Halogen bulbs and petrol taps

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

My bike seems to come out in sympathy with Luigi's every time it has a fault!

Mark has replaced his petrol tap plunger and now mine's gone. He reckons you can just unscrew it in order to replace the cork, but mine was well and truly seized and in a fit of temper I managed to destroy it with a pair of pliers. And then jumped up and down on it. Needless to say it's now flat as a pancake.

It's a good job he is such a dutiful son who is there to fix all of my ham-fisted shortcomings - he has loaned me the use of his spare tap although it needs a new cork really. I've ordered some new corks from ebay - figured I ought to do something.

Mark fitted the 12V halogen sidelight bulb today that I procured for him. It's brighter than his 12V dipped bulb!

Chrome trims on, new petrol tap soaking

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

Mark (Luigi) has fitted his chrome trims to the tank - bit of a pig getting them bolted down. You'd think it'd just be a case of dropping them on and screwing them in but the holes didn't line up and there's still a gap at the bolts.

His petrol tap has been showing a drop of petrol and feels very loose to slide in and out so he popped in to see Brian at the local shop for a new cork. The cork was £7.20 but to be fair it did come with a free tap connected to it that he didn't ask for. Here it is soaking in some vegetable oil to make it easier to fit and allegedly to make it impervious to petrol trying to leak through.

Petrol tank stripped and relined

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

Mark has had his petrol tank stripped and relined by Tim Miller in Altrincham.

New head gasket

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It’s been sunny for weeks and today it decides to rain. At least we were able to work in Mark’s garage while we replaced the head gasket on his C15 to try to cure the oil leak.

It seems a little better now in that the top of the crankcase and the vertical part of the exhaust pipe are now dry, but there is still a leak from somewhere putting a light film of clean oil on the front of the gearchange rubber, the bottom half of the crankcase (below the gearchange lever) and the vertical downpipe of the frame on that side.

RTS engine quote

The bill for my engine rebuild will be £850-900 ish. That includes new alpha big end, main bearings, rebore, new piston and rings, valves and springs etc, plus cams and larger inlet valve.  I'd hoped it would be around £750:00 but I suppose the cam and inlet valve modification are worth the extra.  I see no point in doing so much work on the engine, knowing that the head needed sorting out, and not completing the job properly for the sake of £150:00. 

At least the bike will be up to spec apart from the front forks and indicators. We can then fit the indicators and put some oil in the forks and see if any oil leaks and, depending on how fast any leak might be, that will help me decide whether to just keep topping the forks up, or consider having the forks repaired!

Oil change

As usual, click any image to zoom in.

We changed the oil in Mark's C15 today.

We ran the bike until it was warmed up then drained the oil tank and cleaned both the oil filters before filling back up with 20w50 mineral oil.

To stop an oil leak we've tried replacing the metal washers on the sump plate with some fibre washers.