The bright side of getting stung was that it wasn’t that bad a sting. Oh, it burned. It burned like buggery as I jammed my gloved finger into the side of my open-face helmet and smeared the bastard bug all over my temple. Yes, yes, I remember what I said about my beloved open-face a few months ago. Now shut up and let me get on with it.
It was also lucky that I copped the sting, not Anne on the pillion seat who’d had her visor up.
The bright side of breaking down 20 minutes later in Bathurst was that I knew instantly why the bike died. It was suddenly and completely devoid of volts – all 12 of them had jumped ship. The bright side of having an airhead BMW is it takes seconds to remove the tank, headlight and front engine cover to expose most of the electrics when they’ve failed you.
Seconds later a good Samaritan buzzed up on a Sachs MadAss, sussed us out and rode away to get a multimeter. Wonderfully, the meter put an end to time-wasting by indicating I was not going to fix this myself by poking at wires and hoping for the best. Then more joy: old mate pointed me to Taylor’s Motorcycle Services, just around a couple of corners. They deal with old bikes.
I couldn’t believe I’d been blessed to break down within pushing distance of Nathan Taylor’s workshop. He was alone and overwhelmed by jobs but gracefully elevated the BM to the front of the queue. Things were just going so, so well! I looked out of my now swelling eye at my dead bike and felt so thankful.
A Scott Flying Squirrel caught my attention. Stripped and on a bench, it was being prepared for the Cannonball Run for pre-1949 bikes this coming May. Nathan was completely rebuilding it for the 4300km run from Darwin to Victor Harbor, SA, and he was very excited about the prospect of competing in it, especially on what is almost certainly going to be the only two-stroke among maybe a few other British bikes and a heap of Harleys and Indians.
“At least when my bike blows smoke, it’s meant to, unlike the Harleys and Indians,” he laughed.
This day was just getting better all the time. So when Nathan diagnosed a lack of charging, which had killed the battery, it didn’t hurt so much to have to buy a new one – even though the dead one was only three months old. We hadn’t yet fixed the problem, either, but I didn’t mind because I was enjoying the conversation about the Cannonball, the Scott, and also the BSA B33 race bike in the corner.
More great luck came when Nathan pulled out a detailed workshop manual, complete with diagnostic flowchart, for the R75/5’s electrics. He’d worked on these things before, diode boards and all.
“I had an R60/6,” he said, “but I sold it because it didn’t do anything for me.” Fair enough.
Then Rob Smith showed up to make things cheerier still. He owned the Scott and was Nathan’s co-conspirator in the upcoming overland adventure. And in the B33. And other things. By this time I didn’t mind if I was broken down for a couple of days.
Alas, all good things must end. Nathan got the BMW running beautifully again.
The good news was that we would certainly get home on the new battery. He’d worked out there was a weird and not necessarily consistent problem with the charging system, which produced multimeter readings that were more random than a Trump speech. Better still, just as I was about to start the bike – helmet on, pillion mounted, goodbyes said – I discovered a previously unknown problem with the ignition switch when the power vanished again! Another stroke of good fortune.
With a jiggle of the key it all came back and we rode away. We had no trouble at all on the way home and even missed all the showers that blew through.
In the shed I checked the battery: a perfect 12.8 volts. The charging system: capped at a perfect 13.8 volts with no odd readings. And I couldn’t make the ignition switch play up at all! How good is that?!
Actually, it was not good at all. The problems are still there but will be a nightmare to find and fix if they’re intermittent. And my face is now swollen and throbbing. Screw bright sides.