So, the first bit of garage time...

 So, bit of garage time today to give the bike a proper clean and look over. After a lot of scrubbing it comes up pretty clean. Other than the broken and rusty bits but to look at it in a positive light, that's just patina and a slow, natural way of adding lightness. I've got the bugs and road filth off from when the last time this valiant iron horse triumphed at the LDU, popped the screen off to clean the remains of an old tax disc off and swept up the not insignificant puddle of rust unnecessary iron that was left behind. Also found the missing battery terminal nut that had escaped the previous owner





There are lots of positives, especially compared to what some of the other contestants participants are currently battling with. One person has a bike that has been partially underwater for a number of years.

So, the good bits:

New plugs, light bulbs, tyres, battery, air filter and it had an oil change about 1500 miles ago.

Carbs were rebuilt a year ago with new seals and jets.

Brakes were also rebuilt with new seals and pistons.

It starts, runs and goes through most of the gears, stops (in a fashion...) and merrily turns. Actually, moving this bike around the garden and garage is a dream compared to the race bike!


The suboptimal bits:

The left hand fork seal has had enough and is currently merrily allowing whatever remaining oil is in there to baste my driveway.

Both discs are scrap, the left hand one is more warped than Dr Frank N Furter taking a jump to the left. The right one, let's just say I've seen straighter put-ins at an Australian scrum.*

Both exhausts are blowing from the join between the centre section and the silencers. And blowing quite a bit.

The carbs need setting up, as it stands on my private test track the bike struggled to get about 40mph, and when cold whilst idling the left hand cylinder is doing probably 80% of the work judging by the smoke from the silencers. Once it's warm things are better, but not that much better, and I'm not doing a thousand miles at 40mph. 

 



Stuff I'm (currently) somewhat indifferent to:

Some of the wiring needs tidying. There seems to be a number of connectors under the cracked bodywork that are just hanging around in the breeze. They need chasing at some point or another and either cut away and the ends safely wrapped in heatshrink, or bagged up in a waterproof cover.

One of the indicators has made a bid for freedom. The plate has come adrift from the rubber stalk, if something has broken, arldite and cable ties will fix it.

The cush drive is a wee bit clonky. Not horrendously so, so hopefully Mr MoT man will merely suggest I look at it one day in the future.

The rear shock is lacking in any damping, but.... meh. Not got the budget to sort that to be honest.

 

That's not too big of a jobs list!

 

 

*clearly this is a lie.

 

 

Location: Penryn, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

So why am I doing this. And what exactly is this?

Image
This is the Longest Day Up. If you're reading this blog for the first time, welcome and thank you for visiting. The blog hopefully details how and why I agreed to take part in the 2023 LDU, getting the bike from it's somewhat neglected state to a fully fledged distance trampin' machine and with a bit of luck, the successful journey on June the 21st. If you're interested in reading the whole sordid affair then you need to scroll to the bottom of the main page and read each entry from the bottom up because Google/Blogger has decided to be awkward. The first post is aptly titled As with many decisions it started with a beer... I hope you find them interesting. A decade ago it was the Longest Day Down but, the times they are a-changin' as Bob told us so a while ago it turned into Lands End to John 'O Groats. What's not changed is the fundamentals of starting at one end of Britain at first light on June the 21st and trying to get to the other end before the nex...
Read more

That Was Emotional!

Image
So I made it, 993 miles in a shade over 24 hours.   I wrote this on my forum as an initial thought, I'll either edit it later and write more or just write a whole new post but I'll leave this up for a bit: I think I got to JoG about 0430h in the end, but I shepherded one chap back from about Glen Coe onwards. He'd tipped off his bike at Dunoon snapping his clutch perch and getting a mirror stalk in his eye. I didn't want to leave him, especially as his tank range was pretty small on an old Honda CB360. He suddenly disappeared a number of times from my mirrors so I had to go back and see if he was ok and could get the bike started. 993 miles was my final total. I was soooo cold though, the chap at P5 who owns Haggis Adventures very kindly lent me thermal liners for my jacket and trousers which helped so much, and his wife had made little doggy bags including scones and a miniature bottle of Glenmorangie for arrival at JoG. I gave her a hug as I left and thought we were b...
Read more

Goodbye Wednesday, Hello Thursday

Image
The ferry crossing took about twenty minutes so just before half nine we were being waved up the slipway at Dunoon ahead of most of the cars. As it would be a long run to Inverness and with concerns about availability of fuel at Fort William we trundled along the waterfront to the BP garage to top up our tanks and for both Nick and I to fill up our spare cans too. I wasn't going to risk putting the cheap petrol into the bike as the Chinese carb diaphragms I'd bought are known to split when faced with too much ethanol, so I waited patiently for the chap with the Yamaha to finish refuelling and use the one pump that was selling Super Unleaded. As it happened I was idly watching Nick as he didn't properly deploy his Honda's side stand and ended up keeling right over on the deck with a loud bang.  It took me half a second to register what I'd just seen, then I ran over to him and lifted the bike from where it was trapping his left leg on the floor. Th...
Read more