My Ramblings

Whilst waiting for the new brake hoses I thought that I would try to see what was wrong with the front brake light switch, so I took the switch off the bike, put a multi-meter to it (set to measure resistance) and viola, no change when I press the switch, so it's dead. New switch ordered from eBay. I then decided to take the rear wheel off and have a look at the swing-arm. And boy did it need looking at (and some work too, but I'll get to that in a bit). Once I had access to the swing-arm it looked really bad. it was basically all brown (and no the bikes colour is supposed to be black not brown). I got out some 80 grit wet and dry and started cleaning the rust off, and to my relief, it was only on the surface, so I got into every nook I could without taking the swing-arm off the bike, and cleaned it up. Of course there are places I couldn't get to so I will have to re-visit the swing-arm at a later date and finish it off. Once the rust was gone, I cleaned it up and ...

So, I've got the fork legs back with the new stanchions, seals and oil. putting hem back onto the bike went easier than expected. I pushed one then the other through the yokes and lightly gripped them with the yoke bolts (making sure I could still move the forks up/down and twist so that I could adjust them as necessary). Then I attached the mudguard. my reasoning was that it would make sure that both fork legs were the same height and rotated correctly (plus it had to be put on before the wheel anyway). I then checked the top of the fork legs to make sure that they were the same height as before I took them off. I then put the wheel on which went on easily enough, but I can't torque it up as I don't have the right allen bits (more tools to order, oh dear!). Once the wheel was on (which also reassured me that the forks were aligned correctly), I tightened all of the yoke bolts to the correct torque and dropped the bike off of the lift. It's looking like...

So NaNoWriMo has finished, and I now have 50,000 words of a new novel. It seems to be about halfway through the story, so I still have a lot to write, but I am slowing down the writing so I can get back to other things now.