Back at home I made a start on reassembling the Enfield's kick stand and immediately ran in to trouble. The freshly powder coated parts should have simply bolted together but the bolt had thread damage and was very reluctant to screw in to it's locating hole.
A consequence of this was that lunch was rushed so I could make it over to Hitchocks Motorcycles before they closed for the New Year Holiday. The chaps at Hitchcocks were soon working their way through my hastily scrawled list of replacements for knackered components and then took a look at my side stand bracket. It was a matter of a few moments work for them to run a tap* through the thread to clean it and a shiny replacement bolt was added to my box of parts.
Back at home I soon had the stand attached to the bracket and then I dug out the new return spring …
… Oh shit! How the hell was I going to fix that on the two retaining lugs. The damned thing is made from 3 mm gauge stainless steel and there was no way on Earth I could manage to stretch the thing a micron, let alone the nine or ten millimetres needed to install it. After an extended period of head scratching I stumbled across a nugget of wisdom on the internet. Apparently the technique was to insert pennies or washers between the turns of the spring to extend it and allow insertion.
It sounded simple enough so TP's change jar was raided and I headed off to the garage. The internet did not mention that a vice, garden gloves, mole grips and pliers were also needed to ram a stack of low denomination coinage and assorted washers in to the spring. However after fifteen or so minutes the end of the spring passed over the retaining rod and the spacers were tugged free.
The remainder of New Year's Eve was spent at home watching a film. TP was working behind a bar at a local pub so Lord knows what time he will eventually make it back home.
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* A set of these is likely to be added to my toolbox very soon
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