So called "servicing"

Been fettling the GN250, prior to its Ordeal By London Commute in
January.

The Wemoto pattern exhaust (a) arrived the day after it was ordered, (b)
bolted straight on without any need for walloping (rather rare in my
experience of pattern parts and (c) looks good.

The old system was totally fucked: in addition to the perforacted can,
one header pipe was disintegrating round the double skinning. The first
'skin' has falling away, so it would have lasted maybe another few
months.

Anyway, oil and filter change. The bike "has always been serviced by the
local shop". I pulled out the old oil filter and thought: "Hmmm...
there's usually a locating spring on these things..." The factory manual
confirmed it. So it's been running on essentially unfiltered oil for
who-knows-how-long.

Of course, I've got springs of all shapes and sizes but nothing the
right size so I ended up cutting down a bigger one to fit.

Tomorrow, valve clearance check. I bet they're incorrect.

 

Wemoto will serve you well. Unfortunately their re-designed website is
rather poor, though.

 

Not really a problem for you or I as they're in Southwick.

 

A lot of British cars using the old canister and paper filter system have
a plate that a springs acts on forcing the filter in position. Lots lose
the plate as it can stick to the old filter and the inattentive owner
throws it away.

The Jag now has a jam jar lid with a hole acting as the plate.
Incidentally it wasn't me who lost it and as you say, how long had the 45
year old, 220hp engine been sucking unfiltered oil....

 

I wouldn't worry too much if the oil changes had been carried out fairly
frequently - but it's an unknown history.
Bear in mind the smaller Renaults and others of the 50s and 60s had no
oil filter at all (except a mesh on the pickup) and merely needed a
change every 3000miles.

 

Quite. And more than a few SOBs had very rudimentary filtration anyway.

Checked the tappets today, and somewhat to my surprise they were spot
on. Replaced the cracked indicator with a pattern item I got off eBay.
Ran a fine tooth comb over everything else. Made up a basic toolkit and
stuffed it into its cubby behind the right-hand side panel.

And that's it. I'll add it to my insurance tomorrow and from 4 January
it'll be the town hack.

It's actually in stupendously good condition for something on a J plate:
almost too good to hammer around London.