The Umbrian motocamping quest.

In late October, when it was still unseasonably warm, Sandro and I managed to find a day and a half to get away from the city and explore some locations that we will certainly add to our enchiridion of trips and peregrinations, so that we can expand our forays into the tangible and metaphysical landscapes aboard our awesome machines.

This was a BMW powered test run into Umbria, landlocked, prospering and green, so green! It's hills rather than mountains, and the shallow valleys that separate them offer postcard-worthy views at every corner. It's hard to keep track of all the small fortified hamlets that are built on the hilltops, each with stone walls, turrets and imposing gates. Each is very pretty in its own right and would merit a walk through their narrow cobblestone alleyways.

Drink responsibly: don't let your beer get warm in the sunshine.

Small castles are also found occasionally in a landscape that can't possible have changed all that much since they were built; even the roads we travel, trail-braking into corners and powering out of them with our flat twins, probably follow paths that were originally cut into the ground by merchants, officials and farmers on foot, horseback or carriages.

The air was cool enough in shaded portions of the trip, but plenty warm in the sunshine. Being mid-week and very much off season, there was hardly any traffic and we had peace and tranquility every time we stopped for a break. Some of the places we saw were truly impressive, such as the remains of a Roman river port on the "Nera" river:

This type of itinerary would definitely suit our British classics, as well as the Sportster of course. The roads are sometimes a little rough, but we have seen much worse elsewhere in our neck of the woods. Staying at Sandro's family home meant our luggage was very small and light, which always contributes to a more enjoyable riding experience throughout the day.

Later in the afternoon we headed over to the next town and stopped at a small butcher's and a groceries shop to buy meat, bread, tomatoes, red wine and anything else we needed for our evening meal: it came to eleven euros each, and was worth so much more than that. As we still haven't figured out how to safely transport cold beer on the bikes in large enough quantities, we opted for a bottle of local red instead, which went very nicely with the barbecue and was the perfect closer for the day. 

I like this formula and hope we can open the next riding season soon with something similar. Only a few more months to go, come on.

SIC ITVR AD ASTRA

Perhaps because they had caught on to the notion that life here began out there, BSA had a lot to do with stars.

Here are some of theirs that come to mind, in no particular order:

Gold Star
Fleetstar
Starfire
Silver Star
Empire Star
Star
Royal Star
Blue Star
Shooting Star

It seems odd to me that they would leave out such an obvious choice as "Rising Star", so when my chopper was built many years ago, I went for that name instead.

The Rising Star is named after the TSS (trans-stellar service) ship that reached Earth over 150,000 years ago.

I've had to wait too long and it's high time this bike came back out into the open; it has laid dormant with a broken oil tank mount since late August in 2017 (after putting it in storage, I had actually seriously pursued the idea of selling it, perhaps because I felt it was just not enjoyable), and it's time to take care of a few things that aren't quite right.

I should point out that some of the things I'm tackling now were already apparent in the very early days of the Rising Star, as I had mentioned here.

This is very similar to what happened with my Fastback, which went through a few iterations - all of them seemingly working and fairly final - before I was able to pinpoint those things that still needed a good bit of fettling to get right. The mistake there was thinking that just because it worked, that meant it was done, when in actual fact the difference became undeniable once I completed the Isolatic overhaul as well as the many other things I've done to it (the clutch, the top end, the tires, the handlebar...) but riding and becoming more and more in tune with the machine is so important, and one must always intervene to fix and improve, whenever the machine "asks" you to. Truly, this is important, with any machine that you feel is really worth something to you.

It would be silly to think that this is an easy bike to live with, it's not. This is a hard, tough and uncomfortable bike... and yet the handling quality as well as the fact that it is a one-of-a-kind custom bike mean that I keep coming back to it, wanting to ride it.

As you'll see in the coming months (hopefully in time for spring next year), this upgrade will consist in effecting some repairs (and improvements to avoid a repeat of the same problem) and addressing some "must fix" issues that I believe are the cause of this being not totally enjoyable.

I checked the tires first and foremost and was pleased to find them in excellent condition: there aren't any concerning signs of wear, distortion or deterioration (yes, you can see some surface cracks if you look closely, but bear in mind the image below is very zoomed in). These Japanese-made Dunlop are really good quality items:

Understandably, the battery was shot after having sit all this time (since 2018). I hooked it up to the Ctek charger and left it to do its work over a couple of weeks, the outcome was a clean bill of health so it can go back on the bike, at least for now.

And now we come to what may seem like an insignificant little detail, although of course you know by now that there is no such thing when it comes to these motorcycles. I had to remove and properly refit the kickstarter cotter pin. Oh that most loathsome, accursed, and confounded cotter pin.

