Pulled out the gearbox today, to fix what I thought was a dislodged shift shaft ball. Haven't been in here for about 7 years, but only had to check the old shop manual once. It remlinded me what a nice easy package the old 4 speed Sportsters are to work on.

Its pissing down in Adelaide and had no power all afternoon

Flushed out the clutch, cleaning out the slippery remnants of the Penrite 50 that had drained there.

Put it all back together. Had to spend 2 hours finding the battery hold down strap. Sloppy work I know, but I did move from Obi out to the old school 18 months ago. Pulled the battery out of the Husky, pulled the sparkplugs out and squirted some oil down the bores, spun it over for a few seconds. Oil returned from the sump, so added more to the tank, and cranked it over a few more times. OK, put fuel in the tank, gave the spark plugs a quick hit with a brass wire brush, checked the gap, put them back in, turned on the Golan fuel tap with its satisfying click, watched clean fuel fill up the in line filter, turned the key, pulled out the choke, hit the button. It spun over without firing for 5 seconds. Tried again, fired right up.

Got the new cartridge in, it bled up in a few minutes.

It still would have been a good idea to have cleaned the carb and the ignition system, but I was getting impatient so out the gate we went, burping, farting and cutting out at under 1/4 throttle.

This is a little village in the sticks, so 500 m later I'm on open and interesting country roads. 1 km later I'm dead on the roadside, no fuel in the carb. As I watched, some slowly dribbled through the Golan tap and into the sintered brass ball fuel filter. I tapped the tap with a spanner, waited a few minutes and set off again. Repeated the process 2 km later. And again 2 km after that. I knew I'd soon be out of mobile coverage so turned for home. Stopped again, turned the tap to reserve, set off again. Next time it stopped, I took off the fuel cap to check how much fuel I actually had, and noticed that the fuel filter rapidly filled up with fuel. OK, blocked fuel cap vent. I set off again, loosening the fuel cap every km and it kept running, kept giving it full throttle, then snapping it shut, after doing this a dozen times it backfired heavily and started running OK at low throttle as whatever crud was blocking the low speed jets got sucked through by the increased manifold vacuum. I went back past home and put it on the highway, up to 120 kph running beautifully. Took a few kms to get used to the feel of it, been mostly riding the Victory bagger for the last 7 years. Ah yes, old Sportster vibration, the feel of chain drive with worn chain and sprockets.  It all came flooding back.... the riding position so familiar. Stopped for fuel, pulled into to a local park.

Once there was a village here, with shops, community hall, condensed milk factory with its own railway stop. Now, just  paddocks, fuel stop and a war memorial. And a much loved old bike saying  I'm not dead yet!

Call me a big wuss, but I almost got a tear in my eye.