Sunday 18 September 2011

Songs for Swingin' Lovers






This album has nothing to do with what I'm about to blog about other than having the word swingin' in the title, it's just that blog entries look so boring without a picture.
I've mentioned before that I've got 2 Travellers - the silver one I use, and a white one which I bought because it was cheap. The bike itself is fine other than being a bit tatty and the bodywork is cracked around the mounting points (common fault), but as I don't have a need for it at the moment, I haven't ridden it. I've tidied up and repainted various bits (good old Hammerite!), repaired most of the cracks on the bodywork, fitted a Yamaha TRX850 headlight (much better than the standard Traveller unit and a straight 'bolt in'), a pair of Avon Roadriders, a pair of Brembo calipers, and welded up a rear rack.
A common fault on the Skorpion is the swing arm rusting and this bike was no exception. I had repainted a spare swing arm and fitted new bearings, so today I lined the inside with Waxoyl to help prevent it rusting from the inside out.
You have to heat Waxoyl to make it liquid enough to apply, so I put the tin into a bucket full of boiling water, covered the top to stop the heat escaping, and left it for an hour. By then it had got thin enough to pour, so I poured some into each 'leg' of the swing arm (one at a time), and poured the excess back out into the tin. I did this four times, each time with a different face of the swing arm downwards so that side would get coated. I then left it to cool and harden.
I fitted the Waxoyled swing arm into the bike and replaced the alloy 'rocker' in the rear suspension with a spare one to which I'd fitted new bearings. Everything was fitted with lots of grease and torqued up nice and tightly. A quick test and the 'clonk' the old suspension had now disappeared, so that's another thing ticked off the list. Hopefully I'll get this bike finished and back on the road over the winter, then I'll decide whether or not to keep it or to replace it with another project.

Last night I was in a local supermarket and found this:

96 hour deodorant! Yes, 96 hour! I thought the 48 hour stuff was excessive, but 96 hour? Who doesn't wash for 96 hours and thinks that a quick spray with this will stop them smelling? Perhaps it's better you don't answer that!!

2 comments:

  1. Sinatra to sweat ...... via waxy stuff ......

    An interesting post!

    ng:)

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  2. I think I surprised myself a bit with that one!

    ReplyDelete