My Ramblings

Okay, today I'm writing about my experience with ordering a Sealey motorbike lift. On the 29 April, after seeing Sealey products recommended on a youtube channel, I went to my local shop and ordered a motorbike lift. The lift I ordered was on promotion and came with a free tool kit  (Motorcycle Lift 365kg Capacity Hydraulic with Portable Tool Chest 2 Drawer with 90pc Tool Kit) . The shop phoned sealey to make sure that the lift and toolkit were in stock and sealey told them that delivery would be in about a week. Just under a week later, the motorbike lift did arrive. However when I went to pick up the lift from the shop, they told me that Sealey had changed the expected date for the toolkit and that it would be a couple more weeks. Two weeks later, I rang the shop to see if the toolkit had  arrived, and they said that they had phoned Sealey and Sealey had moved the date for the toolkit. it was now expected on 23rd June. Well, you can guess what happened next. I ...

All of my writing up to this point has been done sitting in a Costa coffee on my Android tablet. of course the coffee there isn't free, so this was beginning to cost me a bit too much, especially if I want to write a little every day (as most people advise), so I had a look round my garage and found a small area that was just being used as a dumping ground. I thought "hmmm, it might just be big enough", so I cleared it out and measured it. it's small, but it's no smaller than a table at Costa, so should be big enough. Next step, after sweeping the floor (its amazing the dirt that can accumulate if you don't move things around a lot). Anyway, where was I, oh yes next step was to make/get a desk that would fit the area. I have some scraps of wood laying around, and there were two ends of an old shelving unit. perfect for the ends of the desk, so I cut them down to size (with a handsaw as it was too early in the morning to be making too much noise). I then ha...

So, I finally got down to Weston Super Mare Bike Night. (https://www.westonbikenight.co.uk/) It was a good night and there were way more bikes there than I had expected with everything from old BSA's (yes more than one) to huge trikes. The plan started out as a group meeting up at a petrol station to ride down.. that plan changed as it was easier for us all to just ride down as a group from work (we all work at the same company), so we agreed a time to meet in the car park and would ride down and get chips while we were there. the appointed time came and went down to the bikes. there was one other guy there, but we were missing two others. We had got to he bikes a bit early, so we sat on our bikes and chatted whilst waiting. one of the other guys appeared and joined us waiting. when the last of our group arrived, he had news. plans had changed a bit as his daughter wanted to ride down with us on the back of his bike. okay that's easy enough, except that he had put hi...

now the fun of putting the tank back onto the bike. As the fuel system is under pressure when the bike is running, the connectors aren't simple push fit, but special clamps that you have to press both sides of and then push over the metal connector on the fuel injector line. sounds easy, and it is, until your trying to press in these connectors while they are underneath the tank and you have about 8 mm of space for your hand to fit. then it becomes a little bit more difficult. of course your hand is also at the wrong angle when you do manage to get in under the tank, so you can only press one side of the connector easily. I can just imagine the designers having a good laugh at the DIY mechanic trying to remove and refit the tank. eventually it feels like it's connected, so I attach a battery, turn on the ignition and hear the small whirr of the fuel pump starting up.  good news, so I press the starter an the engine turns over. But it's still not firing. oh wait, its got a...

So I go looking for other fuel pump suppliers to see if I can get one cheaper. nope, they really do want to charge £500 for a simple fuel pump. well, as the bike is currently scrap (the engine could still be a non-runner) there is no way I'm going to spend that sort of money to see if it will run. searching on eBay, I find quite a few pumps for around £80-£100. that's better, but still a lot of money to spend on a piles of bits that I don't know works. a bit later and I find a pump for much less, only £20. that will be okay, so I buy it. just got to wait for it to arrive now. while waiting I realise that I need to remove the old pump from the tank, and before I do that I will need to empty the tank, so I siphon the fuel out and loosen the bolts on the pump (with a lot of help from good ole WD-40). now just waiting for the new pump. surprisingly, the fuel pump arrived almost a week before it was due. ohhh, exciting times. by now I've loosened all of the old fuel pu...

While the CB750 was off the road waiting for the circlip for the gear lever, I decided to check over the spark plugs. This involves removing the tank, so with the tank on the workbench I took out each plug and checked the thread for corrosion. As I the plug in cylinder 2 had almost seized I decided to put a bit of copper ease on each thread when I put them back in. I know there are opposing views on using copper ease (copper slip) on spark plug threads, but as I wanted to make sure I could get the plugs out again at a later date, I've put a bit on. Now that the tank was on the bench, I started thinking about my rough running problem. after about 10 minutes, I get some 'lumpy' running with constant throttle, and I have already changed the HT leads and plugs to see if that fixed it. it didn't. so I thought I would drain and clean the tank. with the tank on the bench I put a lower portable bench next to it. put a petrol can on the lower bench and put a...

Just thought I would post a quick picture of the little devil that caused me so much trouble I'll try to get a clearer picture soon , Clearer Image is here. You can see the little circlip that holds the lever onto it's pivot. and there you can see the whole gear linkage.

As my other bike was going in for service I decided to ask them their opinion on the fuel pump getting gummed up with fuel. they said that it's not common, and that the alarm is normally attached to multiple systems common ones being the fuel pump and the tip over sensor (as well as the kill switch) okay, so the next step is to put power to the fuel pump and see if it works. tank off again, up on the bench and create wires to go straight from a battery to the fuel pump connector. once the wires were ready, I attached the ground lead to the fuel pump connector and (making sure I didn't short the battery) touched the live battery wire to the other connector. viola power direct to the pump, but absolutely no sign of life, no humm, no vibration, nothing. okay, are the wires connecting properly? multi-meter from battery terminal to ground wire connection on tank. yep that connection is fine, no resistance. so switch the multi-meter to volts, ground multi-meter probe to same...

So, I've been riding the CB750 this week, just to iron out any issues and get a bit more confidence that it isn't going to explode whilst I'l riding down the road. It's been doing fine. It's an old bike, and it doesn't go fast, anything over 70 and your pushing it, but it's a great bike to pootle around on. well, its great as long as you can overlook the odd engine playing up for half a minute or so once every ride. it's quite reliable in that once every ride to and from work, the engine will decide that it wants to test my resolve and starts acting as if I'm throttling off/on like a metronome. anyway's on the way home today, it decided to keep me on my toes again. the engine had played up for a short bit early on, and I was just coming off the M4, down the slip road to a roundabout. the lights were red, so I was slowing down and went to change gear. funny, I thought, i don't usually miss the gear lever, so I tried again, nope still ...