But VW and their failure to deliver the parts on time saved me and I didn’t collect my car until late on Friday afternoon which didn’t leave me enough time, as meetings in London on Monday had been fixed in my diary for a few weeks.
It is now a case of booking 5-6 days off in a run around a couple of weekends to give me 10 days which should be enough time to complete the bulk of the Scottish Coast in one hit, including a stopover at my sister Helen’s place to use her washing machine.
Looking at the map of the UK it appears I have completed a significant amount, however I haven’t touched Scotland yet which is meant to account for 60% of the UK Coastline, okay a lot of that will be the parts of The Western Isles, The Orkneys and The Shetlands that I don’t intend to visit. The reason for that is quite straightforward, they don’t have coastal roads tending to have roads that run down the spine with spurs off down to villages and hamlets. The only two on the Agenda at the moment are Arran and Skye and a begging letter has gone off to Caledonian McBrayne to see if they can help.
The Green line is what has been covered so far. The house is approximately where I live and start out from each leg, the Green Box with the Map Pin is where it all started from in February and the motorbike is where I have got to so far. For obvious reasons I still feel as if I am riding uphill.
Since the last section was completed the following has been replaced and work done on ‘My Baby’ this includes a couple of jobs that have been ‘fitted in’ whilst she was in bits. Within days I was on the phone to Nick Robinson to order some further parts from him. They Included: a new chain, it couldn’t be adjusted any further. A new rear sprocket, it didn’t looked too bad on the bike but when the wheel was off you could really see the wear. When you replace a chain the front sprocket must be changed, now that was really worn. A chain guide, on my bike there is a plastic guide that fits around the rear swinging arm, it is advisable to change it but most people don’t, mine was so worn it had to go; I imagine it had been the originally one fitted to the bike so would have been in place for 45,000+ and two chains.
Whilst this was going on and I had the bike on the lift I decided to change the oil and fix a couple of other issues, one being the flip screen on the top of the windscreen that forces the airflow over my head when riding, it had been flapping around for a while, as fatigue had led to a couple cracks in the mounting. I’ve now adapted it and permanently fixed it to the windscreen.
Given the mileage covered I also decided ‘she’ deserved an oil and filter change, which I duly carried out, unfortunately to get at the filter properly it meant removing the engine bashplate, which is a huge piece of aluminium, unfortunately the mounting bolts on the front are not what they should be, in fact they should be retained nuts welded on the inside, however given an ‘off’ a few years ago when greenlaning the plates that fit across the from had broken and I fabricated a replacement and welded it in place, what I didn’t do was weld the nuts back in place, which was an absolute pain when trying to fit it back in place, more of that later.
After removing all the excess parts such as the pannier carriers etc. I used my unsual but effective way of getting the bike on the level, (I don’t have a centre stand) so I rig a set of ratchet straps through the rafters of my garage, and once they are tightened up the bike then stays upright and then gives me chance to lift the rear with a Paddock Stand, then it is a case of usually pushing the hydraulic Bike lift under the bashplate but this had to come off on this occasion, so I had to rely on the paddock stand.
So when taking things apart, the bashplate had to come off to replace the oil filter, okay some will say that this is not necessary however although you can drain the sump without taking it off, the oil filter is tucked inside the bashplate, so I would only fill it with the residue so it was best to take it off and clean the inside anyway. On top of this to take the cover off the front sprocket I needed to loosen the left hand Crash Bars, to a point of almost taking them off completely before I could get the plastic cover off, to achieve this I also had to remove the left footpeg. Believe me it was far from a straightforward task.
So the with everything off it was time to get the rear wheel off to both take the rear sprocket off and take it in to Micheldever Tyres for my second rear tyre of the challenge. I also decided to carry out some remedial work to the wheel, by cleaning up and painting the spokes, before applying a coat of lacquer to the whole wheel which should make it easier to clean next time around.
Getting the chain off is a bit of a crude engineering, it had a cold rivet link, which means the first task is to use and angle grinder to take the head of the rivet off, then it was a case of using a hammer and drift to knock it through.
Finally when putting it all back together the chain guide that was on back order arrived and I was able to fit that. Before putting the new chain on I invested in a special chain tool for re-assembling and flaring the head of the rivet correctly, which proved to be a lot easier than taking the old one off.
One of the final pieces to go back on was the engine bashplate and this is when the swearing started trying to get the nuts on the bolts at the back of the mounting, all I will say is the gap I had to get the nuts in place was half the size of my hand, so trying to squeeze it into place was very painful and never really successful, so I devised a way of taping the nut to the jaws of a long spanner, and it worked very well for the first one but the second one dropped off, so I had to undo the other one again and loosen the rear two to partially drop it down to get my hand in to retrieve the one that had got away. I eventually got it back together. After an hour of sweating and swearing I got it back into place.
With the bike now back in one piece another bit of good news, the replacement baseplate for my tank bag finally arrived, so once again I have a complete bike, which has also had a number of the sponsors stickers renewed and ones for Norfolkline added.
And although I won’t be going out to complete another section this weekend I will certainly be taking it for a test ride.
In my time of owning this bike, I reckon she is now one of the most customised and enhanced Africa Twins, anywhere, the list is too long to list here but everyone that has seen her comments on some of the modifications, now it is time to stop writing and get riding.
Take care and as Mick says ‘You don’t stop riding when you get old, you stop to build a new bike, Again!
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