Stators are submerged in oil

Lately I have been in keep fit mode. I have been cycling and last week I decided to take a walk on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Not long ago I used to take my camera and walk all day shooting photos of daily life. These days not so much because it irritates my foot, but I take it easy, take smaller steps and keep the distances manageable. As I was in the area, I decided to walk past this old house



It's the 3 storey walkup with the red roof. I notice that the veranda is now closed in. It used to be open



It was not considered to be in a good area back in the mid 1960's, and I notice that nothing has changed. It is still not in a good area but things look more deteriorated now. Earlier I walked past the front of the house intending to snap a closer photo, but the tenents came outside to enjoy the sunshine and I had to back off to a more discrete distance and zoom in, from a vantage point out of view.

It is not general knowledge that I was from a broken home and I thought my mean step-mother was picking on me as I was the one that always had to do the chores, while my step siblings didn't . One night I packed all of my worldly possessions into the trunk of my car and went to work as usual . . . only I never went home again. I found a room in a boarding house and shared my room with a friend. It wasn't the greatest existence but I continued to go to work expecting my family to call me on the phone at work to ask about me, but they didn't. A couple of weeks later, my dad called and asked how I was but we were not well off and he couldn't help much . Not long after I decided that a boarding house was not for me. Dinners were Kraft dinner and perhaps a hot dog or two for protein, preceeded with a stack of bread and butter. To this day when a meal is served with bread as the starter I often think of these sad times when I was alone with no support .

When I left the boarding house I was finally on my own. I had to fend for myself and I rented half of the upstairs of this old house, photos above. I look at those two windows on the top floor and remember that the one on the right was my bedroom, and the left one was the kitchen that I had to share with another young person. As I walked by it reminded me of these old times that I would rather forget. This was nearly 45 years ago and I still remember the sadness.

I walk around the corner to see if my previous mechanic, DJ Paul is in



He was the one who used to work on my SV650. He used to work out of a private garage, but now he has a storefront called, Motomethod. You can hire him to do all the mechanical work, or you can rent a lift and work on your bike yourself and call him over if you run into problems



Chelsea has a failed stator which she installed and somehow there is now an oil leak. I did not know until today that the stator is immersed in oil. here she is with her 600 sport bike leaned on the frame sliders while she removed the stator cover



with the cover off DJ Paul noticed part of the previous gasket was not fully removed causing the new seal, not to seal correctly and the oil just gushed out when the engine produced some pressure



That is the starter pinion gear near the bottom . After her bike was put back together and started for a few minutes



both of them crawled underneath to check for oil leaks . There was some oil residue but it was presumed that it was not completely cleaned off the inner fairings from the original leak, and was dripping down



There is another person who uses the shop to make custom bikes using 650 engines. Here is one example



later on this other person started one up to go on a road test