shocking

Now that I was all set to go, I set out for paynesville to visit Ian at the cafe, I hadn't seen him for ages, being off the road etc and the last time I rode down there he was away.

The new main jet seemed to make a little difference, but not enough to go wow, the speedo actually worked too, with the damaged drive gear and the dodgey connection.

Heres where things go a bit wayward, I get about halfway to Paynesville and the engine starts to bog down, I clutch in and pull over, stall and wonder why. It was almost the same spot I soft seized the first time but with 1700 kms more on the clock since then has just confused me. I wait 30 seconds, give her a kick and away I go as normal, that was about 20kms into the ride.

I get to the cafe, have a quick chat and a coffee and out I go to leave, now there are people everywhere, two cafes full of people all watching me as there wasn't much else to look at, I put my key in, fuel on, should still be warm so no chike, kick kick kick kick, ok here we go kick, shit I try the choke and realise I hadn't turned the key on, dumb ass, kick and after the smoke cleared I zoomed off trying to look cool but feeling like a tool.

I ride back into town, about, 20kms, and proceed to just ride around, laps of the main st, getting plenty of looks, a few toots and thumbs up, I missed this part. I found a few locations for some arty photos, see above, I pulled up at the busted ass caravn out the back of the saleyards and the scoot stalled, whaich it never does unless its my fault, mmm here we go, at least I can push it home from here if I had to, I took the photo and she didn't want to start, I got her going eventually and decided to give the idle screw a tweak and that seemed to do the trick. I decide to give the front brake a road test and thats where My speedo stopped working, turns out the cable was fouling just enough to put a kink in the cable outer and in turn causing the cable to break, and I will need to adjust the brake cable a little so the brakes work a little better.

I do about another 20kms before I get home so I will need to remember approx. how many kms I do so I can keep an accurate history of the running of the scoot.

Once I get home I go about removing the speedo drive gear and this is what I see. See pic. one.......

My brand new dampener has all but slid completely off the rubber, it was clearing the hub by a couple of mm and I'm not sure what would've happened if it came completely off, but it wouldn't have been pretty.

I put it all abck together and vow to keep an eye on it until I hear back about what I should do next or if something else is stuffed i.e. the fork is bent, or the front end is bent or both. Maybe it can be sorted easily, which would be ideal.

My ride into work today was good, I kept checking the dampener every few minutes, I rode about 15kms and by the time I got into work it had slipped about 5mm, thinking I might do a cable tie job for the trip home.