A typhoon shows up and I’m in trouble because I don’t have a rain jacket!
But lately, what with good karma and visiting the graves, whenever I’m about to head out, the rain just stops—
—like magic. (Coincidence?)
Well then…
Oh no! I overslept big time! Rainy days are cool, and the sound of rain hitting the roof and falling on the ground is so soothing that I woke up at 8 a.m. to the boss’s call and then—
“1:30 p.m.…” Oh dear, oh dear!
Well, never mind! I ate some rice I cooked in that rice cooker I bought the other day, had some natto with it, fed the cat,
and headed out. Hey, look at that—it’s stopped raining!
Off to the clothing store where the craftsman buys rain jackets. Motorcycle rain jackets are expensive! They’re not really that different, so
this kind works fine! Since dirt shows easily, I bought black ones—two of them.
Twelve hundred yen each—cheap!
Now let’s assemble the MJ cylinder! The piston I soaked in carbon cleaner came out nice and clean,
and I washed it on the cleaning stand. I worked the piston pin back and forth until it moved smoothly—all good!
Now for installation. Since the engine won’t come out as a single unit, it’s hard to assemble. I shouldn’t have said, “Why not take the cylinder off too, not just the head!”
Was that a mistake?
But once you get the hang of it, it’s no big deal. I got it mounted quickly.
All that’s left is for the head to come up, and we’re done. Next, I’ll modify the cam chain tensioner to manual.
The lathe’s center has been off lately, so I remove the chuck, clean it, and center it. I apply the dial
and tighten it carefully. I got it to 1/100, so that’s good enough.
Then I machine the tensioner and I’m done!
Then I put the cam (Yoshimura ST-2) on the lathe and polish it. The new one when it arrived had a thick rust-preventive coating,
and that circulates inside the engine and gets dirty, which isn’t good. So I polished it and called it a day.
Oh! I didn’t machine the handlebar post! I’ll do it tomorrow…
I’m starving—time to head home.
