After assembling everything I found the steering lock was severely compromised, might be almost adequate fora road bike, but off-road no way. In retrospect it should not have surprised me as I always felt my Dommie was short of steering lock for in-garage manoeuvring, OK on the road obviously, but a pain in the car park. The Norton yokes have lock stops only just outside the bearing OD and I brazed a stop lug onto the front of the headstock before painting - the original behind and under the headstock was another detail amutation by the previous owner.
So, with no other choice I took the forks off again, cut the lugs off the yoke and made a half-moon kind of arc with new lugs at the ends, further round. Then bolted that to the yoke.
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The result works nicely with plenty of steering lock and still robust end stops.
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After that and having acquired a couple of extra clutch plates I could put the chain case on properly and move forward a couple of steps. Putting the rear chain on I promptly found how/why the frame lugs had been so badly damaged - the lower run of the chain permanently scuffs on the lug just inside the foot-brake and the top run drags on the swinging arm pivot boss. Even alloing for my non-standard collection of parts it is clearly an original problem.
I made nylon skids to go over the arm and frame and protect it in future. I may yet add a tensioner as well, but the syspension movement is not like modern trials bikes so it's probably over kill.
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With all that done I couldn't resist the temptation to start the engine and hear it run for the first time in 40 years. After a good 5 minutes there was still no oil return so I obviously stopped and investigated. I assumed there was just not a lot of oil in the nominally dry sump so poured
another cupfull down the push-rod tubes and tried again (I had already put a cupfull down before the first start to lubricate the cams and, I thought prime the return). The additional oil served to smoke out the garage and half the street
'though the sweet castor smog was not entirely unpleaseant
I gave up and removed exhaust, gear lever and oil hoses etc to to access the pump ends (total PITA) and found nothing wrong, no blockages, pump oscillating as it should and finally the first traces of oil in the return line. The short story seems to be that the pump obviously doesn't pump air very well and with the sump near dry it took an inordinate amount of time and significant over-oiling of the sump to prime the pump and get the return to flow. The delay made worse by the fact that I have a filter in the return line which holds around 1/2 pt.
Finally, I got some return flow and another few minutes and the exhaust cleared to run quite sweetly. Happy days.
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I still have to fix the seat as the bare frame is a little lacking in comfort, and some other minor details to tidy up, but overall I'm resonably happy with it.
I'll see about registration next