New Member in West Cumbria

hello and welcome bobgoldie, we hope you enjoy the forum.

Is anyone?     As long as you disconnect the battery before doing anything, that is all one kind of understands from it. 

No, that's probably overly harsh but I think a lot us will get what you mean about the Haynes Manual.

Welcome along.....you are in the right place for help, banter and friendly advice. 

Hi Bob, welcome. Not too bad a job pulling the clutch apart. Er, do you have a Goldie?

Hi Everyone, thanks for your welcome and No, unfortunately I don't have a Goldie, just a B175 in bits. Goldie just happens to be my surname which is not bad for someone interested in motorbikes! Apart from a couple of Triumphs (1 Meriden, 1 Hinkley) and a previous SD and an SRX400, my mechanical experience has all been with Beesa's, C15, A65 and the odd Bantam here and there. They are the only engines I've seen inside, I've got my clutch apart and Wow, what engineering inside the engine! It makes the BSAs look not just primitive, but almost amateurish. My A65L was a 1969 model. 12 years on when my SD was made, the advances are amazing.

However, onto my clutch which rattled (and which will probably rattle a damn' sight more when I put it all back together again). I dressed the clutch outer drum a wee bit with a fine file where the plates had marked it and then washed off the filings in a bath of petrol. When I wiped it down, I found that there was a bit of rotational play where it is riveted to the driven primary gear. Is this normal? When the drum is held firm, it is possible to rotate the driven gear behind it by maybe half a millimetre.

Having now used the Haynes manual in earnest, I think I was a bit harsh in my criticism. It makes a lot more sense when you can actually see the bits it is talking about. But I do think I need a parts list and probably some sort of maintenance manual. I'm easily confused, more so as I get older - age 64 - and I hope I never have to dismantle, check bits and reassemble the engine but if I did, I'm sure the Haynes manual will be most useful. What would be better for me would be an Idiot's Guide to Maintaining Your Superdream, or something like a Clymer manual (their A65 manual was ace) with simple non-engineering layman's English. Anybody got any ideas who could supply or where they might be available. I've found the CMNSL website with a whole lot of diagrams that look useful.

If anyone has any thoughts or ideas, I'd like to hear (see) them but I'm not online that often so it will take me a while to respond but any help would be very much appreciated.