1955 Matchless G3LS

I dunno what other bits I need. The commercially available battery eliminators are pretty much just a cap in a nice box, I think I can hold it in securely a p clip and I think I have some heat shrink tubing that I can hopefully get right down over the terminals to keep them insulated.

Yea match up the connectors and wire gauge, and use some silicone as a vibration dampener. That’s pretty much your £30 kit for £10.

Funnily enough I was looking that blue one listed on Marketplace yesterday. Did you see that one when you were looking for yours?

If you need any info about anything Pm me. My dad is a member of the AJS and Matchless club so has some good connections.

Such good value for money these when you consider the price of some of the stuff on the market.

No I hadn't seen it, kind of avoid marketplace as it seems pretty dodgy sometimes.

I should maybe get in touch with the club, I noticed today that according to the v5 it was first registered in the eighties which I hadn't realised before buying it. Would be interesting to know it's story.

https://www.jampot.com/sections.asp

My dads a member of the West Midlands section. Good Bunch of guys, I go to the meetings sometimes and go on their ride outs they do. The number for Colin is on that page, he knows loads so if you are ever looking for info he would be your man.

Cheers for that.

Oh nice! Proper cool bike.

Dyno tech ecosse at Hillington, that guy looks after a few of my customers old enfields with Amal carbs, so he is very 'up' on them, often you'll get the right casing and slider size/spring, but the jetting will be basically random compared to what you have ordered or require. He likely has a shelf full of bits for them ;)

Forgot to update the thread,

I picked up an oem Mikuni on ebay and fitted it, started first kick. Needed a bit of fettling to set the idle and stuff but been a couple runs on it and it seems to run great.

I gave up on the battery eliminator/capacitor thing. I think it might work to keep the lights illuminated on a bike with an alternator (maybe?) but it wasn't working on this and the ammeter was all over the place. I picked up a battery and the lights and horn work as they should and from what I can tell, it's charging properly.

In the last year all I’ve really done to the bike is to have replace the fuel tank (with another used and pretty crusty looking one) as the threads on the mounts on the original were stripping/stripped and it started to leak slightly from one of the seams and to replace the front mudguard as they original cracked.

The original guard had a large unsupported overhang at the front with a number plate on there and it bounced around a lot.

Instead of getting another original guard I picked up a lighter weight one off eBay and chopped up the original stay to fit. This one isn’t as deeply valanced as the original but I plan to replace the front tire with something a bit chunkier so I reckon it’ll be fine. I had to turn a little brass spacer and paint the guard as it came totally raw.

I’ve been saying I would strip the bike down down over winter since I got it so, spurned on by the garage smelling a bit petrol-y recently I’ve started to do this.

The petrol smell is the new tank also leaking. The way it mounts is a bit shit, they are shallow dimples in the underside which are spanned by thin strips of metal with threaded holes in. The strips being so thin means there are very few threads hence the original tank stripping. The shallowness of the dimples means you have to be pretty careful choosing bolts and not over tighten them. They have drilled heads and you lockwire them to stop them unscrewing rather than rely on them being done up tight. The bolts also go through rubber spacers which makes determining the correct amount to do them up pretty difficult. I’m thinking I’ve maybe punched a hole in the bottom of the new tank by overnighting one of the bolts.

I bid on another of the same tank on eBay but then started wondering about changing it for something completely different, maybe a triumph tiger cub tank that has a completely different style of mount. It’d mean modifying my frame but would give the bike more of a trials/scrambler look which I would quite like. I ended up winning the tank that I had bid on so maybe I’ll wait till that arrives and see how good condition it is.

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Thanks for the update - was wondering how you were getting on with it - looking good.

Lovely to read this. I grew up in a British biking household and my dad died in May with his collection of bikes going to auction a couple of weeks ago. Did you consider swapping the monobloc out for a concentric? You can't beat a soft tuned single for motorcycling enjoyment

Did you consider swapping the monobloc out for a concentric?

When I was pissing about with the carb the way I saw it there were three options,

Refurbish the Amal that was there.
Replace with a brand new one (I didn't consider buying a secondhand one worthwhile).
Replace with a n other carb.

Refurbishing the existing carb was going to cost almost as much as buying a brand new one, the Mikuni was a fraction of the price and has been performing faultlessly.

