Day 8 Not so bad Friday

Donald drove me in to the diner this morning, I drove myself back.

Donald was economical with his words, I am not so inclined, if you prefer Donald stop now, you know what you need too.

The diner crew were in residence and I was flattered that I no longer need to say “I’ll just have a coffee” my habits are known. It was tipping down as I arrived and that was some concern to me because my motorcycle lift is situated next to a blocked drain that doesn’t. Joe had bought a couple of Gazebo’s to erect outside covering the bikes that need to be displaced for any activity to happen in the workshop. We put them up to cover the eight or so bikes moved outside. I used a snow shovel to displace the standing water before it breached the threshold into the workshop and set about fitting the new spring and replacement gears.

The spring was a problem, no matter which way it was fitted one of the ends hung precariously over the edge of the ‘pawl adjuster’ eventually, and this took a long time, I resorted to sticking it in a vice and bending it. That sorted it was on to the new/old gears, the bearing inside the larger one was more knackered that that in my toothless example so I swapped them. Guzzi in their wisdom left a couple of Indiana Jones style traps for the unwary, the speedo drive has a fiendish washer at the base that needs to be installed before the box is assembled but which, at the slightest provocation falls into the output shaft bearing, The speedo drive itself cannot be installed until the rear casing is in place and it is driven by a worm gear secured by the smallest most easily lost ball bearing. The shafts in the gearbox are located by gravity and luck and are bridged by shifting forks secured mainly by the power of prayer. Atop and below the whole assembly lurk shims and spacers waiting to prey on the unwary.

So it was that lunch time came and went, I went to the diner and had crab and cheese patties with fries (no picture) and entertaining conversation, Casey came around to bid me farewell. It wasn’t until nearly 4 o-clock that the fruit of 5 or 6 aborted trial assemblies finally fell from the tree. Joe helped me test the shifting from 1st through neutral and all the way up to the new 5th (the major fifth?) then left me to throw the whole thing back together with his occasional assistance.

It took another 4 hours, with a brief intermission to retrieve the gazebos, which despite being bungled together, got caught in a gust of wind and lifted right over the bikes and into the road where they took the mirror of a passing car (thankfully one of Joe’s pals’ cars) , before we had her back off the lift. Joe locked up and hung around to see if I was OK.

I wasn’t, the clutch was slipping then suddenly stopped working altogether and the bike lurched forwards and stalled as I hit the brakes. I was briefly a broken man again, then I realised that the clutch thrust assembly had probably just seated properly and was able to fix it by taking up the slack in the cable, although there isn’t much left.

Triumphantly and tentatively I set off up the road home and made sure to try all the gears (5th is a tiny bit whiny) and pick up some beer on the way.