For me the most interesting and exciting thing related to our old bikes is travelling with them, to me that´s the salt in the soup!
I travelled a lot with Rocinante y Dulcinea from the north of Germany to Spain, Italy, France, all over Germany and with my first Tremmezzo in the beginning of the 80s once to England and Ireland.
Since I returned to that beautiful bikes in 2000 I began reducing the tools and spare parts to carry with me (also thinking that the spares you carry you won´t need!). As you may know I built up Dulcinea by my own so I do know exactly what I need (there is no phillips screw and the only slotted screw is the one for the mixture on the carbs).
The discovering of a very tiny but strong ratchet of high quality from Wera Mini Zyklop/Förch (Wera 8001 A , 60 dents snaping at 6°) was a great step forward. All kind of bits enter directly, together with a ¼ inch adapter and an extansion you only have to carry the bits and hexagonal nuts you need. And if you solder a ¼ inch nut that you´ll lnever need (for ex. 7mm) in an old school plug spanner you can even take out the rear plug of a 501 Camel using the ¼ inch adaptor withut dismanteling half the bike!
And you won´t need to carry a 14 mm spanner that we only need to take of the cube of the carbs and not even a 17 and 19 or 28 or 30 mm spanner to take of the wheels or adjust the chain if you have a nice Knippex pliers on bord that opens parallel and will not hurt the nuts. (the big spanners of the foto usually I don’t carry with me)
With the tools in this two bags that don´t ocupy that much place I can take off the cilinders and do the normal maintenance works. Ok, to take off the alternator I have to look for a 22mm spanner and loosen the nut by stepping on the rear brake with 6. gear engaged, but I have the extractor for the flywheel on bord. This is meant only as a beginning of collecting ideas to minimize and optimize tools and spare parts when travelling with our signorinas. Surely there will come up some useful suggestions. At least I´ll keep on with longer trips as long as I can
