@ Schtum...Now, THAT is a lovely piece of work, well-cared for and a great reflection of your attention to detail. Thanks for sharing. Luverly indeed!
Thanks but, I'm not entirely responsible. I take it you're talking about the bike, not our house or my old petrol pump, that's converted into a lamp...?
I bought the bike from Long John on here in 2018 and it was in very good cosmetic condition. I'd not been very well for quite a while and I hoped it would enable me to get back on a bike.
It did that but I hated it because it was dog slow. A Hilltop flash and then a run on a local dyno revealed it was only making 29 bhp at the rear wheel. That explained why it didn't want to go much over 70 mph.
I thought about it a lot. One day it occurred to me that what I thought was a quick action throttle might not be all it seemed and that if I twisted it really hard against the stop, there was a bit of give and the engine note deepened slightly. I don't suppose.... My son and I whipped off the dummy tank and lo and behold, there was a restrictor on the the throttle stop stamped with 25 kW which is equal to 33 bhp. The bike was originally registered in Northern Ireland and it was restricted to that power output to comply with the NI new rider legislation. It would appear that none of the previous owners had noticed this or been concerned about it.
A quick job with the Eclipse hacksaw saw much of the restriction removed and the bike certainly went much better. However, it still suffered from erratic running, relatively poor fuel economy and didn't like to hot start.
A diagnosis on Motorrad dealer level kit by Calum at Central Customs in Roslin revealed what he said was a very unusual fault code where prior GS-911 scans had not shown anything. There was an intermittent failure of the crankshaft position sensor. Calum replaced that and adjusted the valve clearances and the bike now runs very well, especially with its recently fitted Akrapovič clone header pipe, courtesy of John Nicholson.
Other than that, it's recently been fitted with the updated clutch cover and mechanism because the original one was showing the common fault of the pushrod wearing the side of the bore.
It's also been fitted with: a fully floating Brembo front brake disc which has made a big difference to the stopping performance; a set of Barkbuster handguards; my old Navigator IV and 4 button mount; a Leo Vince exhaust can; some R&G crash bobbins on both wheel spindles and a few other tweaks. I bought another seat for it last year with a view to having a custom upholstery job done on it.
More to the point is that the bike now runs like it should and probably better than it did when new. It's fun to ride on twisty, bumpy back roads with its soft, long travel suspension. It's a bit like a two wheeled 2 CV in that respect. A thrash over local roads with a friend on his Bonneville Scrambler revealed that he was having to work hard to keep up.
Unfortunately, I haven't ridden anything for about 18 months due to poor health, although I'm hoping to get back on a bike in the next few months. I have some friends of friends coming from California to stay for a few days in June. They're renting a bike and expecting me to show them round a bit.
In the meantime, the wee bike has only been ridden to the MOT testing station and back by my son. I've not ridden it since the crank sensor was replaced but he assures me it now whizzes up to a ton quite readily.
This pic of me down at the beach in St Andrews is one of the few occasions that I've been out on it.
