New clutch cable fitted

As usual, click on any hand-drawn and crayon-coloured image to zoom in.

Well, that was a piggin' nightmare. What should have been a half hour job took hours. Luigi's clutch lever was heavier than an East German shot-putter on steroids so it was time to fit a new clutch cable - the old one had a nick in the sleeving where it ran under the engine and it had gone a bit rusty.

The footpeg came off easily enough and so did the gear lever. The nut came off the kickstart cotter pin fine, but that's when it all went Mario-shaped (think of a pear). The cotter wasn't for moving. Even putting the nut back on and trying to "persuade" it to move with a lump hammer wasn't working.

Fortunately, Luigi is a bit of a dab-hand in the kitchen so he went for his crème brûlée gas axe and we used that to heat up the kickstart lever enough to eventually get the cotter out.

As you can see from the photos, the soft metals had formed a ridge that were binding the two together.

It was time for Luigi to get on his push bike and ride a few miles to BSA Lightning Spares. Needless to say, I was feeling worn out from watching him do all of the above and given that it was hotter than Orcish Hell here this morning, I sat down in his arbour with an ice cold glass of Bud from his fridge. No flies on me.

Luigi came back (sweating) and I was still in the arbour (snoring) with four red and white 500ml cans lying scattered round my feet. It was tricky talking my way out of that one but it wasn't the first time so with a confidence born of experience I played the old, "Hey, do you want my help or not?" card. I think he mumbled something about a fart in a spacesuit as he stomped away but I was too busy putting the cans in the recycling bin to be sure.

The new stainless steel cotter from Brian has a bigger washer and nut on it than the old one. Luigi had also picked up a couple of Allen keys so he could remove the outer case. He only had metric ones and thought I'd been joking about the ones I'd used back when we still had an Empire.

I did the hard work and passed Luigi a file so he could smooth out the kickstart shaft and then take a little off the new cotter pin.

Still - all's well that ends well. His clutch lever action is now lighter and smoother than I was when I met his Mum. And that's saying something.