Kates Journal

I dropped off Kathryn’s DAF (Vixy) at the garage this morning, which went fine. I’m praying that I’m right and that the clutch shoes are worn out… Anyhow.

One of the cooler things about owning a classic, or one of the things I enjoy anyway, is getting packages through the post that have fallen through a hole in time. Such was my experience today when a ‘Cords’ brand 1970s package popped through our postbox. I’ve recorded the ‘unboxing’…

There’s something terribly cool about opening things that have sat for decades. Something fun about encountering design intended for a different generation (and they got the swoosh!*). Anyhow, so they arrived; sadly the ring compressor doesn’t appear to have arrived. Hopefully it’ll arrive tomorrow. However, what did arrive was the clutch shoes. I am so unutterably impressed by Jim Jack Services – they had the shoes arrive yesterday – called me to check on the details – and had sent them back by the evening. They arrived today – and look like they did when I last got new shoes.

Despite not having a manual I guessed my way through replacing the drum (it looked easy) – and eventually got it right (it was about 3mm out when I first did it) – and got the clutch back together. Then I made the mistake of having lunch.

Well, technically the lunch wasn’t the mistake – no – it was sitting on the rug in the lounge. I’ve done this every day, but I’ve not been dealing with something quite as dirty as the contents of the clutch. And I was silly enough to clean out the flywheel too. So there was a lot of dirt.

It was on my jeans. Now it’s on the rug.

Then I made the mistake of starting on the bike. I started in quite a good mood, despite the fact that the manual (and therefore my notes on how to wire the rev-counter to the old-style wiring, the circuit diagrams, and the explanantion of where the clutch should be adjusted to) remained elusive. I started stripping down Cherry Red ‘zed, carefully working my way through noting where the wires went from the switchgear – and then it dawned on me…

I’ve got three partial looms from three bikes with three separate wiring and connection schemes. Seriously.

MZ changed their wiring for the later bikes, with their electronic ignition and electronic regulator; Kanuni changed the wiring again when they started building bikes, because they didn’t do with the nice clicky MZ connectors. Oh no. They went back to the good solid DDR connection blocks with 55 wires going in and out of each one.

After a while it dawned on me that I had an impending disaster on my hands.

I needed a diagram, or something, to give me some idea of where I should be looking. The front end is more or less wired, the alternator is partially reconnected to the rectifier and regulator. I plodded through assembling it – discovered in the process that I really do need some obstruction wrenches because I can’t actually get the Bing Carb (better, faster, more efficient) off Cherry, so Charlie’s stuck with my old BvF (proper DDR, and has covered 120k miles). I sprayed the side panel (badly, I didn’t have any primer, so it went straight over the blue paint. Fluo-Pink as it’s called is not big on coverage). I also found a patch where the paint’s flaked off the frame – I couldn’t afford shot-blasting when I did it – so I wirebrushed and sanded the old paint, but perhaps I should have stripped it all off – because there’s a small patch where it’s flaked off.

When I spray the DAF I’ll touch up the frame :(

Anyhow.

Poor Kathryn arrived home as I stood in a rotten mood contemplating how in hell I was going to work out the wiring on the bike. Feeling like I’d taken 2 potential runners and made one impossible to fix vehicle.

But then I remembered this website – and a bit of dinking – and here we are with simplified diagrams and what each of the connectors actually is. Thank fuck.

And in a totally unrelated to motorbikes, cars, or anything else I normally ramble about, I’d been contemplating writing something about Barack “Change we can’t believe in” Obama’s release regarding the DoMA. The problem is it’s likely to come out as an depressed rant. I’ve been unimpressed with Obama for a while; his stance on abuse photos, on individual privacy, on illegal wiretaps; it’s all been bad. So I guess the DoMA announcement seems like more of the same. Anyhow, so it was going to be a rant, but then I read this over Kathryn’s shoulder, and it was articulate; intelligent; and it said everything I could have considered wanting to say, were I feeling anywhere near as good at expressing myself as this writer. So go read.

In final other news, after much work I’ve finally found a builder who has at least actually turned up, and quoted for the work on the driveway, and moreso has actually agreed to come and do the work. So next week for a day or two we’ll have to get the fleet off the drive. Once it’s done though, we should be able to get two cars on the drive. Which will assist in making-other-people-happy. :)

* I remember, years ago, when Amazon’s swoosh was new and shiny there was a website snarking about everyone having swooshes which enabled you to design your new e-logo for your new e-business. It was swooshtastic.

After two years of sitting in the garage I brought the manual for the MZ home after my last trip. Today I’ve searched everywhere obvious, and quite a few non-obvious places and the fucking thing has just disappeared.

Short of actually emptying the shed entirely, something I’m seriously contemplating doing, I have no concept of where it could be. I’m hoping for ‘fell down the back of one of the shelves where the MZ boxes live’.

It’s beyond frustrating.

So, nights are bad. They stress your body, they stress your mind, they leave you drained and overtired. I find that I get into the ’swing’ fairly quickly, for the most part; but I’m not quite there yet, and was feeling undeservedly pissy at the vehicles. Mostly because despite throwing most of a tin of gun-gum at Vixy she was still clearly blowing a huge amount. Ironically, Jejy seems much quieter – most of her exhaust now consisting of gun-gum.

