Well not much work in the garage since I last posted but Mrs A, the Atlas and I made it down to the Cote D’Azur for the LCF bash – full report can be found in the trips section.
In preparation of the trip I went back into the primary side of the engine to have a go at re-tensioning the gearbox return spring. This time to get more tension I hooked the spring over the gearbox selector arm.
This will put more stress on the spring but ought to have given it more oomph – as you can tell it didn’t and I rode round France still having to tap the top of the gear lever to get it to shift through gears. I’m not sure how I’m going to fix this problem. I can try and buy a genuine Atlas spring from OCT of course (not available in the UK). I also want to check that the spring I inserted is in properly because I suspect it is back to front which means the spring is bent across itself. Anyways more to follow on this – maybe next weekend when I have to change the oil.
While I had the case off I also put some epoxy over the back of the crack in the case. No big deal but it has stopped the oil leak – which I thought was down to the old primary case gasket.
The next adventure is the National Rally – paperwork came through during the week. I’m thinking of going for the Platinum award but either way plan to start at the northernmost checkpoint at Thirsk and end in Warminster. A kind of end to end approach. The route is almost planned so I have to turn my attention to getting the Atlas in order and I think through it’s MOT.
The front disc has been making me nervous since last year’s Scottish Rally when Keith Nairn commented on its poor condition. The disc is floating but rattles on its bobbins and now moves up and down not just side to side! I bit the bullet and bought a disc off ebay – these are really rare items and this is coming all the way from Florida off a Ducati 650. It has less than 10,000 miles so I’m hoping it will be as good as new.The wonders of the internet hey. I also returned to the rear brake pads because I could only rustle up used items to get me to France and I knew the heavy braking would see them off. Last week I noticed grinding noises in the back brake and sure enough the inside pad was down to the metal. I’d ordered up a couple of sets in anticipation and so new pads went in. I spent some time on the calipher pistons and wonder if I’ve got them working on both sides – hmmm leave it again until next week when I will take it all apart again just to check what the wear pattern is like.
The other thing I did was to retard the ignition slightly. There appears to be piston slap in the motor, though that’s distinct from pinking under load which it doesn’t seem to do. Anyways a simple enough thing to do but didn’t get a chance to check it so let’s see how Monday morning goes…
Finally started to get things moving again on the triple front. I spent Sunday morning cleaning up both the RGS and RGA frame so I can take them down to the welding shop on Wednesday. I downloaded the factory engineering diagram’s to strengthen the headstock so hope they can be sorted before painting. I’ve also gone back to squirting Duck Oil on the RGA front engine mounts to try and free up the retaining pin so these can be removed.
Nick 🙂
Bent screwdrivers, big hammers and old Laverdas 