Since the kickstarter will have to come off to get re-plated, this was the right time to fix the cotter pin that holds it in place. For such a small thing, this can be such a tedious thing to deal with.

There is no reason to use a cotter pin in general other than to make things "on the cheap". It would have been far better to opt for a beefy spline and a proper pinch-bolt (or even a Woodruff key and a locknut!) rather than a cotter pin, but this is what we have to deal with. When I look at BSA's unit construction motor, I can't help but consider this a rather utilitarian powerplant, built to a tight budget albeit with promising engineering choices. It performs really well and is generally trouble-free so, given a different path in history, this could have evolved into something very reliable, well built and very useable that could have easily lasted into the 80s and early 90s. You can actually see what one of these engines can truly be if you look at what SRM do to them, bringing them to a very high standard of reliability, functionality and performance.

Unfortunately, when I look at this goddamn cotter pin I can't help but think this is a quality flaw, one that could have been avoided. 

Once, many years ago,  I ended up mangling the cotter pin as I tried to get the engine to fire up (the bike had been left standing for too long, that time as well). I had to pound it out with a 5kg mallet and eventually, once I got it out, I held the chewed-up cotter pin in my hand, looked at it closely for a while and shook my head. "what a piece of crap" I thought. I replaced it with a new one that took a long time to arrive and that was supposedly made for the A50/A65 motor (it is admittedly beefy), but immediately noticed it didn't fit. I did end up using it for a short while, but knew I would have had to either find yet another one, or try to get this one to fit.

Removing the cotter pin this time was relatively quick and easy; we use the excellent ZEP 45 penetrating fluid here at the Monolith and it works wonders for this type of thing. Heat from the Stanley FatMax gun is also essential to avoid damage and get the job done quickly.

An inordinate amount of time was then spent filing away at the flat, refitting, checking, and repeating the process, and the result is finally a perfect fit (third photo down):

One way to do this is to line up the flat with the top of the vice using a magnet:

As an alternative, you can fix a file to your workbench and grind the cotter pin onto it. Whichever way you do it, it is imperative you control each motion, in a single direction, and that you do not "lift off" at any point, or you'll end up with an uneven, rounded-off mess.

Sadly, with the notable exception of Andover Norton, this is a very common occurrence when it comes to spare parts for classic British bikes: things are cheaply made out of crap materials with crap machinery and with not the slightest indication that whatever drunken idiot made it had any idea about proper fit and actual size. Nothing fits together, nothing lines up, there is no precision, no quality control whatsoever; every casting is porous, imperfect and full of burrs. There is no consistency among spare parts manufacturers (meaning the same part number can result in vastly differing items), nothing ever fits out of the box and that is unacceptable. I could understand this from a soviet or Chinese bike (and still not excuse it), but the "mystique" of the brand and a Union Jack sticker are just no longer enough to hide that these are almost just as bad.

There is no excuse for parts that don't fit together. It cannot be acceptable to say "it is commonly necessary to" file, grind, shape, forge, the part to fit. No more of this nonsense.

While the rational brain argued all this, the emotional side was happy to just look at the bike and revel in how cool it is:

Now, I realize I've just ranted on about how badly these motorcycles are made, but... here's something else that's undeniable: switching from the Sportster's high precision parts, castings and all the many sturdy details that bike has, to the BSA (it would have been the same on the Commando), I do appreciate a simpler technology that doesn't require much in the way of special tools, just a lot of patience and dedication. Simpler parts that are the bare minimum to get the job done (think of the control levers) and are nice and light, yes, there is value in that.

Before I even attempted to start the bike this time, I took off the float bowl and removed the jets assembly: predictably, everything was gunked up with old fuel, probably the blasted ethanol and whatever other crap they put in fuel these days. I was really surprised by the state of the main and needle jets in particular: these were fitted as brand new parts yet look trashed now. After all, this carburetter was rebuilt ten years ago but spent half of that time rotting away at the back of the shed. It follows that the result is five years of wear and another five of decay, meaning it's time to refurbish this once again. I have to admit it took a couple of rounds of cleaning (including an ultrasonic bath) before the engine would start: the culprit was a blocked pilot jet circuit - this is a very common occurrence with bikes that have been left standing for too long. There are many technical articles online that all brag and show off a wealth of knowledge and understanding of fluid dynamics, as well as blatantly plagiarize from one another, so I won't add to that, but the crucial thing to understand is how the pilot circuit works and why it is there to begin with. It's there to provide air/fuel mixture at closed throttle, all the way to about an eighth open, so it is essential for starting and initial pulling away. If the pilot jet or any part of the idle circuit, including the mixing chamber and the transfer ports above it, is blocked, the bike WILL NOT START. The mixing chamber is akin to one of those royal burial chambers in the Egyptian pyramids, you know the ones they find through some tiny tunnel that's a mile long... well, it's the same here, the chamber and its transfer ports are machined during the production stage and then sealed for all millennia with a welch plug, never to be seen again. You can surely appreciate how difficult those areas are to clean, especially because of how delicate and precisely calibrated they are: if you try to poke at them with wire, even really small gauge, you will likely ream ports and jets out of size, rendering the whole carburetter essentially useless. And if the inside of the mixing chamber is corroded, which you won't be able to see, in all likelihood the carburetter will never quite work properly. You need to get at the two tiny transfer ports before and after the slide to make sure they're free: that's where fuel for starting comes from, not from the jets.

