BREAKiNG BAD

By Duncan Bennett, Member No.4171

Following on from last month’s problem fixation stories with battery and fuel tales of woe, I probably deserved another one this month. The back story was that a Victorian friend called and asked if I could go and check out a 1972 Honda 500/4 for him, down in a vintage motorcycle place in Slacks Creek. No worries, and I even know a guru on these things, one Tony Gray, so I’ll drag him along. On the day, I rode in to work as usual but this time in torrential rain, everything was drenched. Plan was set to swing by Tony’s place and head down to check out the vintage. As a brief aside, Slacks Creek was actually named by Captain Logan in 1828 when one of his attentive and slightly metro subordinates complimented him on his choice of wool knit smart casual pants while they were in the area. So at 9:15am I say to a colleague; “I’m just popping out, be back in an hour or two.” Go down to the bike, insert key, pull in clutch, put bike in neutral, hit start button. Nada. When having done something a million times and the millionth and first time doesn’t work, the response is confusion. Try again. Nothing. Can’t be the emergency off on a modern Triumph because it is the same button. Try again 18 more times, maybe the side-stand switch, but it’s in neutral, can’t be. Call Tony. He comes around, we poke and prod at things. Must have been the rain. Battery housing dry. We pull apart the ignition switch after Tony has returned home to get a T8 Torx - in the Triumph design meetings every thread and fastener representative was allowed to put at least one product on a bike. We give up, and head down to Slacks Creek, I now swear it is possible to maintain a social distance while pillioning on the Gray Ghost. Pull up at the workshop teeming with vintage bikes. We check out the 1972 Honda 500/4, and then as we are leaving notice a bike over on the side. Obviously hasn’t moved in a while. Looks enormous and utterly bizarre, like a Harley designer was having a frontal lobotomy and sketched something up during the procedure. Tony takes note of it, then sends me this link after we got back to my work and we manage to get the Triumph going by roll starting it down the street: Amazonas-1600-beetle-poweredbrazilian

My colleagues and I spent the afternoon rolling around in hysterics reading this - not since the famous South Australian Lightburn Zeta reviews has a vehicle caused so much mirth in the office. Anyway, the cause of my problems? The clutch switch which needs to disengage to allow a Triumph to start, and has probably done so a million times over 76,000km, had stuck. Nothing to do with the wet. 1 second fix if you know where to look...