Pretty Pink wheels

Well there's the first 2 coats on the back wheel. Didn't know about thinners so had to rub 1st coat down and start again. Will add much thinned out top coat and clear laquer to finish. I don't actually like the colour, reminds me of school blancmange, but it is the correct Breast Cancer colour and this is the Laura tribute bike. The Dayglo pink was great but lacquer stripped it + it had a matt surface so dirt was impossible to keep clean. At least this will be easy to clean and touch up chips.

New whitewall tyres for Streetfighter?

No just prepping for tyres on wheel repaint. Fingers crossed! 

Dead Streetfighter - the guilty party

When the Streetfighter mysteriously died upon attempted winter start up a while back I was pazzled. I checked all the fuses and all connections I could see where OK. I had long been suspicious of the ignition barrel switch with its worn action. I also noticed that the battery was not charging up fully. So I bought new switch and new beefier battery. Into the cellar with the stripped off machine and on with new parts. Still dead. Methodically followed all wiring from front to back checking connections. Came across a rubber topped little box leading to and from the positive connection on the battery. Removed rubber top and there below it was another fuse, 30 amp, which had blown. Did not have 30 amp so put in 20 amp for test, turned key and voila, all systems go. Expensive way to replace a 50P fuse though.

Simson AWO designer Ewaldd Daehn 100 years anniversary

Notice from last week's Suhl newspaper that Ewald Daehn would have been 100 this week. He actually passed away in 2012 aged 97.

First Vintage Rally entry accepted

Riding along on Siegfried

Saturday at last and first chance for a decent run on Siegfried. Started 1st kick and ticked over tick, tock, lovely. Great run pulling strongly but oil leak at cylinder base upon return.

Sunday. Wiped off oil. Same start procedure, Velo style as always, but reluctant to start. Still not got hang of choke / throttle settings but after a rest away he went. Decided on A Great Big Ride to Northampton to show off Siegfried to VMCC. As always, like kids and dogs, bikes know when to let you down. My triumphant entrance was accompanied by the silencer coming loose and clattering on the road. Mmmm. Anyway nothing zip ties can't fix. After 30 minutes of Oh - it's a copy BMW I had had enough. Started 1st kick then clutch cable suddenly found the free play I had been looking for all by itself and I kangarooed away in front of the crowd.

Also one of the early morning swings on the kick start had suddenly spun all the way thru on the ratchet so now have stiff leg to show for it,

But all in all a success, the oil leak did not come back and Siegfried ran great.

At long long last Siegfried not running rich

And here is the image that has cost a fortune and 2 years to get to. Siegfried running correctly, no more sooty plug. Instant fix thanks to Mikuni carb conversion but head rework by Stu Rogers was well worth it as it had a broken inlet spring, wrong guides and valves. Also 12v contactless ignition was incorrectly set so that too was worth it. How does he go? Just as you would expect a heavy 250cc single to, pulls like mad and thumps up anything. Starts 1st time and ticks over like a clock. Delighted

Mikuni carb conversion

Despite trying hotter spark plug, up to 6 from 8, Siegfried disappointingly ran rich and out of uphill puff last time out. I consulted at length with Zweiradhaus Suhl who told me that the original BVF carb was never much good in the first place and that fitting their Mikuni carb conversion would cure any problems in the carb dept. As the £ is currently so strong against the Euro I decided their would never be a better time to get one so ordered everything necessary to do the job in one hit. It came with a new extra long throttle cable. Fitting this revealed a brilliant piece of clever engineering that I have not seen before. The throttle cable emerges from the twistgrip through a hole in the bars. I just thought that this was just German obsession with tidiness. The reality is that the Simson engineers realised that throttle cables snap due to metal fatigue about 1 cm away from the nipple as the central cable is coiled and unwound over and over as on a conventional twistgrip. Much better to have a straight line pull with no coiling. Thus the inside of the twistgrip tube has a raised worm drive. This mates to the slider which holds the cable nipple and which slider has a diagonal groove to accept the worm drive. The slider sits in a channel. As the twistgrip is turned so the worm drive causes the slider to move outwards thus pulling the cable. The cable exits through the bars because it has to. What a great little piece of engineering.

Mikuni carb conversion

Here is the other view of the Mikuni carb