Once the new bearings arrived I realised the replacement seals I had ordered weren't right - the engine had metric sized seals that were much larger than the imperial ones supplied. I found some online and got them ordered. This meant that the engine rebuild was done in a little bit of a hurry on the Friday night before the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride, which was on the Sunday and I was at work Saturday daytime and out Saturday evening which didn't leave me much time to rebuild the engine and reassemble the bike. I didn't take any pictures of the rebuild process as I was trying to get it done but everything went quite smoothly, except for the reassembly of the gearbox which took about two hours to get right. It was a case of getting the gear selector mechanism in the right place and getting the cover on without it all moving. I must have had the gearbox apart and back together 10 or 15 times but I got there in the end.
I then realised a couple more differences with the French made engine vs it's English equivalent. The points are different, no big issue but I'll probably not be able to change them so fingers crossed on that one. The other one is the HT lead connection at the magneto is different but I should be able to modify the supplied on to fit. Obviously both of these are related and for some reason the French thought they'd do the ignition differently. I'm going to investigate whether the points and lead from a similar era Peugeot (who owned Automoto at the time my bike was made) will fit if they are available.
This meant the engine wasn't going to run for the Gents ride but I still decided to take the bike along for people to have a butchers at, there was just one problem with that, the bike had no engine, tank, seat, exhaust, rear wheel or chain case and I would only have a few hours on Sunday morning to sort it. Luckily everything went fine and I did get the bike back together and even managed to join the MTB ride before heading up to the main event.
Dressing up was mandatory, luckily I already had a modified suit from a recent wedding in the south of France.
After the MTB ride I put the Automoto in the van and drove to meet everyone (including the bikers) at the finish venue. I got there quite early so got the bike out of the van ready for people to look at and I have to say it looked good in the late afternoon sun. considering this was late September in Sheffield the weather was unbelievable.
After a while the guys on the motorbike started to arrive in dribs and drabs. The first group included this brilliant Norton. As I took a picture of it someone arrive on a blue CX500 and drifted across the grass right behind it (you can just see their helmet), as it came in all I could see in my mind was him taking the Norton out but luckily he missed it.
It was easily my favourite bike and it got the best bike award too! I didn't take many pictures as I got chatting to lots of people, including someone who wanted to buy the Automoto. I'm sure there are plenty of pics of the day floating around on the interweb so have a google and you'll find stuff. One I particularly like is this one stolen from JohnnyMalco on instagram
Sheffield #dgr2014 #gentlemansride went off! Amazing times! Cheers @baybutt !
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I made the mistake of saying (to too many people) that I will be riding the bike at next years event so that gives me a solid deadline for getting the bike running although I'm hoping to get it on the road before then
