Hello Dave.

Is it a BSA C15 that you and your son are building? You mentioned it in another post. Have you any photos of progress?

I bought myself a new 20 ton hydraulic press a couple of years ago, it cost around £300. It makes otherwise impossible tasks a doddle, although I haven't needed to use it on my two BSA motorcycles yet.

I made up a frame from 3 x 3 box section, welded together to make a portal frame, and used a 6 ton hydraulic jack as the power source. It was used to change a lot of Ford Cortina half shaft bearings.

Just be sure that the parts that you are pressing will not fly out sideways, if anything slips! And that you are exerting pressure on the parts that you should, otherwise you may well break something.

Making dollies to press bearings in or out is just simple turning, and makes life so much easier than "bodging"

Howard

hi dave so you have found the joys of bsa c15/b40 swinging arm pins and bushes, the pin wears on the ends ,so you have to push the worn bit all through the main frame , not to bad if you have the bike apart , as a kid (a long time ago) in my dads motorcycle shop i can remember him laying the bike on its side with wood blocks underneath and using a big old hilti drill with a home made adaptor to punch out the pin , lots of noise but the pin came out , and new bushes /pin and shim were fitted and the bike ready for its mot inside an hour , in fact i inherited all of his old special tools and used the adaptor last year to replace a set on a triumph cub which use the same system , if you have not done one before the only problem if you do not have the long factory reamer is keeping both bushes in line , i now use an adjustable reamer with a 8mm internal thread in the end and made various mandrels to screw in to line up when reaming bushes , just remembered the bantam range used the same set up . cheers will