Saturday, nice day, a drive with swmbo, bit of a tidy up, general relax, Sunday.... well....
Ever had one of these workshop days that start with a simple job and grow and grow….?
Yesterday morning I had a complete XBR500 sidecar outfit that hadn’t run for a while and wouldn’t start… (having managed by luck or judgement to sort the electrical fault that had stopped it running in the first place).
So I dumped the old fuel, put a gallon of fresh in it, charged up the battery, put a booster pack across it to ensure (hopefully) a good spark.
A bit of kicking and no joy, though I can smell petrol. (I start big singles by standing up on the kicker and driving it down with my bodyweight btw)
Full throttle and no choke then to dry out the plug a little, at which point my right foot slipped off the side of the kickstart and hit the floor with the sole of my foot pointed at the bike and my bodyweight driving it down…. Ouch…. In fact such a big ouch that I didn’t realise at first that my left shin had hit the footrest and slowed me down enough to avoid breaking my ankle! (fortunately wearing boots). Still smarted enough to take me to the point I was unable even to swear though, just had to hope around making ouch noises and breathing deeply for a minute or two :-/
After a bit of recuperation hobbled back out, bigger booster pack on (thanks John) and cranked over on the electric start, nothing.. find bad connection to the coil, repair, nothing.. ok, find a plug spanner that will reach all the way down into the horrible well on the XBR motor where the plug resides alongside all the water, salt and cr*p from the front wheel, Hmmm a bit tight… “crack”, ahhh, that will be the sound of the plug breaking below the hex and above the threads… gosh, bother and blast (and similar words).
This means the head needs to come off, which means the front top sidecar mount needs to come off (big job). Mounts off we start taking off the head mounts only for the top casting to crumble with age/vibration/corrosion/etc. Need a new rocker cover then… vigorous use of wall drive sockets, cold chisels, angle grinder(!) etc sees the head off without too much damage… of course three out of four exhaust studs shear off as soon as I attempt to remove them :-(
So now the bike still doesn’t go, I’ve got sore/knackered legs, a cylinder head ready to go to the local bike shop to get three studs and a bust plug drilled out, a growing shopping list of spare parts and a bike in loads of bits, does that count as progress?!? Sigh…
