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I worked for this band for about a year in the first half of the nineties. I reckon this "concert" was recorded within about a half a year after I gave up the job. The bass player was always on about the "carbon fibre" bass that he was having made, which I never saw. I reckon the one in the video must be it. The trick to the bass sound is, it is a double bass, but it has a magnetic pickup in it like an electric bass. The one he was using when I was doing their sound was a cheap wooden double bass, but it had the magnetic pickup, and sounded great. The brown guitar is a Maton. A truly beautiful guitar. I think the black one is a Gibson. The guitarist bought it from a bloke in Adelaide during the time I was working for them. I reckon the Maton was better. They are/were all truly excellent musicians. The songs were all "pop songs", but good. It was fun while it lasted, but it is probably good that I stopped doing it when I did. What came after was also good.

Woud have been convinient when the right side of the alu tank started to rattle on the head cover. Holding up the tank with your right hand and trottling with your left . Exiting trip home. Cheers Tom.

It think Mick if your mufflers are the std factory aluminium skinned units they started out black and then have faded through grey to violet. Phil

Continuing on.... Called Piaggio again...got Willie again. Cross examined him on expiration of recall records. He was adamant there was no recall on that vin .... and they stay "forever". Mean while I decided I'd put the shift spring in so I could get to the clutch bleeder... well I got the clutch bled and the brakes while I had the $7 dot 4 open. Never got to the tyranny cover because I spent hrs getting the shock bottle off. Pulled the starter and side cover off to get to the 10mm nylocks and invented a tool to hold the stripped out Allen button heads. I got it but had to give up because I was all out of swear words...wanted to just put theT dain plug back in so I annealed the crush washer.........🤣😄😅 then I smelled the rubber ..and that was my last swear.. .

That works . Cheers Tom.

I found an explanation for that: a forum acquaintance from a couple of german forums turns out to have fotos of my Le Mans from the time it was owned by the owner previous to the bloke I bought it off. According to the papers, he had it from some time in 2017 until the middle of 2022. The bloke before me bought it then, and sold it on to me at the end of 2022. Anway, in the one photo there is a conventional handle bar on it. Also, the mufflers in the photo are light gray coloured, not the purplish ones that are on it now. So the old girl is obviously a way off being "original". Unless, of course, one means "original" in the sense of "one of a kind"...

Accordion again. This bloke was big in the german speaking countries through the nineties. The accordion he is playing is one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steirische_Harmonika At the start of the video one can hear how important the bass side of the instrument can be. Part of the fun of mixing a band with one of those is getting that out, and making it sit with the bass guitar, should there be one. By the way, even if you think you can understand a bit of german, don't bother. They're Austrian, and singing in dialect. I can barely understand what he is singing, if at all.

Ya...can't understand leaving it gobbed like that. Even I would have scraped off the excess.... 🤣 maybe they cracked it open, smeared goo in the crack and sealed it back up....?? Ain't leaking now... Called Seacoast Sports who had a record of servicing it 4 times but never saw a recall or see one now on that vin. ... Going to change the oolong tea clutch juice. See if it still SNICKS. Was waiting to do that when I did my shift spring... I guess I'm doing that sooner than latter....pull my panties up and get at it. I was NOT looking for a project or death trap. Any tales of warning signs besides doccs false neutrals?

At the risk of overposting, I could not let this one get away . . .

I bet it was. Reminds me a bit of an occasion when I had a broken throttle cable. It was on my first bike, a Suzuki GSX 250 E. I was a student at the time, so money for maintenance was thin on the ground, and the awareness of the necessity thereof also a bit thin on the ground. So the throttle cable had probably not seen any lubricant since I had bought the bike. I was working as a motorcycle courier at the time. The cable broke in the middle of the day as I was on the way to a delivery with a load in the box. I made a loop in the broken end of the cable that I could get at with my forefinger, and rode the rest of the delivery and the way home through the middle of Melbourne with a "trigger throttle".

It seems pretty obvious that someone has had that apart for whatever reason, but it doesn't look like the work of a "professional" workshop to me. Maybe I'm too critical, though.

At about 25,000 miles, mySport started finding false neutrals, especially in the 1-2-3/3-2-1 shifts (traversing switchbacks - perhaps the WORST time to find a neutral). This was at the end of my warranty, but before the recall, so my issue was solved with a complete gearbox at the time. I would think shift behavior would be an indicator of the parts wearing excessively before a complete failure, but that is just conjectural . . . Skip, I have always used th blue Lightweight in the gearbox and switched away from the red Heavy in the reardrive after my ten year battle with reardrive leaks. I found the red Heavy impossible to judge fill volume and suspect I overfilled for quite a long time, possibly burdening the seals. Other factors contributed to reardrive struggles, no doubt.

Also:

Has anyone done the tranny job?? (No..not THAT tranny!)

Flirted with incoming rain today. Got a little wet, but it was worth it . . .