The 'Stripped Thread' - It began.....

Now, phase one of the job was to get my casings welded to take the bigger barrel. Mr Moody (who has the most ironic name ever, well actually after a few tours with him it's becoming less ironic and more of an apt name) had rang around a few places getting prices for the work as he was planning a build of his own. Now it came down to two places, one I think was charging £300 ish and the one I chose was charging £150. Both well known Traders and so I didn't think I was choosing a dodgy place to get it done, and at £150 it was near what we had estimated the cost at.

Now I know some will say why didn't I buy a new casing, well partly lack of knowledge as to how gearboxes can be successfully transferred from one to another, and partly as my casings work; I.e they don't leak oil even though half the stud holes threads were gone and some studs broken off.

So it gets sent off, and when it arrives I get a call saying with all the stud re threading work it's now going to cost more like £300. Bugger I could have bought a new casing after all. But these are good casings I keep reminding myself. Nice and square and flat casings that don't leak oil even though there's only a few studs holding them together. No oil leaks remember that.

So it's going to be nearly 3 weeks till they come back. Plenty of time to get shopping for all the other bits and, plenty of time till the up and coming Run to the Point, which was something like 8 weeks after sending the casings.

Did I mention in those long dark nights at Shister's a group, or an idea, a collective, but not a club, definitely not a club was beginning to be talked of. At first just whispers, but soon it would become the most talked about subject in the world of scootering ( well the world known as Somerset).

Now if anyone else gets to read this then those that know of Company C should know they seem to have the coolest sounding name for whatever they are. They aren't a club. Now Company C is a reference to a film some may know. What a good idea, something from popular culture could ingratiate us with a name. Now I had an idea but couldn't remember what it was, so I chuck Argonauts out there, I hated it. It was meant to be an idea, as in something 'like' Argonauts, but those present liked it (only cos we could talk about something else OTHER than the name: editor) and ran with it for a while. I still hated it, pretentious and just a little homoerotic I thought. But that could suit Pompey Dave, champion of Greek love that he is.

I digress, and yes perhaps that was intentional. Pulling a Corbett is another way of describing the meandering style of writing here. Talking of pulling a Corbett, Shister's infamous hour long monologue is still the ultimate. How much do you think this will cost? That was the question. An hour long reply followed, after which I'm not sure there was even an answer, in fact by then we had forgotten the question and some of us didn't even know who we were anymore.

Anyway back on track, film references, music, literature all of them garnered nothing, apart from one idea at the back of my mind. But it's still pretentious and still sounds a bit gay. So it needs dressing up. Take half of it away. Make it an acronym that my work. It begins with L so that's good, in fact it makes loads of acronyms, perfect. Never to be revealed what it stands for, not by me anyway, others can put their own spin on it. So I put it out there. The "the" was dropped and you'll know the rest. So my claim to fame is I named the group,collective, idea , thing, twice.

Could do with a tag line couldn't it, L.O.S.T .....agh well another time for that. (NO IT COULD'T - Editor!).

Now in between waiting for the casings to be returned ive began shopping. Now shopping for a Shister project is challenging for me. He knows what he wants me to get, and I want to be sure I get the right kit. So I write a list. And then I ring the usual suspects. MB developments for most of the bearings and sundry stuff like gear adjuster block, new cables etc. But for the Monza it's Cambridge Lambretta who supply the bits I still need.

The trouble is for instance with every bit I order they ask me a question I don't know the answer to. I need a head gasket, what type of monza is it. Fuck knows, back to Shister. I need an inlet manifold, what size reed is it, again I don't know, you can see how this task isn't always straight forward. Especially when it seems that nearly every Monza barrel they produced they decided to tweak something or another.

The Reed Block was the biggest problem. They sent me a lovely manifold with a nice reed block, but it was too big for Shister's Monza. So they send me another reed block which fits the barrel, but won't fit the manifold because of two lugs on the manifold. That's okay I can "just" grind them to fit. Little did I know that "just" was a six hour task spread across 3 days, and is also a dremmel killer. Not my dremmel, Shister's. You can see how this bill started to get bigger.

Now Shister's not just round the corner, so each trip to progress the job is a 30 mile round trip. Not that I'm moaning I enjoy nothing more than grinding away a night in good company. More homo-eroticness for Dave there.

Couple with the fact that each time a hurdle slows us down I'm seriously impacting on Shister's time, and quickly I'm on first name terms with his neighbour, his neighbours dog,not to mention his super cute little un Elsa, and his mother in law. In fact rumour has it Russell and Scooter are amongst her first words.

Ted, that's the neighbours dog even recognises my car nowadays and runs down the road to greet me. It's nice but it's wrong.

Now we have all the ducks lined up and we just need the casings to arrive, they've been sent with a courier so we are on schedule to do the rebuild in what remaining time before Shister has to have his finger chopped off. Got it?

I bet you can guess what happens next....