Trevor, I think you are doing a grand job, but I guess most of the phone calls you receive from guys looking for cheap parts are from Ozzies? You have got us wrong over hear regarding vintage bike collectors as being cheap skates. There is a whole breed searching for quality parts rather than the likes of Asian parts. (Sometimes of course, funds and availability will prevail).

You mentioned my Silencer thread, where I have had a copy of a genuine original WD silencer accurately hand made in top quality material and no one seems to have baulked at the reasonable price.

I did have a look at the firm you recommended in USA, and their silencer listed is just a generic item to fit BSA B and M models. It's listed at the equivalent of £180 plus the always very expensive US mail which I'll have a guess at, say £35, we then get hit with 20% tax and an £8 tax collection fee from the post office Total for a no doubt well made silencer of about £266 . And still not correct for a WD bike. Your recommendation was well meaning I know, but in this case, a bit irrelevant I think. Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

I would say the truth is somewhere in between regarding who will pay for what...
Having worked in a British Motorcycle shop and run a business that included manufacturing and selling spares and retailing other manufacturers spares I would estimate that Trevor is far nearer to the truth this time...

IMO approx. 10-15% of people have the quality of the spare they are buying uppermost in their mind with the price as a secondary consideration..
The remainder will nearly always opt for the cheaper alternative, even when presented with a direct comparison and a choice between quality and price as the main factor.

It is something that has always puzzled me when the bike they own is supposed to be 'the light of their life' in terms of their interests and their hobby...Surely you would want the best you can have if that was the case..?

I think the 'cheapo' view has gradually come to prevail these days because the 'natural selection' that weeds out the rubbish no longer applies now most bikes are hardly used and not relied on for transport...

As I have always used by bikes as my main form of transport it was both desirable and necessary that I used the best quality spares I could get to ensure long term daily reliability...

I frequently hear, for example, people bemoaning the lack of quality pistons and some search in vain for NOS Hepolite to address that lack of supply.....
However, the reason there are no Hepolite pistons is that the majority of potential customers over the years routinely took the cheaper option and the Hepolite company (in its latter stages under the management of Peter Hepworth) became unviable...

The reason I use that example is because I spoke to Peter Hepworth in the latter days of the company and he explained the difficult situation..
He actually said he would rather close the company down than compromise on quality to achieve the lower price that would enable him to compete with what he (rightly)regarded as inferior products ...

As of today it is still the case that people will only buy parts if they regard them as cheap...Perhaps also the legacy of getting used to things like £30 microwaves from China?...

The fact is the choices of consumers over the years to buy cheap but poorer quality parts has led us to where we are now with few 'quality' options available even if we want them....Trevor is right I'm sorry to say, the market has followed what the majority of customers want, for good or bad, and the reality is that is low price, not high quality.....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey." John Ruskin

In the craft world it's the same. It's really difficult to sell high priced good quality as people basically buy..... crap. I do think that a majority of modern buyers buy to restore and not to ride so they are less willing to pay for hidden good quality. I still think that manufacturers, not the public, in the latter stages of the british bike industry were all about short term profit, not long term investment. I'm thinking of the early '60s.

email (option): j@clogmaker.co.uk

This seems to be a thread where everyone has an opinion. My opinion is as follows:
1) To answer your question, yes, it will work if it is not worn.
2) My carb was worn so I bought a new 276 and have no regrets.
3) If I was to fit a non-standard carb to any bike, Mikuni would be my first choice as you get good quality for a reasonable price and jets are easy to source.

email (option): pvlietstra@gmail.com

Evening all,
Well I go away on business for a few days and HOLY CRAP you guys don't hold back!!!
Soo, just to poke the bear and enter into the forum spirit of eternal banter, tempered with an aspiration to also be a grumpy old bastard. I will take some decent pictures of the carb as its already dismantled and post them on here this weekend.
Then we can have round two, this could he either educational or just plain highly entertaining.
Whose up for a bit of online condition assessment then?

I yield the floor.........

Scott
PS might also add some progress pics also, if you all play nice!

email (option): larkesr@gmail.com

hi Scott,

Thank you for being so understanding!

Give us any chance to get onto our soapboxes and there is no stopping us. But, in the end, we all mean well, and once stumps are pulled, we all sit down and have a nice cup of tea together...

If you are at the start of your rebuild, I'm sure there will be some unanticipated expenses coming up for you. I take the view that something that works but is not ideal, can stay until other critical things are taken care of. no point polishing her up if she won't go. But everyone has a different view on that.

To be honest, I like the 626 carbs and I'll probably buy a premier to replace my existing one when it eventually wears. But then again, I ride every day. I'd never thought about the Harley Brit-biker comparison I saw in a previous posting but it's dead-on! Living in the US has shown me some very distinct differences in how riders approach things.

I'm used to riding to work each day and spending the weekends fettling away to keep my old girl running. You know, ride, wrench, repeat. Harley riders are quite the opposite. They spend the week carefully polishing their pride and joy so they can go for a ride on sundays (as long as it's not raining). And, as a rule, they demand the best quality parts and accessories - both genuine and aftermarket. We seem to accept some parts are a bit crappy but still buy them and try to keep them working or modify them to work better. I'm not sure if either approach is better but it'a an interesting comparison.

