W/E 18th March 2018

Where did the time go? Been counting down to the V6 rally in Montpellier and now it’s upon me! I’ve had ages to sort out the Atlas and now I’m going to be running about like an idiot bodging it together and probably suffering the usual chaos that make my trips ‘memorable’.

I thought I’d have everything fixed over this weekend but I got sucked in to reading ‘Porcelain’ by Moby then watched movies with my daughter and then it started to snow…This morning when I woke up we’re back to winter wonderland…and the bike was in pieces up in the garage!

I began work to get the Atlas ready by freeing up the choke with WD40 and working it in to the mechanism. This though is a sideshow compared to what needs fixing.

Standard 10mm roller with its oversize cousin beneath

Last time I rode the Atlas the damned sprag clutch failed. The bike was lodged over at my mother’s to give me room for Catherine’s Ducati which needed checking over. I’d pondered the sprag clutch which has the fancy ‘Zimmerman’ sprag and remembered him saying he’d supply it with 10.3x10mm rollers if the ring gear was worn past 49.6mm. Even new ring gears are marginal so I set about finding a cheap way to create 10.3x10mm rollers – cheaper that is than the €70 I’d been quoted a while back.

The solution turned out to be 13/32″ silver steel bar which I got cut down in to 10mm lengths – a 13/32″x10mm roller reminds me of the difference between a traditional English golf ball and the latter day US ball of today – who knows one day all Atlas rollers might have these dimensions! I got 12 rollers made up and still have nearly a metre of bar left. The rollers haven’t been hardened so I have to hope they won’t turn to cheese in the 2,000 kms needed to get down and back to Montpellier…

So the sprag is ‘fixed’ subject to testing. The rear shock however hasn’t progressed as Falcon Engineering decided the White Power Unit I dropped off couldn’t be fixed as the lower mount was weakened by being bent…pity they didn’t make this decision when I dropped the unit off. So Falcon agreed to fix an original Marzo shock but it’s Sunday so unless I get a call tomorrow we’re going to Montpellier on a Hagon unit which seems a bit secondhand but might be alright. At the end of the day the worst that will happen is we’ll end up pogoing around and maybe bottoming out on the larger bumps – not really a big deal.

I picked up a spare inner clutch cable via John Faulkner’s local motorcycle store. I’ve given up getting a replacement from a Laverda dealer as they come with the wrong nipple and ferrule. I’ll just feed a new inner down the old outer should I be unlucky enough that one of these fails.

So aside from booking a Channel crossing, hotels and sorting out the route I also have to attend to:

• Swapping the back wheel with Atlas #2 to get a rear tyre with sufficient thread.
• Putting on a fresh chain.
• Sorting out an electrical fault with the lights that blows a fuse.
• Checking the charging which I suspect has gone awol.

Hopefully Mrs A and I will be en route Tuesday evening. What could possibly go wrong…

Nick 🙂