Petrol Taps

After consulting with the gurus at the ClassicGlory mailing list to confirm the Enots and Ewart type petcocks were rebuildable; I dove right in and stripped them down.  Unfortunately KYL95 has a mismatched set of petrol taps.  Left side is the original Enots type and the right side has a Ewarts valve.

The Enots type came apart easily and it was obvious that the cork seals were the original ones.  There was still a good bit left of them.  Still I'm impressed with the resilience of natural materials such as cork.  I decided to use real cork to replace them since I didn't have any neoprene handy.  The challenge is cutting the wine cork the right thickness, and making the cut parallel.  I managed a couple attempts with limited success until I got the feel for it.  Lengthwise with the grain obviously works better, and some gentle sanding gets it to the correct thickness.  I did a pressurized water test before reassembly and it works fine.  The slider is a bit scarred up, but its still pretty smooth.

The Ewarts type was a bit more challenging.  The rounded cork shape was not something I was prepared to replicate at the moment.  That would mean drilling out the centerpunch and then re-creating the whole brass inside part.  So I cheated.  I clipped the bad edge part of the cork plunger with a razor blade, and fitted a viton o-ring around it so that the o-ring would seal the plunger to the outside and stop it from leaking outside.  It doesn't seal 100% in the closed position, but as long as it doesn't leak down the side of the bike anymore.  I think I'll have to make a more permanent solution here... like maybe the correct Enots valve.

I didn't take photos of the fuel filters taken out of the tank.  I should have since they were a sight.  The right side was nearly blocked with varnish and junk.  The left side had some varnish on in, but wasn't nearly as bad.  A little carb cleaner and some gentle brushing cleaned them up nicely.