But here, you will find the very best family of BSA lovers you could hope for. Very generous with their collective knowledge, experience and help. Enjoy!

email (option): cas.vanderwoude@gmail.com

Nope,
100% wrong
The motorcycle industry was in a major price war between the brands which ultimtely made them all unprofitable.
British industry never seemed to get past the stage 1 industrial revolution phase.
Way too many small plants that could not take advantage of economies of scale.
Unbelievably complex manufacture with no regards to materials flow.
management , most of which was class based simply tweaked production volumes by employing more workers or sacking them.
Not until the BSA/ Triumph joint manufacture plan was there proper regard paid to the logistics of manufacture and even then the plan to make all the parts at Small Heath and do all the assembly at Coventry go torpedoed and then basterdised to the point of being a waste of money and a burden to production.

Even when the entire British motor industry faced closure and PM Thatcher did every thing she could to force industry to modernise the moronic brand snobbery scuttled the plan and the net result is an auto industry which is a ghost of its former self principally owned by foreign companies taking the tax payer subsidised profits off shore because morons at Rover would not allow a Rover to have a Jaguar engine fitted & visa versa so in place of picking the best engines and making them cheaply in mass they continued to make 20 different but similar engines at high cost and no profit til every one went to the wall.

email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au

I would say chasing short term profits was one of the reasons that manufacturers never addressed the points you make. They didn't seem to invest in new manufacturing machinery and processes that would enable them to build modern designs.
Union demarcation was a huge problem. The class system meant that middle class twits with little or no interest in the nitty gritty of manufacturing were able to additionally screw things up.
My brother tried to buy a tank rubber for his Slumberglade 'Bolt. "Sorry sir we are a Triumph shop" " But it's exactly the same part" "Sorry sir we are a Triumph shop".
I would point out that this is a discussion forum; Not a forum for scoring points, but perhaps that's a cultural difference?

email (option): j@clogmaker.co.uk

The UK had class snobbery destroying its industry, down here we had political idologies doing the exact same thing only more so and we have never had a Thatcher who actually tried to make things work.

As a committed BSA freak it appears to me that BSA management was firmly of the opinion that WW III was just around the corner all through the 50's & 60's.
BSA did not reinvest into new motorcycle production but it did invest in a vast array of businesses that would be stragically important should they be called to rearm the nation again.

By the time the penny dropped it was way too late.
What a lot of people fail to understand is the UK passed emergency tax laws post WW II which taxed with held profits at 50% to 75% but did not tax dividends. The idea was to get money flowing , people spending & the economy moving and was a good plan, except it remained in play till , you guessed it the Thatcher government repealed it.
Thus the all too smart financial wizards set up big business to work on 100% borrowed money and thus pay no tax on profits.
Now this did have some benefits as the UK already was a major finance hub and while Europe was in the post WWII duldrums, local borrowing kept the finance houses solvent.
The down side is UK companies did not retain profits for reinvestments and UK banks were happy to lend money for steel & wages which they knew would be repaid promptly they were not so keen on lending on new plant with a longer pay off period.

This single tax minimization plan was the biggest single factor in the demise of BSA because a single bad season put the company in the red and 2 bad seasons was more than the company could ever repay without massive production volume increases which could not happen without bigger borrowings which was never going to happen as that exposed the UK banks to too much risk to a company that was already in the red.

The demise of BSA is a facinating topic lots and lots and lots of small cracks in the wall till the combined effect of all of them brought it down.
People like simple answers, like it was all the unions fault or all bad management or all government or outdated products or greedy shareholdes or too much over paid management or or or or or but in reality it was the combined effect of all of them .
We have the strange problem of all the 1969/70 bikes with 1966 engine numbers written inside the end covers of the despatch books that were despatched in 1969 and the only reasonable theory that would explain this is BSA was found to have fiddled the books with the ministry of supply, remember them the department that had to authorise the purchase of raw materials ( tax variations ? )which put an effective brake on production increases by lliniting factories access to raw materials, another department that Mrs Thatcher tossed.

Now don't get me wrong, am not a Tory but from a distance what she was doing and the benefits of what she was doing is more apparent than from close up when it was your job she axed.

Now what was this thread all about ?

email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au

The question was: will a 626 concentric carb. work , answer is YES

John

email (option): john.kater@chello.nl

email (option): larkesr@gmail.com

OK, as promised, the carb in question, stripped down, opinions invited.
I'm thinking the slide has seen better days, the bowl had a crappy seal which was due to porous casting, think I have recovered it with some wet n dry.
If we can not blame Maggie Thatcher and open that door again, its all good!!! ;)
Click on this one image to see the rest in Flickr

Scott

email (option): larkesr@gmail.com

It doesn't look to have been badly got at - screw heads look good etc. Slide doesn't look bad to me. I've handled far worse.

Make sure it can rise and fall easily and be aware that if it's too rattly, air will pass down round it and make it difficult to set up a consistent tickover.

You could replace the plastic float with a StayUp float. They are adjustable.

John

email (option): john.kater@chello.nl