The green arrow in the photo above is pointing to the pilot circuit air intake. The one on the right is shut with a welch plug after machining an identical tunnel, which is used to supply fuel to the pilot circuit.

If we flip the carburetter upside down we can follow the air flow (green) until it meets the fuel (in red, coming from the float bowl). Note location of the pilot jet, shown by the yellow rectangle. Air and fuel combine in the mixing chamber below that round welch plug, and feed the engine intake through two tiny transfer ports.

Above, you may or may not be able to see the pilot jet, this is with the air mixture screw removed and the only way to reach it (without drilling through from the other side, which I would not recommend).

I replaced the mounting flange O-ring as the one it had had clearly stretched out of shape. After that, I fitted a new float bowl gasket and got the bike to start, though it is running very rich, which probably means I buggered the pilot jet as I attempted to unblock it. I'll try to see if I can tune it, otherwise it may be time to replace this Amal. We shall see.

All of this nonsense was just to get the bike started, imagine the scope of what's coming!

TO THE STARS!

TO VICTORY!!

Calculating new targeting solution.

Since we've hit a snag with the delivery of some essential items for the Sportster's overhaul, I decided to put that bike back in storage while we work on other projects.

To begin with, we have a fun and interesting task to complete, as we attempt to build two Gilera 150 5V Autostrada, out of what is basically one complete bike and two halves in various crates.

This exercise has already yielded some surprises: we are learning all kinds of details about the MkI and MkII versions of these small lightweight bikes. By the time we're done, we should have a complete MkI (in crates) and a MkII "special" of some kind, ready to ride. We have to donate some components from the "red" bike to the MkI pile, and use other MkII parts that are currently in the crates to replace what the "red" bike will lose. Sounds completely naff, but there is some logic behind all this. 

As we plot our moves and try to figure out what will go where, the weather quickly takes a turn for the worse so I run outside to look for myself.

Thunder cracks violently overhead, amidst the chaos of swirling lead-colored clouds, a flurry of dead leaves blown across the scene by howling winds, and squawking pitch-black ravens. The dark outline of the cypress trees in the background makes the Monolith appear as a black cathedral. More thunder, lightning, and an ominous rumble from deep underground; the limestone slabs glide open and the Rising Star emerges.

I guess it's time I took care of this too...

1200S: service time, part 9

This is where I'm going to be labelled a nerd, no doubt, but I'll stick to my guns because I think there is a small but important difference. The service manual specifies that the clearance between the shift pawl and the shift drum pins should be set by using the shank of a #32 drill bit. Simple enough, right? It's a convenient, and real-world way of finding something cheap and easily accessible through any hardware store, that has the correct dimension to set an important clearance in the shifting mechanism, without resorting to a specially made tool.

Except that a #32 bit is unheard of in Italy, and I would guess in Europe, where we use the metric system, including for drill bits. So, aside from the fact that I had a friend bring me a couple of drill bits from the US a few years ago, the fact is that nobody in this country sets the clearance with a #32 bit. If anyone bothers to do it at all, they probably do it guessing and eyeballing what the clearance should be, and the very very few who bother to search for a #32 drill bit might find some charts with the decimal equivalent dimension and determine that "it's close enough to 3mm". Yes, that is true, it is pretty close to 3mm but it isn't 3mm, so setting the clearance using a 3mm drill bit is still wrong. It's pretty close to being right, but it ain't right.

Incidentally, I did check the shift pawl clearance "as found" and it was just a little bit loose, nothing crazy though possibly enough to at least contribute to the problem. Obviously this is a great opportunity to inspect everything I can reasonably look at while I'm in here: it always pays to spend a little extra time to look at and feel as many moving parts as possible, you'll either spot a problem that you can fix, or have peace of mind that all is well down there.

In the next photo, you can see the end of the shift drum minus the detent plate: this makes it easier to see the shift drum pins and the shifter pawl, to the left. 

