THE GOOD BUCK

I’ve been thrashing the Bonnie for a week now, back and to to work, and the seal has stayed bone dry. The bolt seems to be secure and holding. Yay! That’s a big weight off my mind. We were out of money, the Bonnie is my work wheels, and the next steps to repair it were looking expensive and time consuming. With the bike off the road. That’s a huge relief.

Work have been beasting me. I think it’s mostly psychological. It’s 10, 11, up to 12.5 hour shifts. That isn’t that long for a lorry driver. The thing is, it’s in two runs. You do the first one, you’re out 6 hours, you come back to the yard, have your break, swap vehicles, and start again. The other day I was given a bunch of jobs straight away. I was out all day, but because I didn’t have to go back to the yard it felt loads quicker and easier. I’m just going to have to adjust. At least the driving isn’t freaking me out as much. Or rather, I’ve reached a plateau of freaked outness and I just get on with it. It’s all tough and stressful, but that’s what it is. On the bright side, I got 4 shifts last week, and even with a surprise short shift (yay!) I should be taking home about £630. If I can get that every week it won’t take us long to have a a safety buffer in the bank again. And it saves me from having to get another job.

Another thing is the Harley. It’s been weighing on me. It’s been sat in the garden in mute reproach. I decided I didn’t like it and I didn’t want it. This morning (day off) I was woken by a headache and I was lay in bed wording the advert to sell it. I was squirming with remorse because I’ve seen some much better condition Sportsters for sale for what I paid for that 20 year dead rustbucket. I bought it on impulse after seeing what were frankly very flattering pictures of it. Since then I’ve spent thousands on the project. The list of new parts is vast. I’ve got it riding and running right, but as I was wording the advert in my head I couldn’t get away from the fact it’s still old and scruffy. People (who aren’t impulsive idiots) buy Harleys to pose on. Mine is actually a pretty sorted bike (it only had 10,000 miles on it, I’ve replaced all the consumables, and upgraded the engine and loads of the electrical components) but it still looks rough. I was thinking of asking what I paid for it. It would have filled me with shame at wasting all that money, but I couldn’t see another option.

I’ve been working on the split engine casing on the Bonnie. Look at it!

I tried squeezing epoxy putty in the gaps between the surfaces and leaving it compressed.

That was a big no. As soon as I put the engine cover back on the magnet snatched it out of my hand, jarred the join, and the errant piece fell off. I tried again. This time making a bridge over the snapped off part. Better, but when I screwed the bolt in it lifted off again.

After saying last time out that I only got one shift in a week, and that I definitely needed a new job, I’ve got 3 out of the 4 I put myself as available, this week. The thing is, I don’t want to put myself as available for any more shifts in case I get them all. They are generally 11 to 12.5 hour shifts, and the driving is incredibly stressful. I want 3 days off. 3 shifts of work is well enough to pay the bills, so I’ll wait another week before I have to make any decisions.

My opinion of the Harley has been swinging back and forth. I’ve fitted the wider bars, with bar end mirrors, and it’s much more useable now, unfortunately the angle of the bars means I’m now straining my wrist to pull the levers. I’ve not got around to taking the forks out to fit the new oil seals and covers yet. I definitely need to make it comfortable to ride. Some guy online has whipped off the tank, mudguard and seat then fitted Japanese motorbike components. It’s made it look loads more useable. It’s a thought. As is a Japanese front end. Just unbolt the headstock and fit a decent front end and bars. If I knew of one that was a straight swap I’d have it on my ebay watchlist.

