[Nasher]

I thought I’d sorted this issue, the old girl has been fine for weeks, but it happened again, and I believe I’ve discovered the unlikely cause.

I took her out for a ride yesterday, having volunteered to drop some paperwork down to one of Mrs Nashers colleagues who lives on Hayling Island as an excuse for another mug of coffee-like flavoured hot drink and a tray of re-fried, previously cooked and frozen potato strips.

Everything was fine until I crossed the bridge onto Hayling Island when the bike died as if starved of fuel.
This in itself was odd, because it’s @10 miles from home, and I’d got there with no problems.
What’s really strange is that it was exactly the same spot as the problem happened before, but I’d taken a different route to get there.
Once I’d coasted to the other side of the bridge the bike started instantly on the button.
I carried on, but it happened again on an open stretch of road down the West side of the Island.

Anyone guessed yet?

I dropped the paperwork off, visited the White painted concrete block hut of culinary dreams, and watched the boats go by whilst contemplating the problem.

It was whilst doing this that I realised it was a bit windy, and my tray of re-fried, previously cooked and frozen potato strips was getting cooler by the second.
Then I remembered it being windy when I first had the problem a few weeks ago, and there being a strong cross wind on both the bridge and the open stretch of road then and today.
To test my theory I headed home, and went a little slower along the open stretch of road, but obviously in the opposite direction.
Sure enough, the bike died, as if starved of fuel, but restarted again instantly.
And then going back over the bridge it died again, but restarted and ran fine for half a mile up the road.

So, I’ll explain, and I’ll have to put up with the smirk I’ll get from Flip because he told me ages ago this would come back to haunt me.

When I brought my M900 4 years ago one of the ‘mods’ that had been done to it by a previous owner was the breather boxes on the sides had been removed.
Possibly because like me they didn’t like the look of them.
The main carb breathers are cut off just after the valves, and the common float bowl breather was left to hang vertically just above the horizontal cylinder head behind the oil cooler.
I had tidied this up @3yrs ago by extending the float bowl breather down the side of the engine, but had starvation issues at speed which were sorted on the hard shoulder of the A3M by cutting the new breather pipe back again. I’d forgotten I’d done this until yesterday, it’s my age you know.

Anyway, I took out my Handkerchief, bundled it round the end of the float bowl breather pipe and stuffed it up above the small frame rail.

I then managed to ride backwards and forwards over the bridge, and through the cross wind, with no problems at all.
As a final test I removed the handkerchief and the bike died almost immediately the cross wind caught me.

Luckily, one of the things I’ve brought and squirrelled away over the last few years is a pair of breather boxes, so the Port side one went on the bike last night and I’ll test it as soon as I can.

I still don’t like the look of them, so might have to design and make a hidden version under the tank.

Nasher.