Friday, February 21, 2014

A Wee Stroll up the Turakina Valley!

















A few weeks ago a few of us headed west for a spin up the Turakina Valley road. With the old XJ still in need of fork seals for a warrant I rolled out the little KH250 for wander around the countryside. Manawatu Motorcycles had a nice line up of bikes with a mixture of moderns, old school, two strokes and four strokes. There was a healthy contingent of lads from the Nua with Roger on his Walter Wolf RG500, Bruce on his RZ 350 and Tony on his recently purchased KTM Adventure bike. The Tu lads were represented by Rich on his T500, Kim on the H1a, Al on the Aprilia and myself on the KH. Our trip west had us going along the main drag to Mount Stewart and down the backroads to Turakina for a top up at the gas station. Along the way Rich spotted a barn find at what turned out to be at one of Martons local eccentrics. Apparently 'Lord Lucans' estate has many such treasures on it. Roger left us here and headed back to the Nua. A shame,  as he would have had a ball on the mighty Walter Wolf with what was ahead of us.
The turn off from the state highway had us in Fordell in no time. As we headed inland the open country very quickly changed into a more hilly landscape with the road becoming windier as we got closer to our coffee and custard square stop in Hunterville. Hunterville  arrived all to quickly and the little KH needed a top up along with its rider. Our run home through Vinegar Hill had the little KH running on two cylinders just before Cheltenham. Pulling the plug out revealed some lovely round balls embedded between the electrode and the outer casing of the spark plug. A new plug went in and a leisurely ride with the left hand hovering over the clutch had us home without further incident. Richard popped around later in the afternoon and he had the head off and all was revealed. It looked like it was still on standard pistons but the right piston definitely coming apart on the edge. Time to do the top end, but nearly thirty thousand ks out of standard pistons isn't to bad?

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