Yesterday, Lucille & I left the DCW at about 6:30 AM and headed up the superslab to meet Lakeview at his place 45 minutes away. We then took off again for a classic bike show where the plan was to meet RobinC in a hotel parking lot 130 km (about 85 miles) away at about 8:45 AM. Should have been an
easy trip - as Lakeview was on his modern FJ09 and seems to have "no trouble" keeping up with Lucille and I
My old gal is quite happy belting along at....well, modesty prevents, but 5000+ RPM in fifth is just fine.
That was the plan anyway.
After a few minutes we stopped for fuel (Lucille is a bit of a lush at those speeds and I wanted to avoid walking because my knee is sore and it was a hot day already). After the fuel stop, we resumed our way and suddenly she started missing and f@rting - dammit - a sure sign that my coil HT lead repair of several days ago had pooped out. I putt-putted along the shoulder of the VERY busy freeway about 2 miles to the next exit while Lakeview patiently followed. We wound up in an OPP (Ont. Prov. Police) station parking lot. There was nobody there - many of these stations are unmanned day to day. I pulled off the tank bag and tail bag and extracted my OEM toolkit and found...no pliers - sh!t - and no pliers or cutters in the tail bag either. Damn and double-damn. All I had was the (greasy and pretty wonky) stock Yamaha underseat toolkit plus some extra cotter pins and a feeler gauge set that had fallen apart.
PERHAPS the little nut on the set had vibrated off because the big nut riding the motorcycle had failed to Loctite it in place.
Oooooo-kkkkkk - I pulled the fuel tank off and removed the two 10mm nuts holding the stock coil on and then undid the HT terminal nut. Sure enough, the lead was loose in there. To make a long story short, I had it running again in a few minutes - but the repair was poor because I couldn't trim the end of the HT lead (no cutters and I didn't even have my &@&##%^*# jack knife). This same GD sequence was repeated TWICE more on the way to meet RobinC in Ingersoll at the bike meet. The second time we got to a farm house with two Harley's and three nice folks at it - and the chap loaned me a pair of pliers and a set of sidecutters - so that repair
more or less held up for the remainder of the trip. I coasted for a while on the shoulder once more late in the day, when I was nearly back home, but she perked up and we made eventually made it. BTW - after the bike show we stopped at a Canadian Tire store in London and I bought a good set of piers, cutters and a couple of pocket knives.
We did get to meet RobinC at the show - about an hour late - and had a great visit (photos below). He has a beautiful '78 Standard (actually, he has TWO of them) and the three Yamahas looked great parked together. The bikes were remarkable: ranging from a tricked out H1 triple, a very pretty Suzuki GT380 Sebring and a couple of very hot RD350 ring-dings to some really nice British & Asian street and dirt bikes, to a wild looking TWIN-engined (holy cow!!) Norton (how in heck does he keep two of those things running at once??!!) drag bike - and the London CVMG folks put on a really good swap meet and show!
I found a couple of better pictures! LtoR you have Lakeview, RobinC and Maximum Pete (
the CoilMeister). Check out the 1951(?) Nash station wagon and matching bike hauler trailer.
A highlight for me was seeing a couple of Ariel Square-Four engines in pieces on a bench. This 1000cc British bike from the 40s-50s was an amazing machine. It had two of their 500cc crankshaft-piston assemblies geared together to form a 4-cylinder vertical cylinder power unit that was as smooth and quiet as a Gold Wing. If you do all the math, the primary and secondary forces and couples are all perfectly balanced by the two geared 180 degree cranks and parallel-axis 250cc cylinders. Back in the mid-70s, I knew an old chap in Kingston, ON who had a Square-Four that he rode every day - and he used to kickstart it
with his hand.
So, all-in-all, it was a good day:
- Lakeview & I had a good ride and we finally met RobinC;
- We saw a great classic bike show including some unique British technology;
- I got to test out my luggage on Lucille for my safari in September;
- I now have a more complete understanding of the limitations of the factory underseat toolkit;
- I had the opportunity to buy some more tools;
- Lakeview MAY have learned some colourful new words....
That's it from me for now. I'll close by saying thanks to RobinC and Lakeview for their patience with my old gal and I yesterday.
Cheers,
Pete