November 2022

 

November 2022.

 

An interesting month with finally getting to see my GP about ongoing health issues from having had Covid which have left me under the weather and not my usual energetic self. Even the cat was sick. Enough said. At the Observed Sunday it was raining so hard that I took the El Cid to the meeting. The driver’s wing mirror was a little out of place and I thought I would give it a little tweak to better position it and it came off in my hand. The internal bracket had broken. A job to do when I got home. It was a bit more complicated than that. I needed to get access behind the mirror glass. Fortunately the rubber was so old and hard it disintegrated under a little pressure. The broken bracket could now be removed and a replacement was found in my store of bits along with a new nut and bolt. I had to wait a few days for set of replacement rubbers from ECAS 2CV spares to complete the job. Looks nice again. 

The continuing saga of things for the van was sorting out the front brake callipers. Both had seized with lack of use. The dilemma was how to push them out when they are no longer connected to the system. A novel approach suggested by my brother Adrian was to make up a piston on a screw thread that could compress brake fluid and so force the calliper pistons to come out. To make the piston I enlisted the help of my engineering friend Bob. After a few days Bob had made the item and I set about the job of removing the pistons from the callipers. I have done one piston from one side of a calliper. It is not a quick job screwing down the piston and recharging from the bleed nipple as you undo the bolt. I may or may not be finished by Christmas.

I gave the Buell a run out one Sunday morning in sunshine and a warm start descended into bone chilling cold as I went up the M40 towards Oxford. Fog was never far away and it was not long before my outing was curtailed and I returned home. Another day ,after giving the Valiant a run out I seem to have got the ignition right for the carburetion to be right. How many weeks, on and off, have I been playing with it?  Any way it is now good enough to get parked at the back of the garage and get the LE out for the London Classic Off Road and Race Bike Show. Washed, polished and fired up it was prepped for the event. I only had to get the props out of storage to be ready. 

A bit of effort had to go into this one as Wey Valley had the toy run the same day and I could not rely on their support. The Le Club was similarly unavailable. I contacted Spen from Motorcycle Action Group to see if anyone from them would like to help out. Fortunately for me they were or it would have been me on my own. I had one taker from Wey Valley, Chris, to help out. I had five bikes for the display. They were standard bikes, but as you know you don’t need a specific off road bike to go off road and that was the theme.