TALES FROM THE SHED

Time passes. It does this at various rates, as you may already be aware. When a chap’s waiting for a clutch puller for a BSA to arrive – part number 61-3766, in case your memory is as clouded as my own enthusiasm – time can drag. A minute can feel like 66 seconds or so. Fans of interstellar distances and Dr Who time travel would of course be unfazed, though I doubt that the good Doctor wasted much time waiting for BSA clutch pullers to magically appear in the TARDIS.

The puller arrives. This is the second puller for the clutch, as the first to dive headlong through the RCHQ litterbox somehow had the wrong thread. At least, it wasn’t the thread inside the clutch. The second, however, had a rather more fine thread than the old one, and indeed screwed somewhat stiffly into the internal thread in the clutch. Delight unbounded, hurrahs several, things like that. I contemplated the clutch. The puller screws into the centre – in fact it was already screwed in, such is the meteoric pace of things in The Shed. And it works by a heroic chap tightening the big bolt in the middle, which acts against the gearbox mainshaft, pulling the clutch from its taper.

At this point, gentle reader, a chap is reminded that applying a spanner to a puller screwed into a clutch centre when that clutch centre is unrestrained by clutch plates – or indeed anything else – will result in the centre spinning merrily around