Retrograde Mechanica: The joy's of vintage

Thursday, 29 November 2012

The joy's of vintage

We're still rebuilding the triumph 500 engine, I guess what I've learnt is a good thing - but old engines even a 67 is always gonna be hard work - we found out this week; when we split the cases that the chain has obviously decided to go it's own way and put a nice big crack in the cases at some point in it's past, a thank you now go's to Glynn for welding it up - it may not be pretty but it can't be seen and it's strong.

It's been a year now since I changed up the 500 into the black and nickel bike - the bike that's caused me more hassle than any other (my first introduction to old bikes, so deservedly so, but gave me the best ride down to the hayride....and nearly made it home...nearly) and a year since I rode it last. But I love it more every day and it teaches me more with every problem I face. I'm not a mechanic, nor an engineer so I treat it as an education - what I've learned has kept my other triumph - the 750 bonneville, rolling for the last 12 months so I can't complain, it's not like I don't get a ride!

A massive, huge and glorious thank you goes to Jack with helping me on the 3rd rebuild of this engine/gearbox, I'm glad we've finally done the right thing and done a ground up build rather than solving issue's as they come, Old bean, Thank You!!!!!!! I can't wait to ride it again with confidence, and when it happens it will be thanks to you!

"Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of a "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself"

"That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There's no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone's mind — number three tappet is right on too. One more to go. This had better be it — .I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this...that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes...pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts...all of them fixed and inviolable, and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forge work or welding sees "steel" as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all out of someone's mind. That's important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there. But what's "potential"? That's also in someone's mind! — Ghosts"