An Interesting Week.

 

An Interesting Week.

 

I had an email on the Thursday wanting volunteers to man the MAG stand at the Ace Cafe on the Sunday. This was to be a Seventies bike day theme. I agreed and duly turned up on the Sunday morning. It was baking hot at 10:30 in the morning. In the heat, and just off the North Circular I can understand why not many bikes of that era turned up. They do not stand heat and traffic well but lots of newer bikes were there to make up the numbers. I had a long chat with Mark Willsmore about military tactics over the last two centuries and the stupid waste of men in the First World War. It was too warm to do much and there was little activity at the stand. Selling more goods than memberships I went home around two when reinforcements arrived. It was a hot ride on the Buell that afternoon.

Monday was 2CV Club night and I went off to Bagshott for the meeting at Richard’s home sitting outside enjoying the evening talking about everything other than cars. When I got home and tried to park the El Cid it stalled and would not tick over so I pushed to its parking position.

Tuesday  I was up early to look at the carburettor on the El Cid and managed to drop the mixture adjusting screw collar into the engine bay. That would have to be retrieved when I take the sump protector off. I cleaned the pilot jet and started her up. Tickover ok I was now set to pick up George in Greenford. George is an old biker friend and I had  promised to take him to Whitewebbs Transport Museum. I picked him up from his home and headed off around the M25 to Enfield where the museum is located. The stalling at tickover had returned but it would easily restart and continued to plague me all day. At Whitewebbs Chris was manning the motorcycle display. He has done a grand job at reorganising it and he says there is still quite allot still to do and something I need to get back to doing. George and I had a grand day visiting all the nooks and crannies of the museum. I got home around five even with no tickover. That would be tomorrow’s job.

Wednesday was another early start and the job kept me going all day with the following list filling the day.

Remove sump protector plate and retrieve mixture adjusting screw collar and wipe out any residual oil collected there.

Remove top of carburettor for access to  float which I reset to the correct working height.

Removed the main jet and cleaned

Removed by-pass jet and cleaned

Removed pilot jet the offender with an insect leg jammed into the orifice. I could not believe it. How did that get there? How does an insect get into the fuel? I’m pretty sure it would not have got into my petrol tank voluntarily.

In the process of sorting things out I checked the spark plugs, ignition timing, and valve clearances to make sure everything was in order. By the time I had put everything back together the day was gone, the engine was running sweetly again and all that was needed now was a test drive.

Thursday and the test drive was to Asda in the morning. On return I nipped up the rocker box nuts to ensure the seal and gave the mixture screw a tweak for a bit smoother tickover and pickup. After the efforts of yesterday  I took the afternoon off and spent it with the grandchildren at Ruislip Lido watching them play in the fountains.

Friday  I was off early on the Buell to Walton and the camping shop while working on the El Cid I noticed  that the bungeys that secure the hood where a bit tired and not doing much. Time to replace them. CIT Camping has the materials to do the job even complete cord ready to use. I just bought the replacement cord and made them up myself. Back home I started the replacement program. I wanted to use the original securing wires but that was quite brittle and broke while bending them to remove the old cord. I used 2mm copper wire to bind the loose ends together so they would not pull through the knob. The copper wire is earth wire  from 6kw cooker cable. Tough but pliable. It took a few hours to make the ten require with custom lengths for each mounting point. I had time later in the day to write  the Soap Box missive that this is really the finishing off about things that have kept me busy this last week.

 

 

Soap Box

This rendition is a bit of a record about the things I have been doing and the appearance of Electric Scooters. E- Scooters to use a name that everyone knows have been around for some time banned by the government when a child was killed at a pedestrian crossing. It was the child who was using the scooter. Move on a few years and our, somewhat inconsistent government are on the case again sponsoring a trial of E-scooters in every city through the country. In this case only people who have driving licences can hire and ride them. Many people have fallen foul of the law by using their own E-scooters. Being caught gets you a £1300 fine and 6 points on your driving licence. This penalty is for driving without insurance. There is no vehicle category at present for electric scooters and no insurance company who will insure your scooter. I have seen a few You Tube posting from Electroheads who support any use of electric vehicles. Commendable but supporting people who use E-scooters that are still banned and whinge about being fined for using them out side of the hiring system is a bit naive. The idea of E-scooter racing at speeds of 60mph looks like a Darwinian experiment.

