Went out in beautiful 12degrees, sunny, blue sky, bike felt good,
new front setup was great (all hail Randy). Had only one 'oh crap' moment, when I steamed into a corner at twice the speed I should have and nearly exited the corner via the grass verge. Single track British country lanes have a nasty habit of being tighter than you expected half way round. This one was quite savage and was more of a 30mph job than a 50mph one. However I had the foresight to fit R1 brakes about 5 months ago so all was well....just!
Washed the bike, did a little tidying up, applied some Würth dry chain lube (it is the nuts!) which is when it happened, I could stand it no more. I have tolerated it for quite a while but today I had to put a stop to it. As she sat in the sun she insisted on whistleing insesantly, I swear at one point I heard 'camp town races'. So I cracked out the tools opened up the fuel cap inner workings and performed a 'flapectomy'. Much easier than I thought. Only took literally 10 minutes to do. Took longer to get the spring mounted rubber gasket to sit properly than to do the whole job!! The little spring and ball escape antics where well anticipated, thanks to all for the heads up, but my word are they committed little beggars, if they tried to make a break for it once they must have tried about 9 times. But perseverance in the end won out! So she now sits quite happily and quite quietly in the garage!!
That's too bad... I like the happy whistles from my baby. The only time a flapectomy needs to be done is when she stalls due to fuel starvation. '88- on really don't need it at all... Gravity-feed bikes only, typically.