Bodywork, electrics and timing

With the grin still on my face from yesterday, I was up early outside with the bike. The first thing I did was to finish off the exhaust bracket. This wasn’t too bad as it was only a bit of smoothing and making it look presentable. The next task was to look at was the ignition timing. I made the connections on the Koso Rev counter I’d acquired some years ago and fitted the exhaust on its new bracket, which took much longer than it should have done.

Starting the bike was much less dramatic than the previous day. I took the pilot mantle and the only reason it didn’t start first time was due to me not giving it enough revs; I was too eager to look back at Dad to show I’d started it. After the second attempt, we got the strobe on it and saw it was slightly advanced. Those marks I had made yesterday came in really handy.

As the flywheel had to come off anyway, I decided to change the bolts and nuts to give the exhaust more clearance. This was more good practice with the engine as I adjusted all it myself using a timing disc. I was chuffed to get the bike back together in rather a fast turnaround.

 

Before the next start though, I wanted to connect the kill-switch and all electrics to make sure it was fit for the test day. Soldering is something I quite enjoy but unfortunately, today was not my day. The solder and wire just weren’t fit for each other. So I borrowed my Dad for a while to help. Even he struggled, which although wasn’t great, it made me more positive that I had been failing. Molten solder went everywhere!

Whilst he got on with these tasks, I started to finish fitting the bodywork. The first thing I had to do was adjust the steering stop as I had noticed some issues with it yesterday when trying to turn it around on our drive. The timing disc came in pretty handy to keep the steering limits within the BSSO regulations. After this fairly simple task was complete, the mudguard, horncast and grill went on very well if taking longer than I would have liked. By the end of the day, I had fitted the remaining bodywork and Dad had finished with the soldering.

Taking a few pictures to reward myself made me so proud of how far I had got. Only a few more bits to do but I am especially happy with the progress of things.

Race Scooter: All events occurred 11th March 2012