So, I went out after dinner and sank a pint for sadness and frustration at Thursday Night Pint Club. None of the other boys could make it but I'm not really a club person, in truth, so I went out anyway. After the first, I straightened up, took a deep breath and sank a second pint for celebration, and then after that all the rest were for celebration too.
Earlier in the afternoon I’d called Hitchcocks, in Redditch, to discover the correct jet size for The Black Bullet, and they said;
“They were originally fitted with a 140 but fuel has changed since then and if your bike runs fine with a 130, leave it as it is.”
“It kind of runs OK,” I said, edging toward the real issue at hand, “but even when it’s warm it needs a bit of choke, otherwise it splutters and coughs and loses power. I guess it’s running too lean, if it needs choke all the time, right?”
“When you say ‘choke’, what do you mean?”
“I mean the lever on the right hand side. If I close it off, the bike pretty much stops.”
“When you say ‘close it off’, what do you mean? Are you pulling it toward you or pushing it away?”
“I’m pushing it away.”
“Going anti-clockwise?”
“Yes...anti-clockwise, back to the closed, starting position.” Where is he going with this?
“OK, just a minute...” a beep and I’m on hold.
‘Beep’, “I’ve just had a chat with my colleague and he says can you hear something lifting in the throttle chamber when you open the lever?”
“Yes, I’ve watched the operation when the top was off the carb. The lever lifts, I guess it’s the choke valve.”
“OK, just a minute...” ‘beep’ and I’m on hold again, and getting a little frustrated with this all too efficient for me now, lah-de-dah Brummie.
‘Beep’, “right, we here all agree that pulling the lever toward you is the normal riding position. It’s not like a choke on a modern machine, it’s an air valve. It moderates the flow of air into the throttle chamber and that’s how the mixture is adjusted. You get the same fuel but less air”
“But I get the bike started with the ‘choke’ on, in the position you’d expect ‘on’ to be. Are you telling me I’m starting the bike with it off?”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s summer, you’ll never get it started like that in the winter.”
“So you’re telling me the resting position is the rich mixture setting, for starting, and as the engine warms up, you have to open the lever, or air valve, to admit more air and weaken the mixture for normal smooth running?”
“That’s right.”
Hell, so you ride with the lever open, like I've been doing. When is a problem not a problem? You can imagine, I’m at my desk experiencing a Copernican inversion. In a whirl all the frustration and anticipation, tinkering and cogitation flashes before me. Boy have I been really stuck in one of those damn eddy currents, going nowhere fast. I needed a beer like I needed an old timer's somewhat more timely advice.
The strange thing is I couldn’t decide if I was happy or sad. So much effort and time negotiated away from family responsibilities, often being off in a world of my own when people were talking to me, and all because I just didn’t understand one basic underlying function.
OK, it’s not intuitive - I even allowed myself a little angry flick at the designers for ‘wasting my time’ - but once the run of emotions was over, I climbed aboard and rode the long way home (back roads of course) basking in the raucous popping and banging of the exhaust. It may now be running a bit rich, ironically, but at least I know what’s going on.
It was good to be back in the saddle, both physically and metaphorically, and by the time pulled up at the gate I was smiling through the spots of rain that had just begun to fall.
