Author: lemansman

Less than I’d like to be, more than I expected.

Day 5 Shopping with Joe and Casey

Drama fans look away now, this was a quiet day.

A slow start at the new hotel, nestled between the freeway and the railroad tracks, which is cool because the infrequent trains do that lonesome wailing horn thing, music to my ears even as it echos off the Tuxedo warehouse next door. The pool is covered and looks like a buried trampoline, presumable because it gets a lot hotter than this and people appreciate a seasonal change even if only from English summer hot to scorching inferno.

My what long legs you have

I was a little tardy heading in to Joe’s because I needed to send a begging email to Roland at http://sparepartsco.us/# explaining my gearbox woes and requesting parts help. “What shall we do about the begging letters?” asked the lottery winner’s wife, “keep sending them” he replied.

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Day 4 Help me Joe Paparo

I awoke, not refreshed, for the reasons cited previously, and packed like I meant it, whatever happened I had to move on. Skipping a shower and shave through sleeploss I left my stuff in the room and headed down to Paparo Cycles for 8:15 because a picture on the internet had implied that he might open at 8, the door said 9 and it wasn’t wrong. Jo drove up from the diner next door and I liked him already, 66 years old and independent, the last of the few, and he liked my bike, accent and manners.

Hey Jo!

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Day 3 Hookers and blow…

…is how my friend Adam would describe the raucous party that went on until the early hours in the motel room a tissue thin wall from mine. Not to mention the in car, in car park, entertainment demonstration and screaming outdoor rows, there I did, sorry.

Yummy

Day 3 had started quietly enough with a Travelodge “Breakfast of Losers” and brightened up when housekeeping gave me a bottle of beer and some extra ‘coffee’ filter bags. I collected myself, wrote a post and secured Abe in an Uber to deliver myself to Annie Baileys, at Caleb’s suggestion. A large and largely civilised Irish bar and restaurant offering a “Full Irish Breakfast” which I took to include at least two pints of cool and delicious Guinness. It didn’t disappoint and the sunny courtyard bar allowed me the opportunity to digest.

Chad, the black sausage is blood, just so you know

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Them’s the brakes

Slow down. In the interim of ignored leaky fork seals the front brake (there are two, one linked with the rear and activated by the foot pedal and the other paying lip service to the hand lever) began weeping brake fluid over any vulnerable paint in the vicinity. Brakes, for which the term “wooden” would be flattery, were demanding attention. Brembo rebuilds are, for the most part, straightforward. Take everything apart and clean it within an inch of its life, replacing where worn and don’t forget that dot4 fluid and dot5 (silicone) are not the same. I had accumulated, through the magic of the internet and a policy of buying is easier than doing, most of the bits that I needed to replace.

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Day 2 Not so Good Saturday

I promised insight into Italian motorcycle mechanics, I didn’t pledge any drama.

30 odd years ago the gear shift return spring broke on the gearbox leaving the lever flopping about like the proverbial and a chunk of spring steel floating around the gearbox. It happened again today. This time instead of resting, quietly, away from the spinning gears the detached section engaged in noisy conversation with one or more of them.

I stopped on the outskirts of East Petersburg to assess the situation and was presented with the first consequence. To get the bike onto the center stand it needs to be rolled backwards about a foot, it declined. This is a problem because without the center stand I have to support the bike and luggage or lay it down. It appeared that the errant metal was wedged in such a way as to act like a ratchet pawl on one of the final drive gears, connected directly to the back wheel. I could roll forwards but not back.

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Brace yourself (Fork off)

The one specific thing that had prevented me from, at very least, getting the Le Mans roadworthy was that one of the fork legs was drizzled with escaping suspension oil. The first step was to order some new seals but that quickly escalated to new updated cartridge dampers, new progressive springs and new stanchions (the chromed tubes).

Spending money is a lot easier than spending time and so the parts sat and waited.

Eventually circumstance contrived to drive me into action. The relentless cycle of pressure, stress and friction at work then drinking for companionship in the quest for oblivion had to be broken. I surfaced this adventure and requested a break, six months hence and the game was afoot.

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Me, me, me.

I'm no picture

There isn’t much to go on so far but perhaps you can tell that I’m not a confident go-getter and that I’m sensitive to my own short-comings.

I make a living by dreaming up solutions to problems that are too dull, or too abstract, or too technically specialised for other people to engage in. I do engage and, as the dearth of updates to this blog will testify, I do so to the exclusion of any real balance.

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Get a grip.

Way back in the day, when I first had the bike, I replaced the standard handlebar grips with aftermarket foam ones. My thinking was that they would reduce vibration to my hands, looked fairly hard core and even, and I’m pushing it here, were a little lighter.

They were glued on. At that time I may have assumed that my life would progress in such a magical meteoric rise that the perished and crumbling consequences of my past actions would not trouble me. Time proved me wrong.

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Start me up

She was always a reluctant starter, sometimes a kick to the solenoid would suffice and sometimes a sweating, panting run down the road followed by a leap of faith onto the saddle would rouse her into life. So it was when I finally gave in to the guilt and hooked up a car battery to turn her over and persuade a little lube around those dry and neglected canals. No joy, so I stripped and rebuilt the starter all to no avail and eventually bought an updated, uprated, replacement.

Old iron

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