BSA BANTAM B175 NEW WIRING LOOM FITTED AND SWITCH GEAR SERVICED 

Great thing about old cars and bikes is you can tackle bits like switches apart and restore them. Very satisfying but boy is it fiddley Nice job Mr T..

Many decades ago a friend of mine came across a pair of Japanese Quails in a pet shop. Easy, just treat them like chickens. His chickens, predictably, were free range... Opened the door the next morning and vroom... Bye bye, quails... Anyway. Switches. Back in the '50s teams of young womenfolk would assemble hundreds of these switches a day, all the time moaning about what a knobend Albert had been coming home drenched in a barmaid's scent. Her hamster died, I gave her a hug... Lesson to be learned! Don't replace something that you might be able to fix... 👍

I’m preparing to rewire my D14. This is great for reference. Thank you. Looking forward to the next episode.

Fiddly job at best. Only done one completely from scratch, loom replace and upgrade and that was on the Riley RM. It amazed me how much better starting, lights and charge was. Actually cleaning my front cut diesel mower loom as part of a salvage project, when you posted. Must be telepathy!! Thank you for posting.

You are a very patient man Mr Tweed, there would have been a lot of foul language coming from me during the switch rebuild.

Fantastic, those intros just get better and better 😂

I was engrossed with your patience restoring the switch. You already knew what components would be found and taught anyone attempting this to learn first of all how it works before dismantling! My son restored two motor bikes, one was a Triumph sports Tiger cub and the other was a 1955 Ariel Red Hunter. He dicovered the gear box was a seperate unit made in the 1930s. Some British manufactures after world war 2 could never afford further investment in new tooling for years and cobbled bikes together from manufactured parts and still using pre-war machinery which the photos you showed from BSAs manual of different models testified to.

I love a strip down of parts that were meant to be disposable. That's the appeal to older things, you can get inside them and fix them . Too many things are sealed for (short?) life and you can end up destroying them trying to get inside. I've always loved fixing things and as a nipper I remember bending back the tabs of a tinplate clockwork car to gain access to re-attach the spring. I guess it all started from there. Even today before I throw away something broken I still see if I can fix it. I'm afraid you've been done, Mr Crispin's toothbrush has a royal crest on it. Hope you didn't pay a lot for it. Thanks for the video, I loved the suspense of someone else getting those three springs in place.

You are a brave man, taking that switch apart. Well done on not breaking off the tabs. Or anything else for that matter. Fragile is the key word. That is a lovely shade of green in there.

My brother bought a B175 Bantam a few years ago. The front mudguard is secured by stays, at the front & back. There is no fittings where the mudguard passes between the forks, so the mudguard "floats". There are threaded bosses on the inside fork legs, full of factory paint. There are NO holes drilled in the mudguard anywhere in this area.I can only presume that it left the factory like this. I will make something up, if I can get a glimpse of the said part in RU-vid videos...Your videos are hilarious & helpful. Many thanks.

Lovely work! That switch was horror and it came up so well. Cheers, Peter.

Thankyou for a very informative video, i will try some of the items, instead of purchasing new if available

Great episode Mr Tweed, excellent workmanship. Can’t wait for the next instalment 😀

Great episode Allan, I was expecting a jack-in-the-box experience whilst you dismantled the switch, I've had similar experiences and some of them best forgotten. I also remember Pifco torches and yes, what a marvellous bit of kit, you just can't beat tacky plastic and pressed shiny metal :-)

Marvellous progress Mr Tweed.

I always thought what we need for fiddly jobs with springs and ball bearings is one of those baby incubator things to do the dismantling in. I suppose you'd have to take the baby out first... And for continuity testing hell, try building Enigma machine rotors!

That was a really successful job ! Really nice to be able to get a new wiring loom together with new connectors, I wonder why they have changed the colour coding on this, I would think the number of these looms that they sell would not make it viable to start producing a new run, so they could be old stock re packaged, you ae lucky it was not fitted with Bosch equipment , that would have self destructed many years ago, when you consider this has been used and abused for 50 years and it still cleans up like new then look at the equipment we buy today this must have been at the very end of a repairable era, I think the crud inside the switch must be the original grease used on assembly of the switch. But it has all come out like new! Well done Allan! Chris B.

Wipac Tri-con switch, I think the red button is for a magneto cut out, not used on a Bantam. A Bantam would use a Du-con switch which does not have the red button.

Great stuff Alan, you epitomise the old saying that the art of fixing things is having the bottle to take them to bits; which you did with the switches, cracking job mate... Sadly I'm going to be picky, "Loom" seems to be a term which has floated across the Atlantic over the years, back in the day I would call it a wiring harness, the brief glimpse of the manual showed the word "harness" which backs me up somewhat, It's a bit like calling a pillar drill a drill press; I mean what's all that about...Anyway enough of that, looking forward to the next installment mate, I hope it all works... Allen O'Rourke...

Any time that fitting something to a classic bike upsets the concourse nit pickers makes it worth doing. 🙂

There's nothing as exciting as a new Lucas box of darkness. I was on the edge of my seat while you disassembled that switch. I thought we were in trouble couple of times! As always entertaining and educational. Cheers from the shed

a lot to be said in favor of carbide lights.

I like your humour and other content but I want to ask you if you think as I do to it's a good idea to run earth wires to everything rather than using the frame as ground ,I have done it on my c15 the nips did it donkeys years ago it seems so obvious to me that it should make the electrics work better maybe?cheers all the best and please keep up the good work