The upgrade continues.

It's over to uncle Fester's garage to fabricate a new mounting for the oil tank (the one it has now has already cracked a couple of times). I think the problem is that having a flat bar (in green in the grainy shot below) welded across the frame to support the oil tank underneath, which is rather heavy, actually puts that bar under considerable vibration and torsional stress: it must be that at that particular point in the frame, stress is such that it can travel along the support bar and fracture it.

Much like the seat spring mounts and the rear fender brackets, this bar did not come with the frame but was added during the initial build of the Rising Star. It seemed perfectly sturdy at the time but there's obviously cause to revisit that. I believe the final solution will involve rubber mounting of some sort, but I'll let my friend figure that out.

Since the oil tank has to come off, this is a good opportunity to give it a thorough clean on the inside: doing this periodically is cheap insurance for the oil pump, in case there's any debris in the tank that could reach the engine, with predictably bad consequences. I also might as well strip the old paint and give it a fresh coat or two with good heat-resistant primer and paint, both available from Mr. White.

The seat mounts aren't the prettiest thing in the world and maybe there's something we can do about that as well, although this is a non-issue and up to uncle Fester's good taste.

With the engine properly hot, I also took the opportunity to go over the final adjustment of the idle/pilot circuit: this requires a slightly fast tickover to start, then adjusting the air screw to figure out where the engine runs faster; at that point the idle screw can be backed out (thus lowering idle speed) and the process repeated maybe once or twice more until you're sure you're at the best possible leanest mixture. Be prepared to re-adjust this depending on ambient temperature and riding conditions.

Riding this skinny, narrow bike after such a long time felt both familiar and a bit of a surprise at the same time: I had forgotten just how... distilled this bike is, and that somehow amplifies the whole experience. The handling of a properly built hardtail is something every rider should experience; the ability to set up a corner, drop the bike into it and feel it bite into the trajectory with total precision is truly a superior quality.

On the other hand, another thing we really must address is the front brake, because at the moment it's about as good as a strong headwind.

I did fit new brake shoes almost ten years ago, and at the time it seemed to make a difference compared with the original items it had when I got the front wheel for the initial build, but there has to be a way to skim/fix/true the assembly so it works better: OIF drum brakes are usually excellent.

The ride over was intense, no doubt because I had forgotten what the Rising Star is like to ride, but also because of the broken oil tank mount rattling underneath me. The air was definitely crisp, though thanks to global warming it wasn't freezing cold. While the exhaust is definitely too loud, I am once again surprised by the smoothness of the engine and how it delivers consistent torque all through the rev range. It may be relatively small but boy is it a blast to rip around on!

I'll update the blog as we go, I expect uncle Fester will keep me informed of progress, and I hope to be able to drop by once in a while to see how things are going.

Many thanks to Lele who helped out with logistics today, and also had a go at riding this contraption of ours (I need to get someone else into these British lamb chops so we can go on rides together!).