....and when they all come together.
My bag of nails has been driven for over 3,000 trouble free miles so far this season. Suddenly, last Wednesday it decided it was getting old and needed attention. Firstly it started spluttering. Careful consideration of the fault when it happened (engine completely cutting out for a very short moment) lead me to isolate the fault as either low tension ignition or high tension somewhere between the coil and the dizzie cap. Back at base, cleaning the dizzie which was covered in dirt and oil, I could see no marks or tracks indicating a fault. The coil, however, did show blackening around the HT lead. Problem found, solution - fit a new coil (and order a spare to replace it).
Next, and this was almost without drawing breath, the brake warning light stopped working. I pulled the bulb, it was good. I checked the wiring, that worked too. So I removed the warning light fitting. It seems that after nearly fifty years the end had decided to fracture. A generous dollop of epoxy resin left to cure overnight made the unit stable. This was refitted with the original bulb, and now works again.
While the glue was curing, the tacho suddenly stopped! A voltmeter on the generator showed no reading, so off it came. The main bush had become loose and moved the drive dog out of mesh. I know this problem from before, in fact this generator is not very old. So I will have to define a permanent solution to 'fix' the bush.
It was a good excuse for a test drive, or three. Well, the weather has been so good, it seems wrong not to.
BTW, when I pulled the brake warning light bulb, a random washer fell out. This puzzled me until I realised that the bulb was a screw fitting, but the warning light wasn't. The washer was to earth the bulb to the fitting! I wonder if its use put the fitting under such pressure that it caused the fracture?