yes what I thought. That centre one is the worst case and I will replace the pair. I was hoping to avoid having to replace them all though as they are so expensive, but maybe it's worth doing now. What seems like a no brainer job on this bike is always a hesitation as everything is so expensive.
If anyone has a source of bearings cheaper than £15 a shell that would be good
I think I have worked out the codes, BABBB on the case and AAAAA on the crank so I make that 4 greens and a yellow.
Big end bearings all look pretty good, much better than the mains.
When I worked on petrol engines (mainy on cars admittedly) it was pretty much routine that a crank removal led to replacing the crank & main shells. Even when the bearings didn't look that bad it was a case of well my labour is free so why skimp on the material costs bearing in mind the amount of effort involved in dismantling the engine again.
I also found that replacing piston rings under the same argument was not as effective unless there was a very good reason such as poor compression, visible damage such as a broken ring or piston lands plus of course bore scoring / excessive oil consumption.
Likewise I have never been a fan of glazebreakers after over doing it once resulting in needing a rebore. I would prefer to have a rebore if the aforementioned issues were found. I also learnt to my cost that there was a wide range of competency in machine shops that did rebores. In the 1970's there were something like 8 or 9 firms in the Derby area that carried out engine machine work. Some firms seemed to live on reputations that were not maintained over time.
If I have to have a rebore on my bike I would struggle to know anywhere locally as I am now out of the circle of local knowledge - I haven't had an engine rebore since 1979. Irrespective of the distance from me I would in all honesty place my trust in someone such as Trigger as he has what I perceive as that rare combination of reputation, skill, pride in his work with a love of what he does.