Before I get onto the situation with the Matchless, I’ll start with Fallout 3 (mentioned in my previous post) and my Xbox’s new blog!

First of all, Fallout 3… I’ve finished it! :-)

In the end, it took just over 75 hours from start to finish and I’m glad to say I kept “good karma” throughout the game and instead of making my companion enter the highly radiated room in the last moments in order to activate the purifier, I went in myself, thereby paying the ultimate price for the greater good.

This is, of course, still a game, so no price was paid at all. I even borrowed the game from a friend, so literally no price has been paid at all!

I also stick with my previous statement that this is a game I strongly suggest you get hold of if you have the equipment necessary to play it!

So… onto the Xbox’s blog!

There is a site called 360voice.com which acts as a way for your Xbox 360 games console to write it’s own blog posts every day about your gaming habits, achievements gained and other aspects of gameplay.

In actual fact, the games console itself has nothing to do with writing the blog posts (as you may have worked out already!). 360voice.com simply looks at your stats each night and generates a blog post based on that information, which looks suspiciously like it was written by the Xbox itself. It’s kinda funny, and a novelty to have, so here’s a link if you want to have a read: http://360voice.gamerdna.com/tag/fishsponge

Right… now it’s time to talk about the Matchless…

After yesterday’s post, you will know that the piston rings were worn out on the motorbike and needed to be replaced, so this morning I took all the parts to Bill’s house where, after cleaning the valves, re-grinding the valve seats, putting the cylinder head back together, finding and manufacturing an alternative solution to the broken sleeve nut, removing the old piston rings and cleaning out the grooves we went to put in the new piston rings!

Upon putting in both parts of the oil control ring, we discovered it wasn’t rotating as freely as we’d like, so Bill took the ring off and we went to examine the groove a little closer.

It was at this point Bill informed me that the piston appeared to be cracked.

Upon hearing this news, I realised that this was something of a disaster. It’s good that we found it because a cracked piston could disintegrate in the cylinder, destroying large chunks of the engine in the process, but it’s bad that it was cracked because original pistons for a 1966 Matchless G3 350cc short stroke are phenominally hard to find.

I coincidentally inquired at the Spares Scheme while I was there the other day to see if they had any, and the answer was, not surprisingly, “no”!

So anyway, Bill phoned a friend of his to see if he could give any leads as to where to obtain one, and believe it or not, he had a brand new one, in a box, never used, with all the rings, the gudgeon pin a the various other bits you need to install a new piston!

This was unbelievable!

So… this kind chap is going to post the piston to me, I’ll post a cheque to him and hopefully, with a bit of luck, I’ll be up and running soon! :-)

The one thing to note, however, is that with a brand new piston etc… it has to be run in, which involves riding 500 miles no faster than 35mph. Given that the first motorbike run of the season is at the end of March, that gives me around 4 weeks to achieve 500 miles at 35mph or slower if i’m going to make that first run!

Providing the weather holds out, the evenings aren’t too dark, and the bike goes back together as well as I hope it does, that is just achievable in my opinion. A relatively tall order, but just about achievable.

I’ll keep you updated!


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