Persistence & Penetrating Oil

Work was the usual disorganised chaos of calls with people who a) should know better, b) clearly don't and c) therefore need to be told. There was the expected set of unrealistic expectations and ninety minutes when I had to be on my best behaviour for a customer call.

In summary the client's decision will be delayed … no surprises there then …. and they would also like us to modify our solution and pricing to to facilitate their evaluation … that one wasn't exactly left field either. We obviously have little time and there is only so much that can be done. It is a shame that our Sales Lead doesn't recognise this. I dutifully took the team through an analysis of the "ask" and it's impact on our costings and set the wheels in motion to get new cost estimates.

So that was work, challenging and a text book case of "how not to do it". I understand why it needs to be done this way and will do my utmost to complete the requests but I hope that The Piano Movers will learn from this experience and do things better next time.

Outside of work I receive a glowing report from the Doctor at my regular review and also made some progress on the disassembly of the Enfield. A few of the bolts have been stuck fast so, for the past week, I have been wandering out every couple of days and giving them a squirt of WD40. Today I attempted to release some of them and had a successful session ...

… I finally managed to removee the chain guard from the crud encrusted swing arm and, with the use of a pair of Mole Grips, the Allen bolt holding the exhaust header came free. Encouraged by this progress, I temporarily removed the front wheel to gain access to the mud guard bolts. These are steel bolts screwed in to the aluminium fork bottoms and galvanic corrosion was a concern. The combination of penetrating oil, good access and a few taps with a rubber hammer worked and the mud guard was soon added to the pile of scrap components.

At this rate I could be down to a bare frame by the weekend.