Sunday 16 March 2008

We are planning to go to Red Marley Hill Climb on Easter Monday. It's one of my favourite events of the year, watching madmen (& women) race up an impossibly steep hill on classic bikes. So that I can lend my Morini to friend Fred, if his bike is not sorted by then, we decided to try and have the baby Tribsa sorted before then. BH started it last week and it kept running on one cylinder. With that in mind, we went round to Myles' house to borrow his 3Ta manual and arrived in time to assist with the fitting of a subframe to the B40, for the purpose of towing the trailer he has built. After a couple of attempts it fitted nicely and looked very in keeping with the rest of the bike, having been painted in military green paint. I offered to chuck some dirt at it so it would blend in even better but I think my suggestion was frowned upon. BH has just telephoned Myles and he is out test riding the bike and trailer.

Back home, we tried to fit the new points and condensor that I bought a couple of months back but the points appeared to have been damaged in the post so they were rejected and we just replaced the condensor and carefully sanded and re-gapped the points. Attempts to start the bike were not successful and two new spark plugs later we were no nearer success and there was no spark. We changed back to the old condensor and tried again. Now there was a somewhat "weedy" spark. So we tried the "lucky" spark plug, which is not the correct one for the bike and, hooray, the bike started and ran happily (and loudly) on both cylinders. Next step is to buy some more plugs so I have spares and hopefully we'll find that we were just unlucky and the two new ones we tried today were just duff ones. Then, BH will be taking the Tribsa to Fred's to have the timing checked.

Longer term plan is to have electronic ignition, which the sale proceeds of my Bantam will help with. Slowly, it is all coming together!