From:Dave Hennessey e-mail:dave@toyhouse.org
Subject:You won't believe this bad luck Date:Wed Oct 17 20:44:41 2007
Well, first the good luck. At the Jefferson AMCA meet, I spotted Erik Dunk's nice 29 KJ, and took a number of photos of it. I plan to add his bike to the web site next week.

Now the bad luck. I've got about 200 miles on my bike since the engine rebuild. Saturday, I took the bike out for a spin near our weekend home in semi-rural Virginia. Went about 6 miles, then turned around and went home. Late Sunday afternoon, I went to the garage to take a ride, but found that I no longer had a kick-starter! The big spring was there, the little spring was still in the "socket" - but no kickstarter crank. Looks like the pin just worked its way out, and the crank jumped out when I hit a bump. I'm surprised that I didn't hear it.

It has to be somewhere on either side of the road on that six mile stretch. Since it would get dark soon, I couldn't walk it, so I drove the truck real slowly with an eagle eye open - - hoping that it would be lying on the side of the road. No such luck.

I've been trying to take a 1/2 day off work and drive down there and walk the route. It might have only been a foot or two off the side in the grass, and I wouldn't see it from the truck. But work was busy this week, and I really couldn't get off.

I'm going to call in sick on Friday and go do the three hour walk - 1.5 hours up one side, 1.5 hours back the other side. If that fails, I've also made up some flyers offering a reward that I will put in mailboxes. Maybe someone mower the grass near the road and picked it up and tossed it in the garage.

Hopefully, it will turn up. If that fails, anyone got an extra kickstarter? It looks like it fits both the DeLuxe and the KJ - is that right?

Dave