I had an early "knock-off" from work yesterday as I had to have another couple of MRI's at the local imaging clinic, so after starting at 6am, then wandering over to my favourite restaurant at 0700 for scrambled eggs and crispy bacon on buttered toast and a large coffee, I left work at 0945 to be at the clinic at 1045, and arrived right on time, which was pretty surprising, the traffic was way heavier than I'd expected.
What's the deal with hospital gowns? You have to strip down to your undies and socks for an MRI, so need to put on a gown, but the ties are at the back. Now apart from being old and busted, I'm also terribly uncoordinated, so there's no way I can do up the ties at the back of a hospital gown. Being an engineering wizard though (as you all know............) I realised that if the ties were just longer, you could wrap the gown around yourself, pull the ties around to the front, and tie a neat bow in the front?
I mentioned this to the radiologist, and he was stunned, he said "I've been doing this job for years, and never thought of that!" I bet I'll see him on the news soon, with diamond studded gold teeth surrounded by scantily clad super-models aboard his ocean going yacht, explaining how
his simple idea made him filthy stinking rich! Baastard, I hate him already.........
Anyway, back to reality, sort of. Well after both Per and I agreed that the 2 part epoxy is sh1t and probably wouldn't work, it actually worked fine. After I arrived home from the MRI's, I ate some lunch and fell asleep. I don't know about you guys, but nowadays, I'm really good at falling asleep in my comfy chair. Recently my oldest son even took a somewhat embarrassing pic of me asleep with my hand in my container of nuts and dried fruit that I like to snack on, so when you're falling asleep while eating, you know that you're getting old.....
But I digress. By this time it was around 6pm, and I remembered that I'd bogged up that carb with the JB two part epoxy, so should probably take a look and see if it'd done any good.
Mikuni 40mm repair by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
The stuff had dried OK, I was able to pull the float pin out and remove the float without the tower falling off, so I gave it a bit of a jiggle, and it stayed put, it actually felt quite secure. I knew it'd need some trimming though, before I could put the float bowl back on, and as my knock off dremel tool had died a horrible death a few weeks ago and i'd bought a much bigger but quite unwieldy Makita electric die grinder to replace it, I needed something a lot smaller.
My dad was not a tool guy. Most of the tools in his garage are ancient woodworking tools that he "inherited" from my maternal grandfather or things that I bought him. A few years ago though, he'd bought me a tiny electric die grinder which I found particularly useless and put away on a shelf, never to be used again. As it turned out, it was great for shaping the epoxy putty. As I kept grinding it away so as to allow the float bowl back on I was expecting the float tower to come adrift, but no, the pile of putty at the rear of the tower was enough to keep the structure rigid.
Mikuni 40mm repair 1 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
I could have smoothed it more, but I thought it better to quit while I was ahead, and anyway, it had only been on for 24 hours, so the longer I leave it, hopefully the harder it will become. I refitted the float and pin and made sure nothing was obstructing the up and down movement, and was happy to see that I could leave the rest of the small mountain of putty I'd built up around the float tower. It took a few goes before I could re-fit the float bowl, with a little more epoxy putty grinding required each time, but eventually it plopped back into place, so I called it good.
I don't think I'll bother trying to install these carbs on this engine, I think I'll need bigger rubber insulators, but the head that's on it's way from the US has what looks like bigger insulators fitted (It was off a 1974 Z1 with a 1327 big bore kit) but if not, apparently Z1 Enterprises (owned by a member here) have them, so I'll order a set. It does worry me not having any air filters on my carbs, but then I remember that back in the days when we had very few unsealed roads most bikes didn't have air filters and survived OK, so I'll try not to worry too much about it, but if I do see another set of these GSXR carbs with pods going cheap, I'll buy them, even if just for winter riding.
OK, the sun is shining, I better get out there and see what I can't cock up today!
