King of the IT crowd

Put two off- roaders together and the first question from either is generally “What’ve you got on the go at the moment?” This is often followed by “You’re doing a WHAT!?” Occasionally, it is “Oh, one of those…” but more often it’s “You must be mad.” You c

Assembly progresses as a problem is solved and more information comes the editor’s way.

One of the things about a rebuild is it’s easy to forget stuff, obviously the faster a project is completed the better it is and the less chance for the ‘now, where does that bit go…?’ scenario to arise. In a perfect world everything would be available and we’d all have time to devote to our project and when we went to various service providers we would be first in line. Does anyone live in such a world? I know I don’t and while the suppliers and helpers involved in this project have been brilliant, they’re not at our beck and call and if there’s a hiccup at our end it delays things at the other.

One such hiccup was in the carburettor, which has a few clips and springs in various

places, very small springs of the sort of size that makes those ones in a ballpoint pen look like rear damper springs. This particular carb spring is in the float needle area and after reading the strip-down instructions, which warn of the spring and to take care when stripping the instrument, I worked carefully, but not carefully enough though, as it sprang out of the recess it was in, bounced twice on the bench and hit the workshop floor to be forever lost… yes I did try to find it, knowing full well there wasn’t a hope in yon place’s chance.

Why did the carb need stripping? Well, given the state of the rest of the bike, goodness knows what the internal drillings would be like so, apart it came and off to Chris Claydon at CC Clean Carbs, where his sonic bath would make sure everything was pristine inside. This process never fails to amaze me and watching the muck come out of a carburettor that was thought to be clean is an eye-opening sight. Just in case you’ve not seen the feature we ran on carb cleaning several issues back, what happens is the part that needs cleaning is placed in a tank of solution, the sonic device is switched on and sound waves create microscopic bubbles that agitate dirt, crud and the like from hard to reach places, such as carb passageways. Unlike blasting or squirting with an aerosol cleaner, the sonic process pulls stuff out of drillings, whereas blasting or squirting will tend to push stuff through.

But in order to do this the carb has to come apart and I guess we’ve all had that sinking feeling of watching a tiny component fall through a gap in the floor or down the back of the bench or wherever. Still, the spring, or rather the float needle valve assembly with the spring in it, is a stock item… usually. One thing I knew wasn’t going to happen when reassembly took place was any chance that bits could be lost. These tiny bits remained securely in their package until one evening I commandeered the utility at home, cleaned all the worktop off, laid out a sheet of off-white paper – actually a roll end from the Mortons Print department and about a metre wide at whatever length you want – tucked the edges up to make paper