Imprisonment - Day 73

Imprisonment - Day seventy three
Tuesday 2nd June 2020

Cars - 36
Motorbikes - 0
Bikes - 4
Dog walkers - 4
Walkers - 3
Runners - 0
Horses - 0
Horse walkers - 0
Molehills - 0
Cycling temperature - 9.9c

This morning it was nice to see Fluffy Dog and Ginger Dog out for a walk as I've not seen them for a few weeks. Strange as they use to walk at the same time every day but obviously not anymore.

It was a good mending day as I managed to fix the strimmer Flymo and chainring on my bike.

My first job was to weld the strimmer shaft to the clutch cup. The difficult bit wasn't the welding but getting the cup at 90 degrees to the shaft in all directions. I managed to pack it out with some copper wire and when I turned it by looked as if it ran true so with fingers crossed I went ahead and welded. After welding it still looked good so I pieced the strimmer back together and started it up and by jingo it worked. There is slight vibration at slow revs but I must admit that vibration was slowly increasing during the time the spline was deteriorating. Last night I emailed True Shopping the guys who'd sold me the strimmer off the Internet and they do sell nine splined shafts but as mine has only got seven that would be no good. I asked if I could upgrade to nine and yes they sell a complete strimmer kit which bolts straight onto my engine. Still at the moment I don't need that as mine is working fine. If I did buy a kit I'd be tempted to weld up the top spline from new as it's obviously a weakness as they've had to upgrade to nine splines. Before using the strimmer in anger I had a look at the Flymo which would not start at all this morning. As I'd not long cleaned the carburettor and made my new fangled air filter I didn't think that they'd be the problem and that the problem was down to me running it on neat petrol with no two stroke oil. So I decided to whip the head off and take a look at the bore which was fine with no scratches from a broken piston ring. I thought this would be OK as the compression on turning the engine over wasn't bad. I also checked that there was a spark across the electrodes of the plug. With the head off it all looked good so I cleaned off the build up of black carbon and put it back together. It still wouldn't start so I cleaned the carburettor again and it still wouldn't start. In desperation I took the plug out again and noticed a speck of carbon stuck between the plug gap. I removed it and the Flymo fired up but ran rather lumpy so I took off my new fangled airfilter and it roared like a lion. My airfilter was fine when I used the Flymo last time but the ground was not as dusty as it is now after all the dry weather so the dust had clogged up my new filter. After I'd finished the strimming without a filter I redesigned my airfilter giving it a larger surface area to draw in the air. It seemed to work but the proof awaits next time I use it.

I then changed the chainring on my summer bike which was slipping more and more as the days pass. A simple job which took less than half an hour.

I'm glad to say that the cane I'd bought for covering the edge of the Bentley trim arrived today so at long last I've got everything I need to continue with the upholstery.