A bicycle, yes… a push bike sounds nice
April 14, 2008 at 4:37 pm | Bike | No comment
Two wheels, two pedals, a seat and handlebars.
Not a crank sensor to be found.
The overheating issue turned out to be simply air in the system and disappeared once I’d poured some more coolant in, so I was all ready for a big trip to test it out.
I was riding back from Brighton where Jenny (my dad’s girlfriend) had very kindly sorted out two fillings for me pro-bono and all of a sudden.
*Cough* *splutter* *surge* *death*
So I coast onto the soft verge inches away from cars doing 70+ on the A23, my dad who’s following behind in a car, stops and comes over.
“What happened”
“Just died, almost as if there’s no fuel”
“… There is fuel right?”
“Unless it’s suddenly halved its MPG and the fuel light’s stopped working”
So I try and start it, starter motor’s working quite happily but it’s just not firing.
A police car pulls up, “Oh great” I think to myself, but they turn out to be quite reasonable guys rather than the jobsworths I was expecting, and they give me a number to contact when I arrange for pick up of the bike so they can come back and close lane one for us (for anyone who was inconvenienced by this, I’m very sorry!
Fast forward eight hours and the garage has picked it up and diagnosed it as… Crank sensor…
That itty bitty little sensor that tells the ECU went to spray the petrol around, ignite the mix, etc etc.
£150
Plus some labour charges, and apparently the K&N washable filter I installed is suitable for catching things the size of small boulders and not much else according to this chap, which I’m not entirely surprised by actually…
That and my swingarm bearings have a bit too much play in them apparently, he suggests replacing them, but I can sort that myself.
Oh and he won’t work on the bike unless I let him replace the front brake lever (which is snapped, but perfectly workable).
£250 - £350 I expect the damage to be…
Thank **** my insurance claim was approved…
The sensor’s a mail order part obviously, which won’t be with them until Wednesday, but as they’re off on Thursday, if the part doesn’t come in first thing it’ll likely be Friday before it’s fixed.
Jenny has very generously invited me to stay until then, but it still leaves me with a whole tonne of stuff to do at the weekend with very little time.
I may have to postpone my ferry again..
NOOOOO!