It is a powered two wheeler but calling it a bicycle, a vehicle with two wheels, with an engine or to put in its correct term a motorcycle. A Scooter is still a motorcycle. The powers that be have a downer on motorcycle and motor cyclists and do not want to promote that form of travel, but what is an E-scooter?  The public are so far ahead of legislation. So many people have got e-scooters and they are using them anywhere and everywhere. Where I live there is one that flies up and down the road. On the road off the road on the pavement off the pavement I wonder where next he might appear.  If he happens to be going by when I am driving out there will be an accident. I will not be able to stop before I see him or he reacts to me. Even pedestrians surprise at times but fortunately they are not travelling at 15 mph so we have both have time to react. If we ever have contact I know that he has no insurance and it will cost me dearly for his stupidity. I had a recent conversation with a friend at a party and his son was due to go to university in a few months and he was going to take his E-scooter with him. I am not sure what will happen now his dad has found out what he intended to do was illegal and if he got caught  how much it would cost him. Even he did not know that using an E-scooter was illegal in any public areas. So many will find out soon.

Trawling the internet  there are a number of  E-scooters price range £250 to £5250. At about £1000 is the Vsett 10 good for 70kph and the Velocifero MAD I liked as it has a seat and footboards  (but no picture) and at £5250 the Dualtron X2 that is supposed to do 110 kph

 

  Pictures lifted from respective websites.

It is a bit late to stop this trend of E-scooters, better to encompass it and move on. My view anything with an engine needs to be registered and insured. Simply for protection of the third party. Bicycles with motors that travel faster than walking pace need to be included too.  How about high performance mobility scooters for the safety of others? You should see the havoc they can cause in a supermarket. In that respect a driving licence would not be required but a minimum age, suggesting 14 years as in France for riding mopeds would be permitted. This leads on to a new vehicle registration category with appropriate restrictions. Someone needs to act quickly before the cycling lobby muddies the water with what they want and the government gets the wrong end of the stick with inappropriate legislation as they did in the seventies as with mopeds, single speed with pedals is what should have been but 50cc with pedals brought out some fantastic 70 mph mopeds with seven speed gearboxes and amazing performance. A sensible idea but poorly worded, a loophole that allowed some great bits of kit onto the market but plugged when a performance restriction was applied many years later. The E-scooter fans need to get their act together and start lobbying to get a sensible approach to this new form of travel. Sure beats pedalling.

DIY jobs

 

What to do when you can’t work on the car.

 

During the last month I have been quite busy doing bits and pieces generating things from ideas and items I have in the garage and my wood pile that has to be replenished from feeding a chimenea. This last Monday I spent a day at Hampton Court Flower Show. It was the preview event where you rub shoulders with celebrities. I was in gardening gear whereas Gita set the stage with wearing a green saree with matching highlights in her hair. Always the star and with such grace.

 Sadly what promised to be an entertaining day ended  when the rain set in and we could no longer bear the weather and headed for home early. We did our best to watch the live band doing their show and we huddled under a car rug to try to keep warm and dry but got too cold to stay around to the end. Other than this second adventure to explore the world beyond our local Tesco we had a trip to Lidl’s for a change. On that day they had Sail Shades for sale. I bought one along with a table vice. I had an idea to use something similar to shade our garden but was not able to work how it would be erected or secured without using an umbrella pole to get enough height to be usable. The answer was not to have one pole but two and the sail shade started the evolution of ideas and construction.

 The sail is an elongated hexagon with holes for the poles at the furthest points and guide ropes all round. There are pegs with the shade to secure it. When you have a hard surface pegs are not much good so you need to use something else. I used an eye rawlbolt in the wall of the house and an eye screw in the post at the end of the garden. The side mounting guide ropes were to special brackets with eye bolts in that fitted into slots in concrete fence posts on one side and using existing dexian brackets the other side. One more bit of construction was to make custom length bungey cords. To finish off 6mm snap hooks were used to aid quick fitting of guide ropes and a way of getting the right angle and tension on them. The last mod was to use extension tent pole to get a bit more height in the middle. I have set it up to be able to erect it with a few minutes on my own. It takes two people if you need to peg it down.

Another DIY was to make a drain cover to hide waste pipes and keep a small dog from going where it shouldn’t all achieved from discarded wood and recycled with a coat of fence paint to smarten it up.

 The last thing needed a visit to the local shoe repair shop for a few inches of stitching.  My ancient coin pouch had fallen apart from old age although I had bought a replacement some time ago it wasn’t quite the same as it did not have two slots for credit cards so a bit of stitching to add the two card side to the new pouch meant a three card wallet was made.

 Just what you need for travelling. All you need in your pocket, with cards coins and notes securely folded on together. The last thing was to make some latches for my water tank base front. It had been falling off at any gust of wind so I wanted to make something that was a bit more secure and came up with this idea.