Ariel S*HT

[Ariel Badger]

I brought a 1950s Ariel 500cc HT Trials bike a few months back. I have no interest in riding trials ( I am rubbish at going slow) but I knew this machine had previously been subject to some serious tweaking and could be the basis of a competitive freak hillclimb bike. She rode ok but felt a little soft and there were flat spots on acceleration.

The Trials frame is very lightweight and was only used on the competition machines, the engine is lightweight all aluminium but in a soft state of tune although a highly tuned version of this motor was used in the HS Scrambler but in a heavy weight frame. Why Ariel never combined the light frame with the hot engine is anyone's guess but the politics of the time had Ariel as a subsidiary company to BSA and a bike like that would have been a direct challenge to the BSA flagship, the Goldstar.
Any way I decided to rip her down and see what I had.

Over the last few weeks I made some calls and obtained a Scrambler camshaft and cam followers and as the kids were not in school this week I took advantage of our workshops and got the spanners out.

Please forgive the multi-posts but my browser keeps crashing
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[Howling TerrorOutOfOffice]

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Diabolical homemade music Bandcamp and Soundcloud
Singer songwriter, Artist and allround good bloke Listen to Andrew Susan Johnston here
The Harry Turner Project

[Ariel Badger]

[Howling TerrorOutOfOffice]

...That should last till the Ferret & Chrome behave.
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Diabolical homemade music Bandcamp and Soundcloud
Singer songwriter, Artist and allround good bloke Listen to Andrew Susan Johnston here
The Harry Turner Project

[The Original Muzza]

...because Ariel's too cool for a cool story bro:

https://www.esportsea.com/global/media_preview.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn1.knowyourmeme.com%2Fi%2F20854%2Foriginal%2FRiveting_tale_chap.jpg
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Current Bikes: Husqvarna Svartpilen 401 (2020)
Former Bikes: Honda MSX125 (2014), BMW Funduro (1996), Honda VT500 (1983), Yamaha FZR250 (1989), Suzuki GZ125 Marauder(2005),:Triumph TT600 (2002) (stolen)
From then on, I and the bicycle feelings deeper.

[CHR15]

as if we have to wait till tomorrow for pics!!


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Turbocharged drag thing / project death weapon / GK73A
Ste: I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about verbally abusing someone with a potato but I'm sure it's possible.

[Teflon-Mike]

[Ariel Badger]

Well, tomorrow was a long time coming!
The first job I did was rectify the fact that the gear lever was 15 inches (430mm) from the footpeg. This is ok for trials when they never change gear but no good for what I wanted. The easiest thing to do would have been to move the rests to where Ariel intended them to be but I like them well back as it keeps your weight well over the front wheel, ideal for freak hillclimbing.
After much head scratching I decided to use the kickstart shaft as the shaft for the gear lever as well by extending it with a shoulder bolt.
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[ms51ves3]

Meant to rate it as cool, but was laughing at a film I'm watching

Very cool

[CHR15]

have you considered stratigicly weakening the new gear changer? it looks quite strong, and if that doesnt fail, i guess it will remove your kickstart mechanism?
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Turbocharged drag thing / project death weapon / GK73A
Ste: I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about verbally abusing someone with a potato but I'm sure it's possible.

[Ariel Badger]

Next job was to pull the top end down and see what lived within. First thing wrong was the valve pushrods, They should be made of aluminium tube with steel ends. What I had was one made out of solid aluminium bar and one from steel tube. I quick trip to my metal supplier and I had some ali tube that was almost the right side, half an hour in the lathe and they were just right.
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[Frost]

Cool as Penguin piss.

[MaybeGuy]

aren't you going to harden or sleeve the end of the pushrod?
Even building up with weld then facing it off would make it much harder.

Also, tbh the rearset looks a bit bodge even by my standards. Maybe turn a peg down and press it in or something? It looks like a door handle
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Blue_SV650S wrote: it was a sh1te wheelie, but it proves that he can get it up in 3rd and can do angles. In summery, mattsprattuk is a gobby little sh1tebag, dopehead tw4t, but sadly for all of us, he probably isn't THAT full of sh1te!!
Kickstart wrote: Hi I tend to agree with Matt. All the best Keith

[Ariel Badger]

Once I had the head off I could at least measure the piston and order a high compression scrambler job from Draganfly Motorcycles ( although I am now on the case of a even higher ratio piston that I may buy if it looks good).
I also have (on long term load a Scrambler cam and followers (Std on L in picture).
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[Ariel Badger]

[Ariel Badger]

New cam and rods fitted into the engine. I always lighten the cam gear, it is my little sig in a motor.
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[Ariel Badger]

When I was working on the box I droped a little ball that the clutch rod bears on into the box itself and had to strip it to recover my ball.
This is how to position an Ariel to tear the box down.
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[tvchimp]

There isn't many words able to describe the awesomeness of this..


Quick question, how good are ariels for day-to-day biking? Obviously you have them for mainly trials and hill-climbing, but they look 'the sex' and I wouldn't mind one to potter about on..
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Bike: Currently Bikeless... Gahh

[Ariel Badger]

I used a 1939 girder forked 350 as everyday transport for about 6 years. I rode her to work, rallies and trialled her at weekends no matter what the weather. No problems apart from blowing two engines from serious abuse and a fire in Shropshire.
The Ariel club annual rally was in Germany this year, most of those attending rode there.
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[ajbsmirnoff]

I appear to have stumbled unto some homemade hardcore bike/engineering porn.

Nice work.

[Ariel Badger]

[Ariel Badger]

Once I had all the work sorted I cleaned the bash plate and exhaust while they were off the bike. The last couple of jobs were to put wider bars on and do a bit of work on the ignition. The bike was originally fitted with a Lucas wader magneto ( long gone) but was when I bought it running electronic ignition in a thing that looked like a BTH mag through a coil under the tank. The penultimate owner was a woman who could not start the bike on a mag (God knows why not, she was on the large side.) so her dotting husband fitted the very expensive electronics. It was her now ex husband I bought the bike from and part of the deal was he wanted the ignition thing back and supplied me with a beautiful BTH racing mag as a replacement. Changing over only took an hour of so and I poured a couple of pints of petrol in the tank and kicked her over.
In fact I kicked her over quite a bit and nothing happened. I took the plug-cap off and sent a 1/4 inch spark flying to the frame so then I connected the lead straight to the plug and kicked a lot. Then it occurred to me that the electronic thingy could handle a suppressed plug. A quick Google on the spark plug conformed it did have a built in resistor so I found an old pink Lodge and screwed it in second kick she fired up.
Old bikes need old plugs.
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[Handsome]

Is this the one that was in the back of the van with no lump in it ?...
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Previous Bikes...Honda NSR 125 RR...Kawasaki Zephyr 550...Suzuki SV 1000 S...Yamaha FZ8...Current Bike...Suzuki GSX-R 750...

[D O G]

[Ariel Badger]