Saving Old Seagulls

Clutch operation sounds normal. Forward and neutral only. The clutch works by shifting the prop shaft in and out to engage the pinion gear. Hence the gap you see when clutch is engaged.

Is the play on the shaft in/out? That’s normal to a certain degree due to the simple gearbox/clutch design.

After a couple days of poor performance the forum software was updated today to the latest version 3.3.15. Hopefully this addresses the recent issues, apologies for the downtime.

As usual please report any further problems here!

Andrew

Sandro, possibly there is a new issue when usernames have a space in them, you are second person to experience this issue recently. I am looking into this problem.

I can see that your account is still active with the correct email address. I have updated your username to Sandro_Picchio (replacing ...

As Charles says you can easily pop the gearbox cap off and inspect. Seagulls are serviceable with the most basic tool kit.

Possible causes:
1) gunk buildup in gearbox (old emulsified water/oil mix dried to powder over long time. Most likely)
2) drive shaft or prop shaft seized in bushing in the ...

Easiest to remove the prop when testing in a bucket, to keep the water calm. Cooling water usually won’t come out at lowest idle, you just need to rev it a bit to get it pumping.

No standard way to adjust per se, rather a bit of gentle coercing is occasionally needed when reassembling the carb. As you say it’s hard to do much without breaking the pin or float but I’ve overcome same issue in the past with other older seagull carbs.

If you have any more troubles with the ...

Likely the float is not raising correctly/high enough to raise the fuel needle so that it to closes the fuel channel into the float chamber.

Never needed to replace the fuel needle on an old carb myself, when I’ve had problems with fuel leakage it has always come down to float adjustment.

I ...

Later bracket with plastic tilt lock, skeg missing, later dome nut, no idea what’s going on with starboard side of the tank. Getting close?

Looking very nice. A great feeling getting the power unit back together!

I see an upside-down 9897 stamp on the upper crankcase half. Not sure I’ve notice a stamp there before on other motors. Is this normal for the AD range and/or others produced around that time?

Glad to hear it came back to life pretty easily. Did you clean/set points and out of interest does it still have a Bing carb?

This is normal at low rpms. See the FAQ page on the main Saving Old Seagulls website here

https://saving-old-seagulls.co.uk/faq2.html#cooling

It should be fine without water flow here and there. Happens all the time with clogged intakes. Seagulls run quite cool, so if you hear hissing while ...

Is the tank leaking (pinholes etc)?

A common question with these old tanks and from what I can tell no single ‘right’ answer. There are lots of suggestions online for cleaning out old motorcycle tanks which could also apply here.

Usually the cleaning process for me starts with a good degreaser, then onto removing the built up crud ...

Interesting! Wonder if just a spacer added at some point? To what end no idea.

Looks like a century in the background, two rebuilds at the same time?

Looking good!

Which parts will you varnish? Casings, cylinder? Have never used varnish on a seagull but understand it can help protect their finish for quite some time.