ok, petrol is spiralling out of reach, and yet i still fancyed a run out on sunday. so how to get out on the road without spending any cash? mmmm. to my rescue comes my mates dippy pregnant mrs. whilst attempting to show that she istn too ditzy to be allowed on the road with her hormones all over the place, she was so busy concentrating on not crashing his land rover that she accidentally filled his diesel land rover with petrol, 10 gallons of it! ah well, its an ill wind!! after getting the landy towed home and syphoning its tank. he had 10 gallons of fuel which probably contained 3 gallons of diesel. useless for him as his jap bike wont run on it. however, i saw it and thought of the bsa sidevalver in the garage. now on its filler cap it states that it will run on kerosene, and ive seen these old sidevalvers with the small suplementary fuel tank on them. the idea being that you start them on petrol, get them hot and then retard the ignition and swap the fuel over to kerosene. they clatter and smoke black a bit, but will run all day. so, i reconed that this foul smelling mix of derv and petrol must be ok to use. after all, in the 40's and 50's people ran these sidevalvers on so called 'pool' petrol with a pretty low octane rating, and they still ran. so whats to lose? i filled the bsa up with it, and set off. first impressions, a bit more sluggish than its usually sluggish normal asthmatic performance. but it ticked over and showed no sign of stopping. it would still hold 45-50mph, so all seems well. struggles a bit on hills, and wheni switch it off, it runs on for a few seconds. almost dieseling!! after 130 miles i recon its a winner. a bit more thirsty that usual, but thats probably cos its got the throttle pinned fully open all day, and its now returning only 50mpg (normally 70mpg) but hey, free fuel is free fuel. the diesel and petrol mix now gets me thinking, could i dilute petrol with cooking oil!!! however, fate has dealt me another bargain, looking into the tank of a goldwing im currently stripping to sell the bits on ebay,i see its got a full tank of fuel. checkinbg the docs tells me it was last run in 2005. so a full tank of 3 year old unleaded petrol!! bonus!!
all you lads with sidevalve plodding brit bikes will all be able to join in with tese experiments, however the rest of you will just have to continue paying full price!! im off round the back of the shed now to start syphoning any old fuel tanks i can find!!
