Saturday, January 14, 2017

Plates and Fire Extinguisher

Objective:
For IVA, and to avoid any complaints about the exposed vertices, Steve removed the extinguisher and it's holding bracket from the top of the tunnel cover. Spent some time putting that back in.

Another thing was more on the "proud" field. Maybe I worry too much about what others think, but I really wanted to show this: I may not be able to drive it on the road in Portugal, but in the UK I could. So I put the British plates on the car. The back one was a no-brainer since it had to go under the light. On the front, mounted it on the nose, attached to the grid, covering 5cm of the nose hole. Both front and back plates are held in place by cable ties. It is temporary (I hope).

Good I registered during the week on the Track Day. If buying just the afternoon sessions it was full. I bought a full day: 4 sessions of 20 minutes each. Seems it will be completely full pretty soon.

Monday, January 2, 2017

Undoing Carburetor Changes for IVA - Part II

Objective:

Went back to the car, taking advantage of the last vacation day. Tightened the "wrong screws" I undid the last time and applied some more force. But the carbs didn't even move. That was when I had an inspired moment... The guys on the videos have driven their bikes recently. My engine was standing for over 6 months. The rubber connections must be so dry that they stuck! Lovely WD40 sprayed on the rubber connections, wait a few minutes, apply a bit of force and...
With the carbs away, I could reach where I needed. Then it was a matter of unbolting the pipes with the vacuum taps and covering the holes with the proper bolts. For future memory, don't know why, the pipe in cylinder #2 had 2 washers while all others had just one. After this, turned the carburators upside down and, from a tighten position, undid the pilot screws (the ones right below the chambers) 2 and a half turns. These pilot screws, as they are named on the Haynes book, have other names on the "street": pilot / slow running / idle mixture screws. After this was done, it was just the tedious job of reassembling the carbs on the block and the choke.
Since I still had some time left, I fitted the caps on the break fluid reservoirs. For some odd reason, they couldn't be in during IVA. Probably I should have placed the caps as soon as the car was back. Although the garage isn't moist, the fluid may have been slightly compromised, but well...
Caps in and I had to try this all out. Battery in, started the car, it worked and after warming up was good on idle (until warm I had to play a bit with choke). If it is started and warm... And there I went around the parking floors like a kid in a merry-go-round for a couple of "laps"! It is ready for the 12th!