S&S Silver Saxon #8

[RAYZ1]

Most of everybody in the bike world will know Wills (Big Fluffs) Blue Saxon featured in many mags, pictured below. I bought the fabulous bike off him a few years ago whilst I had one of the "standard" silver Saxons in the back of the garage for some years. I think the standard one was bike No. 8 of 9 produced +prototype (Wills)
Anyway I have been discussing with Will its resto and he very kindly offered to sort it it out for me , I had done several standard bikes before and wondered if I was just chickening out !, anyway right or wrong I decided to clean the bike up myself, its turning into a Saga for sure - Will feel free to jump in anytime very much appreciated

History of No8 - for sale about 8 years ago in Panorama Motors , South Coast , was up at 12k or so but when I called priced had dropped to 7k which seemed sort of reasonable for such a rare bike, at this point Will had already visited the garage and verified its authenticity on this forumm, it had 2 previous owners and a letter from the last long term owner (30yrs plus)
The bike was actually quite shockingly painted all over with aluminium paint - all the frame /engine / nuts and bolts , it ran well, a very quiet engine mechanically.
The origianl glitterflake paint from 76 will stay, it probably the only original one left with original paintwork - I have grown to like it - it is the bike , mind you it took a few years

[RAYZ1]

check the silver paint, frame, whole engine, turbo, nuts & bolts

and the snapped plug, the bottom half is lodged in No3 head, been torqued down on wrong thread I suspect other 3 were easy - it gets worse

[RAYZ1]

How often do you wash your bike with paint stripper ?

[neilbarrett]

by the style of them turbo headers id hav thought that was a early bike like the way the fairing wraps round the side pipe,,to get that frame renickled wont be cheep ,once had a Rickman turbo probably 30yrs bac ,neva eva heard of a silver saxon bac then ,

[ZedHead]

This is one to watch :

[garyd]

I thought they lightly worked the engines for the turbo but they look like STD pistons??

Remember seeing the 'prototype' at the road and racing show before it was at the ally pally. Can't remember where it was but it was held in 2 halls..( agricultural socienty keeps popping into my head)..which you had to walk down the road to get between each.

Just digging out of my iffy memory banks....I thought the bike was cream or brown when I saw it.

[Mathh]

Great bike and what a coincidence... I just read these two old magazines from CMM which I found in a big pile...

[FOZ1A]

Royal Horticultural Halls, Victoria!

Foz

[ZedHead]

I thought they lightly worked the engines for the turbo but they look like STD pistons??

Remember seeing the 'prototype' at the road and racing show before it was at the ally pally. Can't remember where it was but it was held in 2 halls..( agricultural socienty keeps popping into my head)..which you had to walk down the road to get between each.

Just digging out of my iffy memory banks....I thought the bike was cream or brown when I saw it.

Flat tops to lower compression. Will can advise... He has changed a few

[RAYZ1]

Yes the top end of the Engine is standard pistons , all the standard versions used them , bored to 1000cc, set to 5psi or so to give a claimed 160hp. I suppose S&S destructed the prototype as much to understand what it would take as they were to continue building these as production bikes ? Z1r turbo was the same . Problems arise when the easte gate was screwed shut, anyway took barells off and no blow back on pistons at all , in 40 years , mind you only 8000 miles

[RAYZ1]

More issues , previous butcher had pig welded a kawa side stand to the Renyolds 531 tube at the corner of the cradle, apart from extreme ugliness, it brittled the tube and the stress pulled a hole in the frame. The bit where the weld is being cut was ok after it was ground and filed off , the frame has been NDT dye tested , and have fitted a strengthening elbow with tube from Renyolds, who advised to TIG weld with pure argon , which is how they do it nowadays.

[garyd]

Royal Horticultural Halls, Victoria!

Foz

Nice one.....you're older than you look!

