The dirtying of the hands

I found this shot this afternoon – this was from bringing home the Bee in November last year. Since then 27000 km has become 46000. It’s disgraceful, but maintenance-wise I’ve achieved two oil changes and five-eights of bugger all else. Tyres and chain lube. A little preventative tarting this afternoon seemed like a bright idea.

There’s something about working on your machine which is equally satisfying and grounding, but also slightly terrifying. I suppose the thought of spending a couple of hours disassembling and reassembling to have a couple of bolts left in the tin, just as the weather sorts its shit out, leaves me in a kind of no-man’s-land, emotionally speaking. That’s right, I’m going to fuse the subjects of working on the bike and my feelings. Dangerous territory follows.

So I dropped the Bee in the driveway, and have disclosed that episode. The vintage-looking clutch lever was brought to my attention a number of times.

You know who you are.

I also noticed, though the creep into decrepitude was gradual, that the clutch pull was getting very heavy, even bordering on gritty. I ordered an OEM lever and clutch cable from the States. The clutch cable routing on the fizzer isn’t difficult, though I cut a couple of reusable cable ties, much to my disgust. With some minor faffing, the lever replacement and free-play calibration went without a hitch. The pull is now smooth and light, from a non-bespoke lever.

After the South Island trip, I was concerned about the amount of dust that may have been ingested over 5000 kms. Five and a half months later, I have investigated.

Not dire. A bit of a compressed air blasting and a re-install took just over an hour. I’ve never had the tank off any bike, let alone my wee fave, and aside from some colourful language and a comprehensively manly pasting of the black gunk under fingernails, I managed not to piss fuel everywhere or generally make a hash of it. Hash-making mitigation strategies included a backwards list which made sense when I wrote it and less when I needed it:

I don’t know what that says about me as a human, that I needed to write ‘Seat’ there, and have indeed ticked it. A sacrifice on the altar of the Patently Obvious, perhaps. My remedial engineering skills notwithstanding, light maintenance was an unmitigated success.

I am aware of a reluctance for the beast to fire into life on the first attempt or even idle happily after start. Next on the list will be spark plugs and if I’m feeling really brave or Baileys, a carburetor sync.

Also, I’ve just picked up Mike Hyde’s very cool book, Twisting Throttle NZ – it has me hanging out for a wee 2 or 3 day trip up north, as soon as this poxy sub-Antarctic foulness buggers off.

Cheersies!

JK