02-04-2015, 05:12 AM
Having worked on both British and Japanese motorcycles, I found the Japanese horizontally spilt cases much easier to disassemble and re-assemble. Everything sits nicely in the Japanese lower case.
Having things fall free while opening British crank cases can make things hard to re-assemble properly. Wrestling the halves of the British cases together while hoping everything stays in place is also a chore. I was fortunate enough to have both a genuine BSA shop manual and parts list that I imported from England along with all the shop tools. I liked my two BSA Lightnings, but they were more difficult to work on.
We may complain about the service interval between valve adjustments on Japanese motorcycles. But my experience with British motorcycles is that they needed a complete motor overhaul every 10,000 miles.
Having things fall free while opening British crank cases can make things hard to re-assemble properly. Wrestling the halves of the British cases together while hoping everything stays in place is also a chore. I was fortunate enough to have both a genuine BSA shop manual and parts list that I imported from England along with all the shop tools. I liked my two BSA Lightnings, but they were more difficult to work on.
We may complain about the service interval between valve adjustments on Japanese motorcycles. But my experience with British motorcycles is that they needed a complete motor overhaul every 10,000 miles.