However, a moment’s tired contemplation reminded me of the unreasonableness of this. Between the two (DAF) cars and the motorbike I’ve spent around 1k over the year. For that we’ve acquired 2 MOT’d, Taxed vehicles which – while not exactly show-winning and certainly requiring more work – are being cajoled, poked, prodded and coaxed into being vehicles we can used daily.

The fact that they have some reliability issues, and some of the flakey 30 year old parts are disintegrating is not really unexpected in cars being run on a budget appropriate for push-bikes.

So. That in mind, I spent a little time laying under Vixy with the gun-gum this morning – and found that the exit from the silencer appears to be…mostly gone, and is now mostly gun-gum :-/

Really I think I need two complete exhaust systems – but we’ll patch it up as long as we can, eh?

As a side point, this made me want to build my classic EV again. I even poked at ebay.fr to see if there were any cheap left-hooker DAFs on there, but I think I really want ebay.nl. Hey, it was 3am, I can’t afford it, don’t have the time or space, but I can imagine eh? CVT EV DAF? Got to be done.

…but this seems a little unfair.

I’d been hoping to ride Cherry (Red ‘zed) until the tax ran out, the MOT expiring shortly afterwards. The slight and occasional clatter from the top end telling me more than I needed to know about how sick the engine truly is (‘cos she’s had a top end, less than 5000km ago).

Another week and I’d've been happy.

And I’m used to random bits dropping off a ‘zed. It’s normal. Usually they’re retrievable or they’re easy to replace. But today she had to show off. It’s easy to replace, if you’ve got the time, being only a bolt. Probably an M14 bolt. Only, it’s a specific length, and I don’t happen to have one spare. It’s also the bolt that holds the exhaust on.

Thankfully she opted for dropping the exhaust less than a mile from home, and with some careful propage I could ride home, albeit somewhat noisily.

I guess it’s time to retrieve and wire up Charlie. Lord knows when I’ll get the chance to do that. Soon, though, I hope. Because the fleet is rapidly diminishing in size.

Work’s been suprisingly pleasant of late; perhaps everyone’e scared of Swine Flu and haven’t been coming in? Can we please keep it that way? I’ve had some odd ones though, in triage. People who’ve broken things days/weeks ago, not really in pain, slight, possible, deforimities and off to Xray they go, then we find out they’ve completely broken their humerus or fractured radius/ulnas… Also sick people who’ve actually been sick. It’s been quite like actually working in an emergency department.

Then, to make things even more strange I was working in the Resus area; normally when I’m there it’s like there’s a neon sign that goes up outside and we get overdoses, cardiac arrests, infections-gone-septic and the odd bit of major trauma (at least potentially). I am like a magnet for the very sick and accident prone to go and be ill and fall off something. But on this occasion I had one person who was very sick who was there when I arrived – and some potentially sick kiddies who improved (one of whom kindly vomitted on my top).

I was quite confused. Why wasn’t the red phone ringing constantly? Why was I stood there doing regular obs on people instead of running past going ‘oh crap! His BP is 60 systolic! It was 120 before!’ en-route to administer some drug to prop some other patient up for a bit.

Not that I’m complaining mind; I’ve quite enjoyed it. I’ve been riding my little red bike to work and bike, slow as it is, and now it’s got a brake light working again I’ll be much happier* (so it is, of course, raining today). Ironically, the MOT and Tax run out next month, so I’m contemplating using it as a spares bike to build up Charlie. I looked on e-bay and MZs aren’t worth anything anymore. It’s rather sad. They’re on there really rarely, and now the company has gone, completely, as opposed to just being bought by new people every 3 weeks, they seem to have disappeared.

I’ve also wired the exhaust back on to the DAF – there’s only about a foot between the missing exhaust hanger and the next one, but really… I’ve ordered bits of Morris Minor to use to hang it all back together properly(ish) – and will hopefully get a chance to do that this weekend. I need to get Vixy up on ramps and check the belt tension on her… but… the weather forecast looks attrocious. Which does not bode well :(

Vixy’s booked into my local garage for the rear brakes to be done, too. I just need to actually source the parts. My local place can get them but they’re more expensive than getting them shipped from Holland, although he’s having a look through his personal stock and will give me a ring back with a price for that… apparently. Although he’s yet to ever actually ring me back about anything.

I’m hoping, also, that the bits of car for Jejy will arrive before too long and Jejy will get a new clutch drum and new shoes, and an inlet manifold without a huge crack in it.

The garden continues to progress; lots of things are flowering and producing a great deal of pretty, we’ve got more Swiss Chard than we can eat, the beans are growing into great tall bean-stalks; we picked up some more plants when my mum was here (some more dogwood, and some other things which I’ll journal about later) – which have gone in. I’ve clearly found an effective way of making it rain though, which is to remember to water the new plants. Then it pours with rain for the rest of the week :(

Anyhow, Lunch and then Work.

* My initial assumption was that the contacts were dirty &/or sticking, and would clean with a few uses. That has occured before, but having ridden to work it wasn’t working. Riding it home, I presumed the bulb had blown; but no. I checked that and it was fine. Finally, in a fit of enthusiasm (and desire to not be squished, and having got fed up of doing hand signals) I dug around the foot brake switch on which both wires had broken. This made me happy because 10 minutes later they were resoldered and the bike has a brake light again :)