Sunny evening ride to Parkgate

 

A 34 mile spin out round the lanes through Puddington, Burton, Neston, Parkgate,

Thornton Hough, Wollaston, Hooton and then home down the A41.

Anna’s first day out

Having built up 50 or so "confidence miles", I felt comfortable taking Anna out on a "proper journey" - to the Middlewich Classic Car and Bike Show, about 25 miles away. I went there for the first time last year, taking Gloria the Honda 250G5, and it was a lovely low key day out. See here for that adventure.

The weather forecast for the weekend was pretty shocking and attendance hadn't been great on the Saturday as a result, but I decided that we were going on the Sunday, come what may! I had a back pack with an array of tools, just in case. That proved to come in handy when she sputtered to a stop after about half a mile!

A quick aside: On the last ride out, I filled up with fuel and then noticed that the fuel cap washer clearly wasn't doing it's job, as there were dribbles of fuel appearing all over my new paintwork 😧. I quickly mopped it up but it had clearly done a little damage around the filler neck, which I have touched up and doesn't look too noticeable. During the refurbishment, I'd made a new cork washer for the cap but it was quite coarse cork I had and clearly wasn't doing it's job. Anyway, I ordered a new proper washer from good old Hitchcock's and fitted that. 

Back to the journey - I opened the cap and a big vacuum hiss was released - a classic case of fuel starvation! I noticed that what I thought was a rust spot on the cap was actually a rusted up vent hole. Out with the tools and my trusty Swiss army knife, I poked that clear and then also one on the inside of the cap, refitted it and she started up fine and then ran perfectly for the rest of the journey.

We took the back lanes through Cheshire. I'm still running in and limiting things to about 30-35mph for the first 200 miles, so the lanes are firmly in her sweet spot at the moment.

It took an hour or so to get there, including a short break to let her cool off a bit. As we arrived and parked up, I noticed that one of the rear indicators had vibrated loose. Fortunately, everything was held in place by the wire so I quickly took the rear light off and reassembled everything before too many people noticed 😃.

The show was pretty well attended despite the threatening weather and plenty of people took a bit of interest in Anna, who was the oldest bike on display for most of the day. She didn’t win any prizes but that has never been the intention with this restoration. The original aim was:

 

"So my thoughts for the Crusader have been that I wanted to end up with a presentable old bike that I could happily roll up to a classic show on and display, safe in the knowledge it would never win a prize for best in show, but also that I won't be afraid to sling some camping gear on the back of and head off to the Classic TT or on a weekend camping trip."

 Objective met by not winning a prize!!

During the afternoon there was a fly past by a Lancaster bomber, which never fails to impress.

As it got to late afternoon, I packed up and headed for home. Another delightful journey across the lanes and we ticked off the first 100 miles just before we got home. The list of "niggles" to sort is getting shorter with each journey. In particular, the clutch seems to be bedding in and making the gear changes generally easier, although I may still pull the side cover off and give the gear change mechanism another tweak at some point.

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