Barely able to contain my excitement, I wandered into the bar (sorry, barn) to scrape away a winter's and more's worth of cowdung and muck and see what I have got on mine. Being the only bike in my private world which hasn't had its bowels opened in years, I didn't know . . . but the pix here looked sort of wrong to me.
Lo, after a nervous moment looking for any sort of hexagon, be it head of a bolt or a humble nut . . . there was nothing on the drive side. So the hole's a dreaded threaded thing, with the thing within pretty much flush with the case. Nothing broken. Odd, I thought.
Sigh . .
So round to the timing side, scrape away the matching winter crud (we don't want a cowdung imbalance on these slippery country roads where fine handling matters . .) and what is there?
Answer, a nut, just-past flush with the thread's end, but a nut for all that.
Which made me think. A stud which goes into an open threaded hole? Why? A stud into a blind hole, and a nut on the timing side, fair enough. Or even a blind hole and a set-bolt going in from the timing side, sort of OK - although that would remind me too much of certain bits of my AMC twins which work that way - until the bolts break.
Another of life's imponderables. If I was dictator, it wouldn't be like that. But then nor would a lot of other things. More wine please nurse.