Bingo!

Well, you know that Cub noise that I was worried about? After chatting to my Cub Hexpert friends one of them got me to go out and make a sound recording of the noise so that he could try and determine where it might be coming from. I think my description of rattling, humming and a bit of whistling wasn't good enough for diagnosis. Eventually I had a brainwave and remembered that the camera I bought before the Canon I use for my work, a Fuji Finepix, has the facility to record movies. They'd be rather short movies because the max film length is about 15mins, that even so thats pretty good for a camera and plenty good enough for rattle recording. So I sent Diggy in NZ a huge file which, as well as capturing the noises, gave him some arty shots of the exhaust pipe and footrests - well to get the mic near to the engine thats what I had to do. I had a vague idea that the clutch was rattling, so it was off with the primary cover and a quick vid of the clutch - which I was able to move up and down, left to right and forward and back. I'm told this should not be possible. Diggy's instruction was to take the clutch apart. Got as far as I could without using violence, and found nothing obvious. Round to the gear box then and pull all the cogs out to check the condition of the bearing and bushes. Due to a rare bit of luck, Fido turned up to look at the RE I've got on long term loan (he's got a Lighting 535 so wanted to compare and contrast a few things) and I roped him into whacking the last bit of the clutch out - its on a taper and I'm only a girl and couldn't hit it hard enough. I don't quite know in which order things happened, but at some point, the nut that holds the front sprocket on fell out. Just like that. All by itself. So we concluded that maybe it was a severe lack of decent thread on the shaft and the nut that has caused the rattle. Too simple? Probably, but if I get a new one and fit it we shall find out. All I've got to do is track down a suitable replacement and then do a complete gearbox rebuild. Looks neat and compact from the vid, don't you think? hopefully this will aid the rebuild proces....
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I like the way some of you have picked up on the water cooled theme, some of the feedback I've got about that is a hoot! Thanks.
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Camping, anyone? I was planning to head to the hills next weekend but just remembered something else more important is planned, so reckon I might just take off tomorrow. Load her up and away I go. Anyone care to join me?