W/E 9th April 2017

Sunday night, just enough time to ride across the Downs to Hungerford and wave Catherine off back to Bristol and Dean on his rather nice GTL, who’d dropped in after the ILOC AGM, could head back to the New Forest.

The Atlas has received a lot of attention as part of the road hardening process throughout the week but sadly it remains a bit of a dog…Catherine commented on the backfiring and flames as she rode in my tracks 😦

First off the engine is noisey – top end noise and I suspect that maybe there is another loose valve seat as on Atlas #1. I’d thought I might be lucky and the noise was this 17 mm spanner that I’d somehow left in situ’ when fitting the exhaust system! I hope the spanner enjoyed it’s trip to London and back!!! Engine noise wasn’t the only problem however we also had a significant oil leak out of the primary side which proved just to be loose allen bolts in the case.

Laying Atlas #2 on a log saved me draining the oil and I hoped all would be well, albeit a little noisey.

Unfortunately on Tuesday we’d sprung a leak in the nearside oil cooler. Damn silly design that means if you throw the bike down the road you’re almost certainly going to damage an oil cooler – this was a legacy from the April 2016 ‘off’.

The solution has been to dig out a single oil cooler off a Mark 2 (Mark 1’s and 2’s only have a single oil cooler mounted under the headlamp) that I had in the shed. I thought that would be plain sailing but then discovered the headlamp brackets are slightly different. The solution while I wait OCT to send out a Mk 2 bracket is to mount the headlamp bracket above rather than below the instruments which raises it sufficiently to clear the oil cooler.

While all the leaks were being sorted and noises ignored I kind of forgot that on the Wednesday the engine started to misfire when warm and flatten its performance even when firing on two (just like when you have a loose valve seat). As I type this I’ve just put in fresher plugs and checked ignition wires without success. Next stop will be a carb’ inspection and if that doesn’t do the trick then is it ‘head off’ time?

You know it’s at times like this that a Honda looks quite appealing…

Nick 🙂