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CHAPTER FIVE - 24
This now was starting
to look better but I could not understand why I had to do this, but I
carried on anyway. I now refitted the exhaust pipe and silencer and
tried it again, yes it was fine, but now I still can’t get the
side-stand to work.
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It suddenly
occurred to me that the side-stand was not the original but a
made-up one that someone has welded onto the frame, and not in
the correct place. It should be part of the engine support and a
bit shorter; as you can see from the picture it’s clearly not
correct. It started to dawn on me that this frame was never a
solo frame but one intended for a sidecar, which never had a
side-stand. This explains why the silencers would not fit, but
still doesn’t get me out of a problem. I can’t cut off the
side-stand and re-weld it, that would screw up the paintwork so
another solution had to be found. |
To get it all to work
I needed the whole exhaust system to move nearer the frame so the
side-stand would retract, to do this several more brain cells had to be
employed, and put to work on the task whilst mowing the grass and other
non-thinking jobs. The only thing that I could think of was to adjust
the bracket holding the silencer. As you can see by the small drawing I
cut the normal bracket fitting as in Fig.1 and straightened it Fig.2,
this now allowed the silencer and exhaust system to get about an inch
(25mm) closer to the frame, thus allowing the side-stand to retract
properly. In doing this the exhaust balance pipe also had to be
shortened by the same amount. Problem solved, and it would take some
looking at it to see the difference.
Now
that the exhaust was completed the bike was ready to fire-up. All the
checks were done, fuel in the tank and oil where it should be and not
leaking out the bottom, I was ready.
Key in the slot, fuel
tap on, cold start levers up, I moved the engine until the compression
was right and then pushed the kick-start down. To my amazement it
started and ran quite well, but a bit lumpy, I let it tick over for a
while to let it warm up then adjusted the tappets, which were ticking
slightly. Now it was running I was able to get the timing right by
moving the assembly around with small taps on a hammer and a short bar.
When the timing sounded right and the throttle could be opened without
misfiring I tightened up the screws.
All seemed well until
I heard what sounded like small beeps, I listened to the engine and it
didn’t sound like it was coming from inside, I looked at the back and
the front of the bike but couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming
from. It wasn’t until I sat on a box to do some thinking, that the sound
became clearer; it was coming from the horn.
I turned off the
engine and had a look at the electrics, the first thing was to press the
horn button, nothing, not a beep. ‘That’s odd’ I thought it worked
before, why wouldn’t work now? I tried disconnecting the wires and
making a better earth but it still never worked. An hour passed and I
still could not get it to work and I was about to give up when I knocked
the kick-start lever and happened to press the horn button in
desperation and it worked! Not particularly well, just a small beep. You
can’t imagine what went through my mind at that point only to say that
the horn was ‘close to death’. It came to light that when the points
were closed the horn worked and when they were open it wouldn’t. |
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