Jan10

The Outsider

by Rob Campbell on January 10, 2012 at 9:47 pm

Not that Jones is much bothered by his outsider status. If anything, he takes pride in it.

I’d like to thank everyone who took the time Monday to come by and leave some nice words, welcome backs, and words of support.  Getting back into the schedule of cranking out a comic strip three times a week (oops, four this week, gotta get one out for Fast Lane Biker NY) is always a challenge, especially in the first week of the new semester.  I think I am getting faster at working the strip when I need to be faster, so even when I’m pretty sure the art would be more useful as bird cage liner, it usually works and tells the story.

A quick bike report–fun stuff. I had every intention of getting the shovel back on the road during my two week vacation. It came pretty close.

  • Got the heads put back on and the pushrods adjusted.  Kind of a piece of cake, really.
  • I managed to put new buttons and wires in the handlebars, and now all my handlebar electrics work.  We’re not talking about a lot of stuff here–a kill switch, the horn button, and the dimmer.  I even went so far as to put in an oil pressure light. Sure, these are all pretty much required equipment for any half bright (or better) motorcyclist, but what biker cartoonist has the time to get all that crap working right once it goes south?  At any rate, nice to have it working again. I very nearly went as far as to put turn signals on, but I couldn’t stand the idea of doing it poorly. If I get signals on this thing after 24 years of no signals on it, they’ll have to fit in perfectly. I’m not sure I would know what to do if I had ‘em…
  • I rebuilt and lowered the forks.  I got some great help from my friend Benito at Thunder Road Motorcycles in Hollister.  Always support your local independent bike shop.  Benito taught me a few tricks in taking the forks apart and re-assembling them properly.  Without saying a word, he also helped me get past the delusion that maybe I could work at his shop part time this summer while on vacation from the classroom.  I think I’d have to pay him for the education.
  • The leaky primary case is what stopped me. I’ve been ignoring this problem since I got the bike running again this summer. Apparently, ignoring is an active process.  Once I started looking around down there, I pretty quickly sighted what looked like an oil-encrusted crack on the top side of the primary where it bolts to the engine.  Not good.  As soon as I got that bolt out, the whole ear fell off the case.  I’m not too interested in buying a whole new inner primary, so I took it to Gavilan Welding and got them to weld it back together.  Some home machine work with my neighbor’s Dremmel got it pretty close to last a while.  That’s pretty much the last thing. Getting the primary back together and adjusting the clutch might take an hour. We’ll see.
  • The only hitch left is that the dash light socket I thought would work for the oil pressure light is too old and worn out to work, so I need to get a fresh one. This is easier to do with the tanks off, so I’ll just wait.  Oh yeah, I have to put the tanks back on.

Then that’s it–back on the road.  Really not a whole lot of complicated stuff.  I”m fired up about riding this year, maybe making the darn Top Hatter’s Bike Blessing for the first time ever.  That’d be okay with me.

Thanks for showing up.  Glad to have you here.