I like riding motorbikes. That much should be obvious from reading these pages. I also like tinkering with them, and for a while now, the balance has been falling towards the tinkering, rather than the riding. I’m not entirely sure why this happened, but I think it’s a time thing. Firstly, now that the girls are both grown up I have a lot more time on my hands, and it’s easy to just potter out to the garage to take a bolt out, clean it, and put it back again. And also time in a slightly more abstract sense, in that I’ve now got to that stage in life when I can look back at different eras. The teenage years, the racing years, the fatherhood years etc. And I’d kind of settled into The Garage Years recently. In other words, I was in a rut. Got a spare half hour? Disappear to the garage… Don’t have a spare half hour but want to avoid talking to someone? Disappear to the garage… Don’t want to go shopping and face some human interaction? Disappear to the garage… Yeah, things weren’t going well.
And then, things happened as detailed previously, and I knew that I had to get out of this rut, and the Morini was the starting point. And I’m happy to say that things seem to be working very well so far. I’m getting out and about just riding the bike for the sake of it. Stopping here and there and just chatting with people, again, just for the sake of it. And while I do disappear to the garage on occasion still, it’s more when I actually have something to do, rather than just to avoid human contact. There are still times when things all get a bit much and I just potter in the garage – but I now realise when I’m doing this, rather than just accepting it as normal behaviour.
And while it’s tempting to get all self-indulgent and make this about me, I do genuinely realise that anyone reading this is far more interested in what’s going on in the garage than in my head. So, firstly, please forgive the very introspective start to this post, and let’s go back to that list of things that need(ed) doing:
*Fuel tank: Leaks. Repair.
*Battery: Replace.
*Cam belt: Replace.
*Oil filter: Clean.
*Oil: Replace.
*Air filter(s): Inspect, clean, maybe replace.
*Carbs: Inspect, clean.
*Spark plugs: Replace.
*Plug caps: Replace.
*Plug leads: Replace.
*Test run.
*Valve clearances: Inspect, adjust.
*Assorted crinkly hoses: Replace.
Oil level sender: Replace wiring.
*Oil pressure: Check
*Rear brake: Bleed.
*MOT
Choke cable: Repair/replace
Brakes: Strip, clean, rebuild.
Suspension: Strip, clean, rebuild.
*Bodywork: Repair where essential.
*Tyres: Replace.
Seat: Recover?
Exhaust: Clean, de-rust, repaint.
*Clocks: Repair mountings
*Forks: Replace oil
*Sidestand: Stop it clattering so much!
*r/h front indicator: Replace connector so you can take r/h fairing off without having to take l/h off first.
*Oil temp sender: Replace.
*Brake pads: Inspect, replace
Everything with an asterisk has been done, so I’ve obviously been spending more time in the garage than I thought. Things of interest that have happened since the last instalment. Firstly, the tyres. I ripped off the 20-yr old tyres and threw them away, and replaced them with a ContiScoot on the front and a ContiTwist SM on the rear. And while grip is instantly 100 times better, I’m not completely convinced by the profile of the rear tyre. It’s a bit pointy, and a bit of a mismatch with the front. So that may well end up being replaced sooner rather than later, but for the price (about £50 or so, delivered) I’m not overly upset by this. I’ll give it a few more miles to see if it loses that ‘lurching off the edge of the world’ feeling every time I hit a roundabout at more than about half enthusiasm.
The fork oil was drained and replaced with Motul 5w oil, and it’s made things so much smoother at the front end. I should have known when I drained the forks, and got completely different amounts of some foul smelling cloudy jizz from each fork that things were about to get much better. That was an easy fix, and well worth the tenner or so it cost me. Cheap gratification.
Finally, on the safety front, I replaced the front brake pads and cleaned up the caliper. Again, this was insanely cheap as the pads (AP Racing pads, so not cheap rubbish) were £6.95. OK, so the pads are probably complete overkill for something that’s never going to see three figure speeds, but I’m not complaining at that price. I probably should have bought two pairs, but honestly, I can never see this thing wearing out the pads.
So far so good then. I now had better tyres, brakes and suspension to make the thing safer to ride. The only other thing that needed doing was something about the charging system. I put a meter on the battery, and it was immediately apparent that there was nothing happening on the charging circuit. The battery made about 13.2V or so when not running, and about 13.1 or so when it was. This was not a good omen on an Italian bike, but I was reassured by the Morini Owners Club that the Dart, having a Japanese charging system, was immune to these problems. I can only assume that up until I joined, there was some rule about having never owned a Suzuki being a prerequisite to membership. Anyway, a bit of gentle wiggling of wires soon showed that if I wiggled in the right place, there was a spike to 14.3V or so on the battery, so my diagnosis quickly turned to a dodgy earth rather than anything properly Italian happening with the electrics. And this was soon proven, when a particularly enthusiastic bit of wiggling ensured that next time I pressed the starter button the passing flasher circuit came on rather than the engine. It didn’t take long to find the offending earth point after that, and a quick bit of cleaning and rearranging of wires soon had the battery charging nicely. And just to keep an eye on things I fitted a lovely little Gammatronix unit to the dash to show me when things inevitably go pera-shaped again:
Otherwise, the only other bit of non-essential maintenance was to replace the oil temperature sensor. This was so dull that I won’t say anything about it other than it now works.
So there we are. I’m actively avoiding unnecessary maintenance right now (errr, the fifth-gear whine falls under the category of necessary maintenance but I’m just ignoring that) to concentrate on enjoying the long hot evenings pottering around the Fenland countryside rather than the garage. And it’s fair to say that this hasn’t always been an easy course of action, but I’m finding myself to be much happier because of it. Friends and family, too, have shown their happiness at the fact that I’m not crapping on about M6 threads and torque wrenches so much any more.
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