Fixing an old rotary bell
 

I've just picked up an old Triumph that has a lovely "Kennard Cycle Co" rotary bell:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5063/...8da01990_z.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5303/...bbb9928b_z.jpg

Yes I know the bike needs entirely dipping in OA....

But the bell doesn't work. Are these old bells fixable? I've struggled to find diagrams or information on fixing them. The springs all work, but it seems that one of the connections somewhere has come loose.

Any tips? Or should I just give up?

Have you cleaned all the rust out of it yet? I've had trouble using oxalic acid to loosen things up; it works great for removing accessible rust, but frozen parts remain frozen.

Since your bell is all metal (right?) you should be able to get it going. I've had a few bells that had plastic (nylon?) gears that wore out, after which there's nothing to be done with them. Your mechanism looks complete to me, so if it's all moving freely I can't see why it wouldn't work. The actual ringers are those two washers under the top plate. They should move freely, so centrifugal force swings them to the outside where they hit the ridges in the bell which bounce them away to let the bell vibrate freely. I'm not sure I explained that very clearly....

Thanks RHM - I'll have a look when I get home. The parts all move freely but the semi circular cog attached to the thumb-bit doesn't engage the rest of the mechanism. I think I get your description and hope you get mine!

Oh, that's not good. At the top of your picture, there's a medium sized gear; it hides a smaller one, that it's attached to on the same spindle. That smaller gear is what the big semicircular one engages. The small one doesn't have many teeth, since it's small, so it's the first thing to wear out, in which case it may be that you're out of luck. But it's a fairly long gear, maybe 3 or even 5 mm long, and possibly it's only worn at one spot; so if you bend the semicircular gear up or down, it may engage the little gear at a spot where it's not worn.

Aha - I shall have a look and see if that helps! The bike itself is in dire need of a clean up anyway :)