First jobs - clean seat. I tried various chemicals and ended up using surgical spirit, this helped after a few applications. The ratchety throttle, I thought it would be cable problems, but stripping it out I found the cables & carbs were nice and smooth, however the twistgrip has an odd bevel gear arrangement inside it which was worn out, I found a useful BMW dealer who had those in stock, although it was not far off the price of another tyre. Not many options though, no used ones around and to replace the whole twistgrip/switch/brake lever arrangement with something off a different bike was going to be complex & even more expensive. The tyres quickly arrived & were pretty easy to fit, though the rear wheel is surprisingly awkward to remove, there's so little clearance that it's best to deflate the tyre to squeeze it by the swinging arm. As for the front wheel/brakes, more later on that topic. In the meantime I also found a disconnected plug under the seat which was why none of the rear lights worked, a splendid easy fix. If only the instrument lights were so easy, more later on that too.
OK, I now had an intact and seemingly roadworthy bike. Test ride time. It starts easily, full choke, hit the button and away it goes after a few turns. It kind of shakes at tickover like something heavy is going on. Clunk into gear and away I go. Just gently along my road to the junction at the end, a brake check didn't seem to do much, then I so nearly overshot the junction. Dreadful brakes, almost nothing there yet firm lever & pedal. I tried riding along a bit dragging them, to burn off any crap, which maybe helped a little, but it was a short slow ride with a stop at the local petrol station as it was on reserve too. I then headed back home, other than the brakes it was riding pretty well, but they needed sorting before I explored it further. Something seemed amiss with the transmission too, I'll come back to that later.