Because we live in an arbitrary yet vindictive universe, I’m also having issues with the Bonnie. After the oil and filter change I put in the workshop manual specified 3.3 litres of oil. Which was too much. I noticed a small drip of oil and realised I’d blown a seal. Idiot. I drained some off, but riding into work I noticed it had sprayed oil on my boot and there was oil dripping on to my pipes. Very not good. I ordered a new gasket and fitted it today. It turns out it wasn’t the excess oil (well, that won’t have helped) but a broken bit of the engine casing. Where one of the alternator cover bolts screws into the engine casing, the two sides of the thread are bust apart. I’ll post a picture tomorrow, but instead of it being a circle of metal with a thread in the middle, it’s two half circles, split open. There is no thread for the bolt to gain purchase and it doesn’t form a smooth seal against the gasket. That is so not good. Especially as it’s cast alloy, so it’s brittle, I’m worried when I try to bend it shut it will snap. I’ve ordered some high heat epoxy resin (and another gasket) that says it’s good for engine blocks. On Monday I’ll whip the cover off again, clean and dry the surfaces, squeeze some resin into the split metal and clamp it shut with mole grips. If it snaps, it snaps. As long as the epoxy does its job and fixes the two halves back together smoothly, I can work from there. I can slap more epoxy on to try and build it up. It doesn’t have to be pretty, just functional. What’s done my head in is how they did it? It’s a screw thread for an 8mm bolt that is supposed to be torqued to 8Nm. How the hell do you split the engine casing open doing that? It’s a 15 year old bike, but come on, that is above and beyond level of cowboy crap. I’m a bit miffed, truth be told. The epoxy should do it, but if not, it’s not the end of the world. I will have to find a welder who can do it. It would be a small weld and it’s easily accessible. Pain in the arse though, I hope it doesn’t come to that. Oh noes. I just looked. They say you have to pre-heat the alloy to 350c to avoid shocking and cracking it with the weld. That sounds like something you’d need to have a bare engine case for. If I have to strip the whole engine for this little job I am going to be so miffed.

The nights lark just did not work for me, as I said last time out, so I’ve switched to days. Yay!

I’ve done a full week of days, including the busy weekend period, and got one shift. To be fair, when I applied to the agency I asked about days and the guy said “We have a lot of drivers who want days and not many shifts.” I don’t know, after getting six shifts in a week on nights I was hoping there would be enough to keep me going on days. Nope. Back to the job hunt. Nights fail, days fail. At least there is symmetry.

There are plenty of jobs out there, but none are great. Nights or stupid o’clock start times, adding a lot to my day in commute time, or poor pay. For instance, I was thinking of doing Iceland. It’s a tough job, with tough driving and long hours, but it’s local and it’s full time. But it’s 04.00 – 06.00 starts now. That’s less than ideal. For 43K. Which sound good, but for, say, an average of an 11 hour day, that’s about £15.50 per hour, and it’s a weekly take home of £633.

I tried. I did two weeks of nights. It was stupid start times, but that is the shift they recruit for, so I was trying to show willing, and see if I could do it. I couldn’t. 23.30 start, 01.00, 00.01, then one day 21.30. That was the final straw. I’d only got to bed at 13.00. I was either working (11 to 12.5 hour shifts) or trying to sleep. It was miserable. Then they did that 21.30 thing and I’d had enough. I asked if I could move to day shift. They said I could, which was a relief because I was going to quit if they’d said no. Then the next shift the sleeping tablets (antihistamines) gave me a massive tachycardia attack. It was awful. It lasted about 40 minutes and I couldn’t stop it. That was when I was absolutely sure I’d made the right decision. If I couldn’t take sleeping pills I would have been on about 2 to 4 hours sleep a day. That is a recipe for falling asleep at the wheel and dying. I finished my last two shifts on nights, I’m supposed to be on days after my days off. Another good thing about it is Wendy has gone loony again, so she was suffering really badly with me leaving her alone all night. She seems to be a lot better while I’m here, so it’s worth it for that.

The job itself is a mixed bag. It’s physically extremely easy. And seems to be very laid back. But the driving to get to the stores, and to deliver to them, is next level tough. I’m not looking forward to seeing what the deliveries are like when the stores are busy. Yesterday, for instance, I had to deliver to a local (small shop) in Salford. The route plan said you had to reverse (a rigid truck) the whole length of a residential street, with cars parked on either side, around a corner, between cars, bins and concrete posts, to get to the drop. That was focusing. And that was at 05.00 on Sunday. I can’t even imagine what that would be like at a busy time.

I had a moment of stress this morning. I looked at the agency app to try to work out roughly what I’d be getting paid. I worked out my hours for the week and it came to 69 hours. That’s well over the 60 I’m allowed by the Working Time Directive. 60 in a week, 90 in any consecutive fortnight. So I was screwed for next week as well. I was mentally taking off breaks and Periods Of Availability (as they don’t count to WTD) but I was still over. Luckily I keep paper records for myself. I had a look, and one of the shifts was technically in the previous week for WTD purposes. That was a huge relief. I don’t need a bunch of infringements on my first weeks. Henceforth I’ll batter POA. It’s been so long since I’ve done consistent long hours (and nights throws everything off) that I got caught out.