Thanks guys, well I took "The Beast from Breganze" for it's Maiden Voyage yesterday, it started up right away, but wouldn't idle with the choke off. Oh well, no biggie, it was a bit tricky, but once underway it ran fine, and I only stalled it 15 or 20 times in my 45 minute ride, hell, by the time I got home I was so used to being abused by other drivers I was disappointed when I didn't cop a mouthfull from whomever it was that I stalled in front of!
The gearshift pedal is on the right side, where every one else conveniently locates the brake pedal. My first experience with this was when I rolled out of my driveway straight in front of a moving car as I madly stomped on the gearshift pedal, which not surprisingly, did little to retard (co-incidentally what the driver yelled at me as she swerved around me........) my progress. This situation reared it's ugly head on several occasions during my ride, 40 years of left hand side gear changes had made an indelible mark in my tiny brain, and I was struggling to teach myself that black is now white, up is down, and I'm an idiot...........
The PO, Colin, is only a little feller, probably 5'6" tall. I'm 6'4 with gorrilla-ishly long arms, but it was still a real stretch down to the beautiful "Jota" bars. I hate clipons, clubmans etc on road bikes, even with rearsets they are a handfull for normal riding, and it's just not natural to be riding around with your head jacknifed at 90 degrees to your torso. 18 hours on, my poor old neck still hurts, so I'll be swapping out those bars with some low rise European bars, which will be closer to the OEM 750SF bars, with my current "right is left, and left is right" confusion, I don't need to be in pain physically, as well as mentally...............
So apart from it's inability to idle, the goofy right hand side shifter and handlebars so low I can use my knees as armrests, how did it go? Actually, really good. The Staintune "Conti" pipes give it a glorious booming note, the engine has stacks of low down grunt, the gearshift (once remembered) is a smooth and well spaced as anything else from the era, including our Honda's, it has that typical italian "Running on Rails" feel in corners that inspires greater corner speeds, but only adds to my confusion when I have to suddenly slow down and forget which side the damn gears are on............
I'm still trying to get used to the brakes, the rear brake is better than a lot of discs, but the front TLS drum is pretty lousy.The cable is pretty stretched and there's not much adjustment left, but I'll sort it out, I'm sure. Apart from the stupid cafe racer riding position, it's really quite comfortable, the Ceriani forks and Marzocchi Strada rear shocks work great, but the right side fork seal has dried out and was weeping a tiny amount of fork oil, so I might dump out the oil and refill them both with ATF and see if that softens and swells the seal, or if not, I'll replace the seals.
That was my only oil leak, which is pretty impressive for a 36 year old bike that's been sitting unused, for many years. Colin told me that he'd done around 4000 miles since the restoration was completed, but I suspect that he might have "embellished" this story, he rebuilt the bike after buying it from a friend in several boxes, and there are still a couple of important parts missing, one was the front brake stay arm which makes the bike all but impossible to ride any distance at all, ( I made one but it wasn't easy, and as Colin has no workshop facilities he couldn't) it's also missing the tank strap, the battery strap etc, the tires are brand spanking new and all the little mold knobs are still intact not to mention that the idle screws on the carbs haven't been adjusted leads me to believe that he didn't ride it much, if at all. The oil that came out of the engine was almost new too, and the plugs had done no work, so I'm guessing that he didn't quite finish it, and rode his BMW instead.
Of course I could be wrong, but it wouldn't be the first time someone has sold off a project bike before they'd completely sorted it. Talking to him, he didn't appear to have a great mechanical knowledge, so I'm guessing that he put it together, took it for a short ride but was as confused as I am with the right side shift, couldn't get it to idle and didn't have a brake stay arm, so shelved it until he could get motivated again, but then his marriage collapsed, and he lost interest.
Anyway, all assumptions (correct or otherwise) aside, there's precious little that I need to do to make it a really enjoyable ride, I'll swap the bars today, adjust the idle, change the fork oil, make a tank and battery strap up, adjust the brakes, and it should be good to go. Now if I can only retrain my pea-sized brain to remember that the shifter is on the right, life with a Laverda will be good! Cheers, Terry.
