New duffer member

[Rob Harknett]

You do not mention what bike you have. If AJS or Matchless, you may consider joining the club. As a guest you have a time limited free access to the club forum. Ah notice on your profile you have 61 Matchless G12. It would be good to mention this, as the topic is under General topics.
Some of our very old bikes do not have a clutch or gearbox. They still get ridden. Even your G12 is nearly 60 years old. So will take some getting used to.

[Duncan]

Hi Mark

Great bike , enjoy it.

Personal view is that valve master is unnecessary in all but early engines, although you have alloy heads there are valve seats set into it.

You bike will run happily on unleaded, I would advise using the premium grades at the moment to avoid the worst of the ethanol issues.

There are several aspects that can make a clutch feel heavy, the most common and simplest to test is the cable and cable run, a kinked / non lubricated (don't use oil if cable is nylon lined) cable will feel heavy as will one with tight turns (if you have a spare cable try fitting both ends without routing it tight to the frame and see if that improves things. You should also look at the levers to see if they have a 7/8” pivot distance, a lot of after market ones are 1”.

[clive]

Not sure what happened to the original post.

[Janet]

If you go to the General Topics index and click on the username for the original poster, it says it does not exist.

[Smithymc]

I have been having a little difficulty with registering but hopefully sorted now.

Ok, another simple one- oil grades. Go by the original handbook or are modern oils better suited? Oil always a contraversial topic on my more usual 70s car forum.

Thanks

Mark

[Stuoyb]

I have been having a little difficulty with registering but hopefully sorted now.

Ok, another simple one- oil grades. Go by the original handbook or are modern oils better suited? Oil always a contraversial topic on my more usual 70s car forum.

Thanks

Mark

And on here, most use straight SAE 50 but you will get a multitude of different opinions.
The phrase “ light the blue touch paper” comes to mind.

Welcome to the club

[vincentvv]

Welcome to the club! Nice to see a new member passing by on the forum. Any questions can be asked here but I advise you to make use of the search button in the up right corner. Allot of questions have been answered in the past and are very helpfull to find a quick answer.

Kind regards,

Vincent.

[Smithymc]

Have I got something missing?

To my rusty technique, getting the bike on the centre stand is harder that I recall, but there is no foot 'peg' on the stand to give the additional leverage of body weight- and not an obvious place to pull up either.

Are there various centre stands available or is it something to get used to?

Thanks

Mark

[Group Leader]

Hi Mark,

I can thouroughly recommend the technique mentioned on another thread which is essentially this;

1) Depress the centre stand until it makes contact with the ground using your left foot.
2) Grasp the rear mudguard handle with your right hand
3) Grasp the bottom edge of the seat, as close to the front (i.e. by the tank) with your left hand.
4) Lift up with your left hand whilst pulling back and lifting up with your righthand and obviously stopping the stand moving with your left foot.

Easy and simple even for this 5' 2", vertically challenged newbie!

Hope that makes sense!

Alan