Malcolm had ben asked to lend one of his cars to the local car club so they could show it on there stand at the NEC in Birmingham, which was nice. It meant we - me and Russ -  had the opportunity to get a cheap bus ride and have a most enjoyable day out, which sounded splendid. It was agreed that we would catch the bus at Boston bus station at 08:00 on the Sunday morning, Russ very kindly picked me up from home so with lunch bag in hand we set off in good time and arrived some 15 minutes early.  We decided that the best thing to do was to pay for the parking and sit in the car with a view of the whole of the bus station so we could see when the bus arrived. We waited about 20 minutes - no sign of the bus or of anybody waiting for a bus, which was odd. After about 10 more minutes of unsatisfied anticipation we came to the conclusion that shit had happened and started making phone calls. Sadly Malc most likely had his hearing aids switched off and we couldn't think of anybody else whose number we had that would have the faintest idea of what was going on. We concluded we had a choice - go home or drive the 100 odd miles, not much of a choice really, I paid the parking, Russ paid the fuel.

Definitely been doing too much work on Malcolm's cars recently and not enough on my own, various personal crappy things have got in the way too but at last got a few minor bits done over the last few days. I had a job list but couldn't find it, I remembered that securing the fuel pipe better in the trans tunnel was one job so I did that first, the DVSA are really hot on stuff not being properly secured, quite rightly so really. it was never really going to be a problem where it is but installing another two p clips makes absolutely sure of it.

Malc had taken the car out a couple of months back and had reported that the brakes weren't working very well and that the handbrake wasn't working at all. As it will be in action at the Lombard Classic event at Revesby abbey this weekend we figured it was time to have a look and see what was what. It was easy to see that the master cylinder on the handbrake was seized, replacement or rebuild was the only option. As soon as I looked at the footbrake master cylinders I noticed some seepage so decided they would need replacing or rebuilding too. I looked up prices and found the price of 3 new cylinders was about a fiver more than rebuilding the original Girling items so we just bought new. Two of them were 625 - 5 /8ths of an inch and the one for the fronts was a .75 or 3/4 inch one.

Before anybody says it I need to go straight to the elephant in the room, my engine is a v8, the Samdo is really meant for 4 cylinder 4 strokes but let's not worry about that right now, thee are far more important things to address.

I keep seeing a lot of folk on various forums that are attempting to restore or rebuild a motorbike for the first time and see the same easily avoided mistakes made repeatedly so thought it was time to do a bit about some of the pitfalls and how to avoid them.