I returned home ,tired and sore from preparing a concrete job at a local Primary School and sought solace in a cold brown bottle, and was not disappointed , the temperature was around 90 degrees in Christian measurements [stole that from Mick Hemmings Norton notes ]"I waited patiently " until it was my turn ,at the computer and was surprised to note 303 hits on my blog . The mind jumps to the famous line from Breaker Morant " We found them and we shot them under rule 303 " and in the light of the circumstances decided to post again .What I needed to tell of on the blog was Sundays disaster ,somwhat akin to Morants , Hell bent on a ride despite Vic Roads tardy postage of my red plates , I geared up filled out the log book and rode to the highway and returned ,the Domi was running like a dog .I then stripped the carbi and cleaned the plugs ,that did the trick ,running much better now I shot out the drive and stalled the motor giving way to a local on my right at the bitumen . One kick and I'm off ,yes the motor fires clutch in ,up on the right toe and out with the clutch and off ? yes ! but, with a nasty crunch . As Jules says " long story short " the bike made it down to the rail crossing and back to the shed I pulled the box out and stripped it and found the smallest gear on the mainshaft normally has 13 teeth but mine only had 12 the broken tooth fell into the 29 tooth KS gear and fractured the gearbox case from one of the studs back about two inches.
Adding insult to injury I later noticed that the nice little red plastic lens had fallen out of my repro Lucas MT 110 tail light
.During the 39-45 war they needed to fly aircraft over the bombsite to assess the effectiveness of the damage, this was not neccessary in my case. The upshot of it all, is not as bad as appears, the case can be welded up easily or I can use a spare I have and I will borrow the MS pinion from ES2 [Peter]to pay Domi[Paul] ,but just sometimes when the frustrations and disappointments almost knock you down ,It's a good time to find a cold beer and share the story with kindred spirits on the Blog .
Steve, that was gut wrenching just reading about it!
ReplyDeleteIs metal fatigue responsible for that tooth breaking do you think?
Keep the faith mate!
Cheers Jules.
After having a good look at the break I can't see a difference in the texture or the colour of the fracture , this makes me think that all the damage was done in one event . There is a bit of a depression in the gravel where it meets the bitumen and I think the bike has come up out of the low and down on the hard stuff with too much power on . I have put the pics up but need to change it all around and get some labels .
ReplyDeleteI am bidding on a gear cluster on E bay now which will give me lots of spares I need a good four or five hours to fix this one ,I think this will be the fifth time I've had the box out , what I really need is to get new gears rather than more old stuff ,all the AMC box stuff is being remade but not the lay down gears .I will have a chat with Marcus Deutcher at the Ballarat Swap next month he may make small batches .
Some gruesome pics there!
ReplyDelete