25th April 2002, 11:44.
Soo, sucky day.
After yesterday – at least my yesterday going quite well I suppose
it’s only normal for me to have a crap day – but this is a bit much.
So, on my way home yesterday I had a bit of an “incident” with the
bike. Riding along, it suddenly gets much louder shortly before
the engine just stops. So I roll to the side of the road and get off –
quick check, not siezed (which I thought might be a problem with the new
exhaust/running hotter) – turns over freely but it sounds a touch noisy.
Kick it over, no, there’s no sign of life whatsoever.
Oookay, I have a little prod. No, it’s definately not happy – but I
can’t see anything wrong – same as yesterday morning only with more
noise. Anyway, after about a minute it restarted – but there was no
drive in first gear. Second, third, fourth and fifth were all fine – but
first just did nothing. No unpleasant noises, no real feeling of badness
except for the obvious fact that I wasn’t moving. So I limped home in
second/third but at the last junction before our house I found that
first had recovered.
It was fine. I sat outside the house for a bit and checked, and
whatever had been the problem had disappeared.
So, fast forward to this morning (although I did some more gardening
last night!) – and I head off to work. About 2 miles from work the same
thing happens – only it just gets much louder – sounding really ill –
and there’s a distinct drop in power. So, I pull over, it stalls, but
restarts while I’m rolling….
And I look. And look, and listen, and prod, and tap, and clout. And
then I think back to this morning. When I checked the oil the bike was
on a slope – could it be that it still hadn’t used any – and that maybe
the oil-pump wasn’t working (either wasn’t working or had air in it so
it just wasn’t pumping any oil…).
Yes, indeed it could. So I limped in, trying to keep the revs down
(which is hard on a 125cc 2-stroke, because they produce s*d all power
at low revs) to the carpark here and I’ve called the RAC.
Yes, I’ve got the ignominy of going home in an RAC van. I could
*actually* do the repair in the car-park here if I had the
roller-bearing, but I don’t carry one with me (oddly enough, I wasn’t
expecting to have to replace it for another 30k miles). It’s extremely
dissapointing – not least because I’ve really been enjoying riding it
recently. Okay, I’ve been pushing my luck on occasions….but it’s been
fun.
Oh, interesting link.
—
Kate E
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