Sunday, June 10, 2012

I advise you all to throw your K2F's in a ditch now.

At one point I had opinions about strange things...things like magnetos, strong opinions about them, in fact. As I got older and I had to deal with a smaller selection of the things, but a greater selection of other things, those opinions drifted further from from my mind and I instead developed opinions about things that had nothing to do with mags, opinions about flooring, for example... However, I recently discovered that as you sit on the side of the road waiting for your friend George to ride his annoyingly spark-endowed Triumph back to your house to grab your truck to come load up your annoyingly spark-challenged AJS, those opinions come flooding back like a wave.
Once upon a time I had a Royal Enfield Constellation. I hated that bike. Hated it for many reasons, only one of which was its magneto. It's likely that it was about that time I began having opinions about mags. In particular, I didn't like K2F's. Compared to the SR1 on my AJS single, it seemed like a needlessly complicated device, with its fancy rotating armature with everything having to flow in and out of it and such, plus important bits that might need changing as part of routine overhaul buried deep inside...horrible (the word "surgery" always seems to occur soon after the word "condenser" in K2F-land). But then there was the lowly SR, relegated to powering industrial engines an' boats an' such. Not nearly glamorous enough for a motorcycle, I guess, so they were rarely used on two wheeled devices. I never understood this. They are probably the best thing Lucas ever made, the whole thing can be stripped down and rebuilt with a flat tip screwdriver and a small wrench in 5 minutes, lovely. Oddly enough, two of the very few bikes that used an SR were one year of AMC singles (which just happened to be the year I had) and a couple years of Enfield twins (which mine wasn't). I decided I needed an SR2 on the Constellation. I Acquired one. I never bothered to install it. I sold the Constellation. Did I mention I hated that bike?

Back in the present, the Mongrel 20's K2F (rebuilt at considerable expense just last year) packed up this past Sunday just as I was set to load the bike for British in the Blue Ridge and some trail riding on Wednesday night. I can't rebuild a K2F, in fact I don't think anyone can. I once heard from a reliable source the rebuild procedure goes something like this:
1: Receive mag from customer
2: Wait 'til moonless night, bury mag on sanctified ground, sacrifice 2 chickens and a goat on spot mag is buried
3: Wait 'til full moon, exhume K2F, return to customer in exchange for much money
4: Wait a year or two and receive same K2F from customer, repeat steps 1-3
At first I looked for another mag to quickly drop in the duff one's place, I couldn't find a working K2F in the entire Southeast, I needed a Plan B....I glanced around the room, my eyes happened to fall upon the spare SR1 that sits next to my computer (its sat there for a good while, you don't need spare SR mags), I was reminded I hated K2F's, a thought came to mind "I've got an SR2, and I've already modified the mag pinion to take an auto advance". As I waited for phone calls to be returned telling me a drop in replacement did not exist in the miniscule time available I checked to see if the SR would fit, it would. I checked if it had spark, it had spark. Did it have spark in the right direction, it did not, but because its an SR, I grabbed my trusty high tech Magneto Grade Screwdriver and brief moments later (ish) it had spark in the right direction. By 4 o'clock Tuesday the K2F's options were running out as time was running out. The SR it was, time for an adapter plate and a plan to get it in there
It was a tight fit, but it did fit
Just needed to reroute the exhaust to clear the much taller instrument
And the job was done
Did it work? I didn't know and honestly didn't care. I was beat, my shop reeked of a dead rat that I couldn't locate, it was hot, I was being attacked by some of the horrible flesh eating insects of which Florida is well endowed and time was up. Nothing for it but to load up and hope it just needed timing the next day.
The pressure was on, for the three days this process had been playing out I had been crowing how much better SR mags are than K2F's. George and Max were ready to pounce. As I stayed back and timed the engine with my trusty wood wedge, brass rod and cigarette paper they went riding on their reliably sparking Triumphs, visions of the abuse they would heave my way when they returned to a non working AJS dancing in their heads. The AJS started and ran. George and Max looked disappointed. In the end it was a great weekend, this past weekend, with three happy Floridians on mighty Five-hunnert twins scaring themselves witless on horrifying clay downhills in the north Georgia woods, all 6 cylinders just a-sparkin' away (ish). Lovely.

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