Richard Hobbs

Well… yesterday was the day of the first classic motorcycle run of the year for the Fenrunners section of the AJS & Matchless Owners Club and I, of course, attended!

The weather was pretty awful, the forecast was even worse and it wasn’t very warm either, but nevertheless a few dedicated club members turned up for the run at the Tesco store just north of Cambridge.

The run was basically from the Tesco store to Mildenhall, for a warm pub lunch and then home (obviously via some convoluted route that actually makes the run worth doing!), but sadly, I didn’t quite make it that far…

In total, including the journey from my house to Tesco, 46 miles were planned there, and probably another 46 miles or so home again, totalling 92 miles for the entire day. However, all in all, I rode a grand total of only 39 miles!

As you will know from reading the rest of my blog (assuming you actually do, of course!), my own bike is still being put through the 35mph run-in period having had a new piston and rings, so I’m currently attending club runs on a fellow club member’s (Peter’s) bike which he has very kindly lent me – a 1955 AJS… not sure of the model, but it’s also a 350cc heavyweight like my own bike, just 11 years older. Very good condition too, I might add!

Anyway, as you can see from the map below (click to enlarge), the plan was to meet up with a couple of local club members in Sainsbury’s car park in Huntingdon (at point A), to then ride to the starting point of the run (at point B), and then to ride the route shown to Mildenhall (at point D). However, frustratingly, I couldn’t go any further once I reached point C! So close, and yet so far…

Point C (the layby where I stopped) can be seen below:

As you can see, it’s in the middle of nowhere!

As we were riding along this long straight road (from bottom to top as you look at the above photo), there was a horrendous sidewind which was gusting a lot. It wasn’t gusting to the point where it was dangerous, and we were nowhere near being blown into the oncoming lane, but it was certainly significant. It was also raining. It was roughly at this point I started to look forward to the warm pub, the hot pub lunch and the opportunity to dry off slightly! Maybe that was my mistake…

With a sidewind, as any motorcyclist will know, it can feel a bit like you are riding on jelly, you are gently swept from side to side as the wind comes and goes and as soon as any gust disappears, you find you are still steering into it slightly, so suddenly move the into the gust and have to compensate again by steering in the other direction. It’s pretty much the same as in a car, but you feel it a lot more on a bike!

Anyway, with all this happening, and the rain coming down, albeit lightly, I noticed that even when the gusts stopped, it still felt a little like I was being blown around. It wasn’t until I noticed this happening a couple of times (in the space of 15 seconds or so) that I realised that if I really was being blown around, it was only happening at the back of the bike!

It was at this point I decided I ought to pull over and see what was going on – was the wheel coming loose? Was something else wrong? Was it really just the wind?

Well, it turns out I had a puncture in the rear tyre, caused by a metal fencing staple!

So, that was it – the run was over! 3 or 4 other club members pulled over too, to see if everything was OK, and I must thank those people again for doing so!

Now, canisters of compressed air mixed with liquid rubber-like stuff exist which can be squirted into the valve to both pump up the tyre and seal the puncture, but (a) they don’t always work, and (b) nobody had one anyway, so that clearly wasn’t an option!

I decided, at that point, I ought to find out if Peter’s insurance (on which I am a named driver) had breakdown cover. I spent 30 minutes or so phoning 118118 and all the numbers they gave me, to no avail, and eventually phoned up a work colleague who looked up the number online for me! So much for 118118! It turns out that Peter’s insurance does have breakdown cover, and so 45 minutes later, the truck arrived and took me and the bike home!

By the time the breakdown truck arrived though, I had then been stood in the windy layby for 1hr, 15 mins, 45 minutes of that was spent with Neville and Mark from the club, so a big thank you to them! During that time, we had even stronger wind, more rain, hailstones twice and countless cars zooming past spraying us all with dirt and water! The photo of this location, at that time, can be seen here:

I must admit, I’ve brightened up that photo a bit… it almost looks bright in the above photo, but believe me – it wasn’t!

And here is the bike being loaded up onto the truck having been carefully strapped to the loading device:

Once I got home, there had been half a warm turkey delivered from Sarah’s parents (Sarah had been at home during this short trip), which Sarah kindly made into a sandwich (as I never made it to the pub and really was getting kinda hungry by this point!) and later on that afternoon Peter phoned me to say he was more than happy to sort out the puncture, as it’s his bike and therefore his problem, and as much as I disputed the latter, he wouldn’t back down, so he later turned up with his trailer and picked up the bike. So, thank you to Peter too, not only for lending me his 54 year old bike, but for also offering to repair the puncture before letting me have the bike back yet again!

Hopefully I’ll have beter luck on the next run…

Well… after a long search (which I’ll attempt to summarise below) and a fair amount of effort, the Matchless is up and running again! It does need to be run in, however, which is going to involve riding 500 miles at 30-35mph! This, of course,  is far from ideal, but it must be done to ensure long life of the new piston rings, and no engine seizing! Anyway… onto the story since the last post.

The piston I picked up from AMC Classic Spares, although the correct diameter, was definitely the wrong one (this was not their fault, I might add) and although it could potentially be milled out, I decided to wait and see if a proper, original, BHB piston was ever going to turn up. This piston is therefore sitting on my shelf right now, waiting for me to sell it back to AMC Classic Spares if they’ll take it!

The main problem was that even if it could be milled, the metal underneath the milled area would have been very thin, and the reinforcement ridges built into the casting of my original piston don’t exist on this new one, so it would be far from ideal in this situation.

Having almost given up on the new piston, I started to phone the rest of the places on my list, in the UK and abroad! I even, accidentally, woke up someone at home in Australia at 4am, having got the timezones 4 or 5 hours out compared with the UK! I knew it was morning over there, given that it was evening over here, but I wasn’t sure how early in the morning it was. I figured that given this was a business, if the business was closed I could leave a message, but it was actually a house phone, so there it was – the call at 4am!

After phoning all of the places on my list though, I gave up hope of finding one via the web or over the phone and started hoping the adverts placed in the various magazines might throw something up.

Before these were even published though, I received a response on the club web site from a club member in Canada who had an original BHB piston, part number 030148, which had been sitting on his shelf since 1977, which I was welcome to have if I wanted!

So, this piston was posted to the UK, and 12 days later it arrived. Once cleaned up a bit, I revealed the same part number as my cracked piston!

Excellent!

So… into the bike it went, and after 2 hours in the garage, on the 5th kick, the bike started!

The next day I set off around town for a couple of miles to see how the bike ran, and to begin the run-in process, but once the bike warmed up, there was a distinct rattle from somewhere in the engine.

I adjusted the tappets, the day after, and went out again to find that the rattle was still there. When I got home, I adjusted the tappets again (while the bike was still warm this time!) and since then, I think the rattle has gone away.

I’m 35 miles into the run-in period now, and I still can’t hear the rattle, so I guess it really has gone!

The trouble is… I’m now questioning both my memory of the rattle, and my audio observation skills. Perhaps the rattle is still there, and I just can’t hear it for some reason… perhaps the rattle really has gone… perhaps I’m over-analysing things again!

I guess I’ll know for certain when I have a second opinion from someone who actually knows about these things!