I guess we are or have become used to many decisions being made for us by digital processors. One of the main aspects of me arriving at Morgan ownership was to get back to basics and self reliance in terms of maintenance and repair having grown up as a child of the make do and mend generation.
My first motorcycle and many thereafter, required me to operate the lever to retard the ignition, turn on the fuel tap, "tickle" the carburettor, operate the choke manually, put it in gear and pull the machine backwards until the piston was felt to have arrived at compression thus restricting rearward progress. The aforementioned process equated to requiring less effort involved when operating the kick-start lever, thus with a bit of luck making starting a less physical effort and less chance of my ankle suffering a "kick back" should one have forgotten to operate the advance and retard lever. I suspect if one has ever suffered a kick back, then it kinda assists to remember that part of the ritual in bringing the machine back to life..? I guess my first m/cycle being a 350cc AJS and not of a sporting variety did not have overly high compression ratio, and thus did not have the advantage or added complexity of a de-compression lever.
All of which perhaps seems a bit of fuss and perhaps a too much for the modernised man to handle....? Or if like me your memory is somewhat lacking as you have aged..? Perhaps in order to assist the difficulty in remembering to turn on a simple lever operated tap fitted betwixt the oil tank and the engine to prevent the oil build up in the sump due to periods of lay-up, if you also fitted a similar manually operated tap to the fuel to shut it off, then using both taps to isolate oil and fuel at when parking up, one might hope once into the habit of using the taps, you might then be saved the embarrassment and expense of driving off having forgotten to turn the oil tap on when the lack of fuel kicks your memory back into gear...?
Of course if you find such processes all to arduous or think your grey matter could be over taxed to any degree, then perhaps another form of transport may be worthy of consideration...?
Yeah, kinda think I`m heading that way myself...
T`would be interesting to learn the processes involved in firing up an "original" Jap engined M3W, I suspect they may not be a lot different from that which I grew up with when firing up my old m/cycles..?