[Big Fluff]

Ray.
You are correct in that S&S pretty much did everything they could using the prototype as a mule. They tried with the standard 903cc, experimented with 960cc and settled with 1015cc.
Their main problem though as I found out, was that all their findings were based on the prototype, which through its years as a mule had a faulty boost gauge! They never thought to test the gauge thinking it should be accurate as it was brand new at the time. This was one of the first jobs I looked at when I started restoring it, taking it to the metrology department in Bentley. Applying 10 psi of pressure only gave a gauge reading of 4 psi so you can only imagine the intense pressures that the poor crappy cast pistons were up against. They were running 6 psi, but in reality more like 15 psi.
Personally, after seeing the mess of the last two TC engines I’ve had to rebuild, I certainly wouldn’t stick with cast pistons. For trouble-free enjoyment I would highly recommend the following: APE cylinder studs & nuts, 75mm MTC forged piston kit (7.8:1 CR), MLS head gasket, APE valve springs, one of my wastegate modification kits, Dyna 2000 ignition, one of my boost retard kits, Dyna coils, oil sump anti-surge modification, top oil feed to turbo. Other extremely worthwhile mods are welded crank (if going over 10 psi), Mikuni HSR carb plus one of my HSR deep air filters, and a decent crankcase breather flame trap.

S&S were still experimenting with the Silver Saxon long after they sold the last production bike No.8, but at over £4k they didn’t sell very quickly. Just like the TC that followed shortly after, there was no warranty implied either.

The prototype was ‘upgraded’ in early 1978 by Russell Savory of S&S. Fitted with an A-flow turbine impeller, a ported compressor housing and uprated gearing, it was sent to France to attempt to beat the current production bike top speed, though I don’t know what that would have been at the time? According to my friend Mike Cazalet (director of S&S at that time), the bike went through the traps at 325 km/h (202 mph). Somewhere there is proof of this in a French publication called something like “Toutes du-Lemonde” though I’ve never found it and my poor friend Mike Cazalet is coming to an end.

Ray if I can help out in any way you have my number so please feel free to give me a call anytime. Keep on with the project, remember these bikes are more rare than a Brough Superior!

Regards, Will

[Big Fluff]

Here's a bit more about S+S in their non-turbo days too, in particular order

[RAYZ1]

Will you are a mine of information !, with respect to the engine mods what I will do at this point is get the bike running and presentable, it has been together for 40 years or so in its current form , but any serious use may entail the top end work and other works inc ignition - TBH that is a job for you and I wouldn't mind doing the donkey work at the this stage to then have you take it further or to the next stage. There is so much stuff that was either knackerd or seized on this bike you wouldn't believe. One real bit of stupidity was the alu blanking plate inserted into the waste gate !! WTF !! and they still never blew it up, couldnt have opened the throttle much. I have a letter from the previous 2nd owner about the bike so will post that, the first owner didn't keep it long

some issues to date...
I used an easy out to try and remove the plug...wrong it snapped, so made it worse. I have now thrown out all my easy outs - my fault I googled a soloution .... Went to a local engine shop (60 miles away) - spark erroded it out and did a quality insert

baffle was completely rusted in slash silencer, eventually came loose in the wrong direction ..and went past the elbow in the silencer - nope not coming out now - 4 hours of pulling , tools , jammed solid - recip saw finished it off

Sump plg !, I couldn't find it ...then I saw a bit of metal hacked to death .. had to cold chisel the rim to get a turn , so overtorqued / seized - new one bought

6mm bolts each side of head - threads in barrels stripped, 2 x helicoils fitted , 2 cam cover bolts the same

Sprocket bolt so seized on even 3 ft tourqe bars wouldn't budge it - dremel off one side , 2 mins and a socket and small ratchet all was needed , so new bolt - I will never fight a sprocket bolt again like that - cut it on one side and it will stretch to open no bother

Steering stem - would NOT come apart, had to use oxy torch to heat inner race of top bearing red hot and belted it with a copper hammer 8 times before it budged, had the top nut on - came free with a damaged top nut and thread - local machine shop sorted the threads and turned me up a titanium exact replica of the original steering nut, turns out that the top and bottom taper bearings - inner races was 24.5mm dia from the ussr codes. The stem was 25mm - that is a hell of a stretch and obvious why it wouldn't budge, the bottom bearing I cut the inner race with a dremel(again) and it went bag with a crack before I cut all the way .

Crank auto advance bolt - was so tight was going to snap most def trying to undo - so I cut a slot between the small and large nut to relieve the compression/tightness and it came off with a spanner no problem , thank you dremel - it cost £23 for a new bolt - so much better that a snapped bolt in the end of the crank