A long time since anything was posted. A long time since I did any work on the Laverdas 😦 Still I was shocked out of my inactivity by the arrival of the ACU National Road Rally (NRR). With only the Turismo close to running order it was time to get it out of the back of the shed and get it ready.
As I’d last ridden the bike properly at last year’s NRR it ought to be ‘roadworthy’…and so it proved to be…kind of. Preparation was helped in that I had to at least clean it for a magazine article I was asked to write. It started okay and the main lights worked. The brake light didn’t and nor did the horn but I wasn’t about to fix these items. The only work I decided to do was sort out the messy electrical tape I’d covered the wiring in. You can see at the front of the engine I’d left a plate off and just taped the wires because the ignition was shorting onto the cover. I’d also wrapped the same tape round a large block connector in the main wiring. It was simple to sort this out – infact I didn’t see any use in the block connector so just removed it and taped up the end of the errant wire. Job done once I’d put in maybe a quarter of a litre of straight 30 oil and tightened the screws holding the clutch nipple in place.
All this massive preparatory work paid off and the rally went without issue until the final 20 miles when the tank started to vibrate on its mountings. I just pressed on as I was so close to finishing but this has been a perennial problem that I’d failed to address for many years.
The problem is that the tank was missing grommets where it fixed to the frame. I also think the hard metal locating lug is a problem as it will eventually whittle its way through tank grommets. So first off I installed some grommets. I then shrank some petrol pipe over the locating lug to add more insulation. So far it’s working well.
Next tweak was to look at the wiring behind the engine cover properly. There are three wires behind the engine cover so I trimmed them to the right length twisted them together added a new connector to the end and covered the handiwork in heat-shrink. It all looks very neat and gets round the issue of the wires shorting on the engine cover. However when I attempted to start the bike it was not having it…hmmm.
I hadn’t realised but I was close to breaking down on the NRR. The sprung steel blade that runs from the ignition wire to the points had become dislodged. It was connected but just hanging on. The brass bolt connecting it all had half its head missing but in the absence of a replacement that was ‘good enough’.
So the obvious thing to check while I was poking about was the points themselves…
Not the best so a happy hour spent with a wet-stone dressing these and also cleaning the rather mucky plug!
I’d carried a couple of spare plugs on the NRR but not needed to use them. I thought I’d whack a new one in by way of celebration but luckly compared them first – they are both new plugs for the Atlas! If they’d gone in the piston would’ve hit them with a mighty thump!!! So wire brush the plug, set the points gap and second kick she’s back running.
There’s still the back brake light and horn to sort out but aside from these ‘luxury’ items the tiddler is running rather sweetly. If only I’d made similar progress on the Jota…
Nick 🙂
Bent screwdrivers, big hammers and old Laverdas 