The clearance to be set with the #32 drill bit is between the pins and the pawl. You have to shift into third gear, which aligns a hole in the detent plate with the spot between pins (yellow arrow) and pawl (green arrow), it's a little hard to see in the next photo but it's shown by the double-ended red arrow:

After cleaning the shift mechanism and applying fresh transmission oil, I installed it (as well as the detent plate and a new retaining clip for that) and tightened the new nyloc nuts, by hand only at first. The gearbox must be shifted to third gear. At this point you insert the #32 drill bit's blunt end into the hole and press the pawl down to eliminate the gap (but not so hard that you shift into another gear).

The absolutely important part of the process is to maintain pressure while you tighten the nylocs to the same torque spec of 11N⋅m. I am confident that this is now set correctly on my motorcycle. Of course I also installed a new retaining clip when performing the adjustment:

Well whaddya know, we've reached another natural stopping point. Let's get ready to refit the primary transmission, shall we?

TO BE CONTINUED...

1200S: service time, part 8

With a parts list now ready, I headed over to the nearest Harley-Davidson store (not the one where I bought the bike in 2015) to ask for a quote: they said they would get back to me but, disappointingly, never did. I asked around a couple of dealers in Europe and the US but none seemed too interested in my business. In the end it was Mr White who came through, went out of his way to help me source all needed parts and was an overall ace about it. W&W in Germany was the only outfit where I could reasonably purchase OEM gears, and - crucially - the updated parts that were developed to remedy the 1st gear problem. As you can see in the side-by-side below, the update consists in the lobes being machined with virtually no ramps when compared with the original 2001 component. Everything is straighter and this makes for a more positive engagement.

Above: countershaft 1st gear; original/damaged one on the left, updated part on the right.

A close-up view reveals the main difference between the two:

Above: countershaft 3rd gear; original/damaged one on the left, updated part on the right.

Below: the updated gear is in place on the countershaft:

All these parts were not only hard to find, but very expensive too so, thinking back about the time I originally bought the bike and asked the shitty dealer to fix the gearbox, it's obvious that they knew they couldn't fix it without losing serious money on the sale. Absolutely terrible people.

Reassembly begins with cleaning every part thoroughly and laying everything on the bench. I won't go through each gear, thrust washer, needle bearing and retaining ring - and if you're considering doing this type of maintenance on your Sportster, you shouldn't use this as a reference: get a manual! But all those parts go back on the two shafts in the reverse order they were taken off. The important thing to note here is that the needle bearings (one is shown below), thrust washers and, perhaps most crucial of all, the retaining rings all get replaced with new parts. Everything was lubricated before assembly and tested for correct operation.

Once the gear cluster was ready, I added the shift forks and slid the shift drum back in, then secured it to the trapdoor with its retaining double plate (together with the detent positive stop mechanism on the outside). The forks' guide pins go back, and each fork gets a brand new cotter pin.

This is it as far as reassembly goes, then comes testing to see that all gears engage as they should, so it's over to the power flow diagram once again. I ran through it a few times and found that everything shifts and engages smoothly going both up and down the sequence (1-N-2-3-4-5). 

The complete gear assembly can now go back where it belongs, you have to be careful that all three shafts engage their respective needle bearings, and under no circumstance should you hammer it into place: if it doesn't want to go, it means you've missed something: go back and check again, easy does it.

The trapdoor is bolted back up, each fastener should have a sparing amount of blue Loctite and the correct torque setting (18-23N⋅m) applied.

I tested once again afterwards to see if all gears would still engage, and everything seems to work as expected.

I can show you one more interesting detail here, looking towards the back of the transmission case, with the gearbox in neutral, you can see the pin on the end of the shift drum pressing against the ball bearing to activate the instrument light:

And with a gear engaged to show the difference:

I had received warnings of impending catastrophe, that I was doomed to fail were I to attempt such a complicated, difficult and risky job.

I was told only truly experienced mechanics could grasp all the finer points and have a chance at succeeding here. I have a sneaking suspicion it was a sly attempt at charging me for labor, with zero guarantee the job would actually get done. Sorry guys, I'd rather take years to get around it, than let someone else do it for me.

There is something very important to know in case you're considering buying a Sportster: 2004 was a year of big changes for the model, and one thing many people don't know, is that H-D removed the gearbox trapdoor altogether. This means that if for whatever reason you need to get at the gearbox, the entire motor has to be disassembled, the cases split, and then you're looking at at full rebuild after you're done. Stay away from anything other than a 1995 to 2003 Sportster, those are the good ones.

Now, this is a good stopping point, we'll pick up next time with a critical adjustment in the shift mechanism.

TO BE CONTINUED...