It sometimes feels like the only reason I can produce for hanging on to some of our old clunkers is that they provide seemingly endless opportunities to pass away those frozen, windswept hours out in the unheated environs of The Shed. Like several others, I would prefer to actually ride my machinery more often, but… but… I have the RE Woodsman for winter duties, so can stop pretending that I maintain my weary fleet of two (Triumph T25SS and Matchless G2 CSR) ready to take up Post Office Run duties every time it's salty outside. At the moment, Woody is providing reliable and rugged riding, so why did I get both Matchless and Triumph ready for action a couple of months ago?
No idea.
Moving swiftly on, then. All the Shed denizens which need to work, actually do work; the Commando is tucked away slathered in protective products under a very large outdoor waterproof cover, alongside the alleged collection of bikes I don't use but can't face selling. What to do, then, as the wind howls around our Cornish outpost and the rain hammers the rafters? I know! I'll move the bikes about a bit. That'll be a useful thing to do. Not.
And so it was that one especially mucky afternoon, when the lanes and much of the garden were under water, the skies were dark at lunchtime, that I uncovered the G12CSR which has graced these pages many times to check that my fitting a tap to the oil feed line had in fact stopped the engine's gear pump allowing oil to fill the crankcases and spill out onto the floor. You can most likely imagine my delight when I pulled off its cover and observed the big pool of clean new oil soaking into the concrete. This was
