Tony made up a platform unit for Malcolm Webb to try on his Vintage

Tony made up a platform unit for Malcolm Webb to try on his Vintage "V" twin Matchless. It was a tight fit but Malcolm managed it and has the machine up and running. He caused himself a bit of extra work as you will see from the email he kindly sent us.

Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 11:37 PM

Subject: BTH Mag - first impressions

Hi Tony

Thought that you might be interested in an initial report on fitting the platform-mounted 50 degree "V" twin BTH mag. The only problem in fitting it to the Matchless Model X was in mounting the CDI unit and coils.

On this bike there is plenty of room to hide it all under the tank using a plate mounted on the top diamond. However, anyone who has ever rewired a bike with a tank-top instruments will tell you that you don't take the tank off unless you really have to! For now I have settled for a "temporary" mounting using the sidecar lug.

After the fiasco when I over shortened the timing peg and lost it down the hole in the mag, I found that by removing the exhaust pipe which sits right over the top of the timing hole, I had enough room to manoeuvre a slightly shortened peg into the timing hole.

With the mag locked, setting the ignition timing was a piece of cake, much easier than normal.

I tried the usual spark test with the bike still on the bike-bench but, since she has stood for months, I realised that the (low-geared) kick start was hardly turning the motor over.

With my grass track background the solution was obvious. While everybody else was sleeping off their Christmas dinner, I gave her a bump start down the road. I was rewarded by a large bang and then she took off with me still side-saddle (I live in a short cul-de-sac!).

Once the bike had warmed up and the oil had circulated, I found that she would kick into life easily with a much more even tick-over than before.

With the deserted roads, I couldn't resist a trip around my short "test track" - about 3 miles around the outskirts of town. She feels a lot happier than with the old mag and pulls like a train. I never noticed the automatic advance, which shows that it is doing it's job. There is only one decent hill around here and she pulled up that in top.

On first impressions, the mag does exactly what it claims to do. As the weather and, hopefully, my health improve, I will be aiming to do some longer test runs and will send you a further report and some

pictures.