some pictures of the before and after for me so I thought I would share them with you.

Here you go, Enjoy:

looks like a good job!