Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Titillation of Tubby

The reason the electric screen fails to operate - crud! The vendor made a point in saying that at least the screen had failed in the down position - the author subtracted £100 from the asking price.  A five minute job to remove the switch, resolder the green wire, clean and lubricate the sliding contact.

On the delivery journey home I had noted (apart from wobbly handling) excessive movement in the brake pedal.  On inspection and adjustment to take out the slack, a dollop of brake fluid emerged:  New cylinder £103 - Nikos now £3 down....
(I have never seen aluminium delaminate like it has on an area of the brake lever - this lever is mounted on the bike where it is exposed to all sorts of crap from the road so it has now been cleaned up and sprayed with ACF 50 corrosion inhibitor in case you are concerned).

New tyre fitted - seems to have cured the wobbly handling.  The old tyre had squared off and was down to safe limits at the centre.  Curiously the previous owner had kept fastidious records and notes but had wrongly converted  the rear tyre pressure of 2.9 bar to be 46psi. I had subtracted £100 from the vendor for this and so I'm £4 up overall.


This is a demonstration of  the HID headlamp bulb conversion on dipped beam.  The H4 bulb system normally produces high and low beams from 2 filaments.  I was curious to discover how a single HID H4 gas discharge bulb could do this and the answer is an electro mechanical shutter integrated into the bulb assembly.
You will note that Nikos cousin's broken deck chair is picked out  by the dipped beam and the tomato plant is receiving extra white light.  You will also notice the external air temperature guage that had been sitting in the spare parts box for 20 years has now been put to "good" use.


Main beam - the IKEA folding chair is now fully exposed and irradiated at 5000K whereas the tomato plant is mainly in the dark.  I decided to upgrade the headlamp so as to avoid festooning the bike with add on lamps as I did with Tractor (my GS) and keep the lines clean on the aerodynamic masterpiece of the K75.  I realise that I have no redundancy.

The IKEA sofa aka  the bargain remade seat waiting for £70 on Tony Archer's workbench and this should provide 2 inches of extra leg room and allow me to slide back my riding position and position my legs for aerodynamic effect within the fairing.


Further to the first test ride to validate the titillation and repair (during the Northern lights night time spectacular HID light demonstration) the rear brake switch gives up the ghost - this is a manifestation of the law of sod especially as its function appears to be key in the operation (or otherwise) of the ABS system. Now I'm  £23 down.

11 comments:

  1. You were lucky to get your seat from Tony Archer - I sent him one of mine for upgrading a year ago and he stopped answering the phone and didn't send it back.

    Thoroughly enjoy your adventures with bike repairs though!

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  2. Do you think there will be some welding?

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  3. El D - thanks for dropping in! Tony Archer works a rather strange MRP Enterprise system. The procedure seems to be:
    1. call him to discuss - get quote
    2. take seat to him - he will ask when do you want it and you say 2 weeks is Ok - he will say call me a week Tuesday and it will be ready Saturday (ie he starts work on it when you call).
    3. call him on Saturday before leaving home just to check that journey is worth it an drive to Huddersfield again to pick it up and he will charge less than quote as long as you slag off the awful crowd in Coventry who messed your last seat up.

    This process has now worked twice for me!!

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  4. Hi Alice

    One never can tell at this early stage!

    best wishes

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  5. The HID conversion: my Sprint has two headlights - one is a low beam and the other is high beam. Do I have this right: one only replaces one bulb with the HID and it does both functions?

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  6. Affer

    Depends on the bulb! The H4 bulb (was/is used commonly on cars etc) has 2 separate filaments in the same bulb for dip/high beam. This is what my K75 has. It sounds like that you may have single filament H7 bulbs so you would need two sets of HID "Apparatus" for each bulb. Confused more?

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  7. I decided to check out your site after you commented on mine. It is now bookmarked.

    Please accept my greetings. I will be nosing around here more.

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  8. Dear Nikos:

    And so it begins... I am amazed, and somewhat appalled, at the condition of the switch contacts and brake pedal stuff on this machine. The previous owner should be beaten within an inch his life. It is my persinal feeling that K75 abuse should result in jail time.

    Then again, Im glad a few basic repairs have netted you substantial savings. I like your big cushy seat rebuild. I am going to do the same for my Russell Day-Long saddle this winter. The headlight bupgrade is certainly impressive, isn't it? And I must say I do respect your decision not to clutter up the machine's lines with a lot of external lighting.

    However, we have tons of deer in my neck of the woods and I have found that the ancilary lighting is the best solution for me. Where you pointed out that the tomatoe plant was in the dark on yir high-beam, it would be getting a tan from my rig.

    It seems to me that you have a lot more choice and options when it comes to headlamps in the UK. I had to order mine from there to get what I wanted.

    Good luck with your efforts!

    Fondest regards,
    Jsck • reep • Toad

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  9. Dear Irondad
    Please don't take my blog too seriously as it sometime verges on the Pythonesque, if you follow my German!
    Many thanks for looking in,

    Best wishes from England, N

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  10. Dear Jack

    The previous owner had not ridden mauch in the previous year due to ill health and so when I WAS TOLD that it had been fully servced I knew that had finished 2 years ago! The issue with the brake servo looks worse than it seems.....
    I have now changed the gearbox and final drive oil and am waiting for the front fork oil to be delivered . I'm wondering how on earth to change the air filter but the engine runs fine.

    Best wishes from England, N

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  11. The MOT guidelines should be changed forthwith to require all headlights to be tested against a spread of tomato plants and folding chairs. Think of the benefit to the atmosphere of all that extra greenery...

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