Unwinding

After a lazy start it was back into the garage to pour some petrol into Fidra's tank, plug in the voltmeter, press the starter and see what happened.

What happened was a rough but quickly smoothing out idle, a steady voltage of the correct level, and a big puddle of coolant on the floor.

Some rude words may have been said at that point.

I filled the rest of the morning with some more epoxying of the Africa Twin's replacement body panel repair, then a good old sanding down of the bigger scratches on the original panel and a first go with the Isopon filler.  While epoxy is generally mixed with a one to one ratio, the filler is about 1000 to one!  While it cured in the sunshine I had a quick lunch and then bestie had her lunch with a long video chat.  She suggested purging the air from Fidra's coolant pipes which I hadn't remembered thought to do, in case it was causing an overflow.  I was doubtful though.

While the sun was still shining and the temperature quite mild I pedalled over to the shops for milk and bread and a third syringe of the epoxy.  Mirabel's drivetrain is still clicking.  Then it was time to sit by the big pond for a while and think about nothing.  The two young swans have nearly lost all their brown baby feathers now.

Back home I fired up Fidra and…the coolant was still dripping steadily out of somewhere.  I will have to start taking things apart all over again.

By then though the filler on the panels had cured beautifully, so I spent an hour or so sanding it down to the plastic.  At least something worked today.  Then it was teatime with some rice and veg and terikyaki sauce which was excellent.