The Casting Couch

I hope the saucy nature of that title got a few looks!

OK, so polishing a motor by hand is something of a complete trainspotter thing to do – so it is just as well that I am up to the challenge!

Well I was happy… steel wool in hand… sweating away listening to the rather dodgy esoteric music choices when I rolled the Love Cubs engine over & started work…

Just after I realised that the grease was a casting ripple (Yes I do know that there is a chuck of metal missing from the exhaust port)

After - Looking OK (not perfect, but that is OK)

That is when I noticed… the Casting flaws… (Cue bad music that goes Bah Bah Baaaaaah!!!)

I had noticed the small flaws in the casting when I was working on the other bits of the motor, but I had never really noticed this bit … until now!

The section is on an area not readily seen from the top of the motor (& to be honest, I thought it was oily grime when I first started to clean it, it was only after a bit of elbow grease that I realised it was in fact a casting flaw.

OK love cub, Challenge accepted!

Out with the wet & dry to start getting the aluminium back to what I think it should look like!

The other side of the argument is that these flaws are not material & have been part of the Love Cubs Mighty Powerplant for the past 42 years, so I really should just accept that they are part of the anatomy of the wee beasty… but that would be far too simple & that is not what the Love cub is about after all!

So… four hours later & a heap more music…. Ta dah… looking good… in fact, it is looking like the engine casing is headed on the way to looking better than new!

So Mote it be

Leigh

Finally a Ride

Well, I did get to go for a ride on Friday morning. The glorious surfer went quite well too.

Over to the train station to purchase my trip to Sydney on Sunday afternoon, then off to the other side of town to drop of some paperwork, then, I took the silver surfer to the hardware store, this was an easy thing as I needed a pad lock only!

The interesting thing about a ride like this is that it is exactly the sort of environment that these bikes were invented for; just nipping down the road to get something, see someone, do something… It just works so well at this job, No wonder they are just so dam popular!

When I got to the Hardware store, I made sure I had a good park - I wanted to get some blood pressure up from those that cut me off in traffic... 

Now, taking a Vespa to a hardware store may seem odd, BUT, on the upside, as you have worked out, I am something of an impulse buyer at times, thus there is a positive to riding a Scooter to the hardware store; as I only wanted a padlock & some screw in hooks which would fit in my scooter glove box I did not need the trusty Rhonda the Honda, or Falcon, thus all the other cool things that I could easily have justified buying were not able to be purchased, that is I kept the $50 bill in my pocket!

Money saved is money earned – thus I have earned another $50 to spend on the scooter addiction – and at the moment, I reckon that the $50 would go quite a long way to the engine works at the moment!

So mote it be!

Leigh