Posted by Maurice on February 22, 2002 at 11:35:38:
Tuesday evening the fifth valve linkage on my 56J broke at the rotor end of the s-shaped bar. With out getting into a long involved story I made three phone calls, local repair guy - large company - would have taken a while to get the part, Sonja (AT) UMI - very helpful but couldn't sell to me directly, and Matt (AT) Dillons. Got the part this morning drop-shipment from UMI!
I should add that this was not related to a problem with the horn. I had removed the valve section a few days ago to have nylon keys installed on the pistons. While I was cleaning things up (prior to reassembly) I rolled the large section of the horn over to wipe it down. The exposed portion of the linkage dug into the carpet and was bent slightly at the thread. When I straighted it out it didn't feel good at all and broke after about three hours of use.
By the way, my tempory fix was to take a plastice ball end joint (model aircraft type), drill and tap the end for 8/32, cut an 8/32 thread on the end of the broken linkage bar. Screwed it together, trimmed the ball end a little so it would travel on the rotor without binding and it worked fine.
Anyway, once again, Matt Walters has come to my rescue and I can't thank him enough. The folks at UMI aren't half bad either, thank you Sonja.
Maurice Plummer