electricity needs timing

last weekend i spent saturday in the garage. here's what it looked like. it was a beautiful day, so very tough to make myself go spend it in a garage. but it turned out to be an awesome day, because my bike now runs extremely well. before it was misfiring and running rough. it was very hard to tell what was wrong. could have been carb/fuel mixture issues, or electrical. luckily james, who is also in the garage, was on-hand and he knows brit bikes (and bikes) very well. it turned out to be two-fold, as both things needed to be addressed. the timing was off, because the magnets on the rotor (this bike has a boyer electronic ignition) had moved and the rotor was also now loose. that means the timing would sometimes (rarely) be spot on, but also would often be way off. occasionally it didn't start. so we reset the timing and boom, it immediately it ran right. but the carb mixture did need sorting. with that also sorted, it's now running very well. starts FIRST kick when cold. pretty cool for a bike 37 years old.

arguably the most amazing part about this day was james willingness to dig into my bike with me for a few hours when he had been working on his own. i will remember to return the favor to someone else down the line.