Fair play. It will probably run far better on that than anything AMAL ever produced

This thread is a great read, looks lovely. If the tank you’ve won one eBay is a no go, then a tank that mounts differently would be a really cool option I think.

Found this picture of me and my Velocette Venom 20 odd years ago...

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Nice - great dog, fantastic exhaust glimpse.

Yes sorry t isn't fishtail side around, my bad. Great bike, quite revvy due to the 86 x86 bore/stroke. I used to love taking it uup and over the Sloc and round table on the Isle of Man. You could advance the ignition and hit an indicated 90mph with less vibration than most Brit bikes

Great photo that. That is all.

Love Velocettes - that's a terrific bike. I had a fabulous giggle chasing one down a twisty mountain pass a couple of years ago on a 68 Honda CL175. Lots of peg and boot scraping, and at the limit of what I was comfortable with. Frankly the Velo looked a lot more composed than the Honda felt. It cleared off once we started going back up. Sadly, the fella I was chasing ended up in a ditch later that day with a sprained shoulder. Not much damage to the bike fortunately.

Brilliant. Yes you could heel it over into a corner and it would hold its line perfectly. The Avon tyres it ran on are probably no wider than a fat bike

@EcuriePeril the Velocette looks amazing. There was one in really poor condition that was in budget when I bought the Matchless but I don’t think I’d have had it running yet!

I definitely need to work on my cornering on these old tyres, the rear is so square.

Barely used my Matchless this year. Combination of a few things;

1. It took me longer than predicted to get it back together after stripping it to try and make it oil tight.*
   
2. It actually leaks more now because I replaced all the gloopy old oil with fresh new stuff.
   
3. The weather not being very good this summer meaning that I just got out cycling at every opportunity.
   
   

*I also discovered there was no oil filter fitted. It’s meant to have a primitive gauze filter on the feed from the oil tank but this often gets removed as if it clogs you get no oil into the engine and it’ll seize. I have fitted a Norton style screw on filter in the return to the tank now.

I actually listed it for sale at one point but got little interest and I refuse to drop the price (below what I feel it’s worth) in order to shift it.

I’ve always fancied a desert racer/scrambler type bike and figure that I use this so rarely that making it much more impractical by removing the lights isn’t going to do much harm!

I’ve yet to figure out how I’ll run a horn or what kind of speedo I’ll have (the smiths one in the Nacelle was pretty inaccurate anyway, over reading speed by as much as 25% and the odometer seemed to be even more out than that!) but I think just removing the nacelle and the big wings that attach it to the fork and some switches and wiring from the bars has made it look much better already.

I’d kind of like to keep a brake/tail light for safety but I think it’s all or nothing in the eyes of the law. I might try a smaller headlight mounted to the lower fork tree.

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Other mods I’d like to do, remove the rear rack and possibly replace the long Mudguard with a shorter alloy or plastic trials one, maybe adding a loop to the rear of the frame if necessary and getting ride off the bulky silencer. I did try running the bike without it once and while it was gloriously loud, it didn’t actually run very well. I do have other keys for the carb somewhere so could try that but might also look at other silencers that could slip on to the back of the header or just running a straight pipe further back, not sure if just a longer straight pipe would make it run much better.

A high level exhaust could be cool but I look for them on eBay semi regularly and they don’t seem to be out there for these bikes so it might have to be custom and I think that’d put it out of budget.

my moto client explained all the exhuast length thing to me the other day, which would be much more helpful here if I could remember it properly - a big part of it was how inline 4s etc work well with a shorter pipe and the v-twins ducati etc race need a longer one, because of gas starvation in the cylinder or something. The analogy with the 4s was also that theyre basically 4 single cylinders stuck together, rather than the twins which sort of work together/in opposition to each other. So I think this means a little silencer should be fine here, as long as you have the right gas flow rate.

We're actually developing a silencer at the moment, to try and come in at the 250-300£ price mark as this seems to be massively underserved. It basically goes from the EMGO/Aliexpress things, to the entry level ProRace ones which suck, to £500 ones from Arrow, Unit Garage etc.

Interesting.

I'd wondered about seeing if one of these cheapo ebay baffles could be fitted into either just the end of the header or the end of a bit of straight pipe attached behind the header, if that would help with gas flow and back pressure?