The weather turned out to never clear up. We decided Sunday morning that we’d rather take a meandering way home instead of adding a long return trip from Fredericksburg. Next time. We took a couple of small side trips, decided against a couple others and neglected to make a shopping stop we’d planned to make. When we got home, we had time to unload everything from both trikes and go inside to relax before it started raining. Perfect timing. Unlike the engine…

The starter gave me no trouble first thing in the morning at the hotel, but it did surprise me a couple times during the day. For example, I killed the engine a time or two at a light or in some other traffic situation and it chose then to just go clunk instead of turning over. Continued stabbing at it was generally successful and it would start perfectly when the starter would finally turn the motor. When we were nearly home and stopped for a late lunch, it wouldn’t start in the parking lot until I’d pounded on the solenoid a bit.

The Autozone starter has a lifetime warranty, so I don’t expect any difficulties in exchanging it, beyond the minor pain of changing it out. Way easier than on a car.

The other problem I had may turn out to be my own fault, at least partly. During the course of the weekend, especially on Sunday, the engine got worse about hesitating at takeoff, which contributed to the afore mentioned killing at stoplights. It got to where I would keep it reved to around 2000 RPM at stops.

As Toni napped on the couch last night, I did a lot of vacuum advance distributor and carburetor selection research on the internet. Lots of good data there, if you have the patience to wade through the irrelevant, or at least unrelated, stuff around it.

For the big picture, I think it comes down to this. The Solex H30/31 carburetor provides a vacuum advance signal, but it is a fairly weak signal, intended for the stock vacuum advance distributor with it’s large vacuum dashpot. The distributor I have has a smaller dashpot and is probably intended for the 34PICT carburetor, which provides a stronger vacuum advance signal. I also have learned authoritatively which port the advance is supposed to connect to. Armed with these bits and without the performance anxiety of a crew of lookers-on, I will see if I can make this combination work. The new carburetor started and idled nearly perfectly out of the box, so I have done no adjustment on it at all. I will adjust it as best I can with either the new distributor with no vacuum attached or if I must, with the 009 reinstalled. If after that I still can’t get the vacuum advance to work correctly, I will see if there is any change I can do to the distributor, maybe change a spring or something of that nature. Finally, I will replace it with the $160 unit from aircooled.net that is made specifically for the H30/31 carb.

In any case, it occurred to me this morning that I don’t remember ever tightening the clamp on the distributor. I remember looking for my 10mm socket for that reason, but I don’t remember actually doing it. In adjusting the throttle cable a time or two, I had to remove the distributor cap and may well have moved the distributor. Besides, an unclamped distributor is subject to movement just from being on a running engine.

So, at lunch, I checked it. Sure enough, it’s not clamped down.

The other issue was the speedometer. The cable was squeaking Friday night. I oiled it Friday night and it was quiet Saturday, but still apparently broke at some point. I had my GPS bungied to the tank, partly because I wanted to check the speedo against it. After the speedo died, I just bungied the GPS to the face of the speedo and used it all weekend. While I probably can just replace the speedo cable, we have a new VDO electronic speedometer that I picked up intending to use on the Harley trike before I succumbed and ordered the actual replacement Harley speedo.

Electrically, the VDO speedometer is going to be trivial to install. A pickup coil that I can probably wind myself and a few magnets attached somewhere, probably one of the rear wheels, a little geometry and programming and it should come up easily. The trickier bit will be mounting it. I found some VDO gauge mounting cups, the back of which is not 100% water proof, but I’m sure can seal it well enough and it will otherwise work and look really good.