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  • A Lovely Ride, A Broken Bike.

    Gen 20:04 on July 15, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , , Mechanics, , ,

    It’s Thursday 9th July and Gary decided to organise a little trip to get some more miles under my belt; around 50 miles of country roads with a few stops and a practise on some gravel. We also invited Mikey along for the ride. I won’t go on about it too much; I was a little shakey, still nervous round tight bends and couldn’t open her up because of the amount of revs I’m limited to, but all in all it was a nice ride. The gravel was a little bit scary but I managed it ok, we had a run in with a crazy Bandit lover who was admiring Mikeys bike a little too much!

    Biking-002

    After our ride we decided to join our friends at the local pub for a pub quiz. Just as I put my bike on its side stand and went to get off, the bike decided she loved me too much and came with me, side stand pinging back up and to my complete horror she was on the floor (admist a lot of swearing and throwing of gloves by me). Thankfully Gary and Mikey were there in seconds to pick her back up. We checked her over maticulously; broken clutch lever, a scratch on the mirror and a scuffed handle bar, not too bad really, much better than I was expecting!

    Biking-004

    About two hours later around 23:00 Gary and I go out to make our way home. I Get on my bike and turn her on, pull in my poor broken clutch, press the ignition and nothing… Dead. Well at least we know that my recovery works, I paid for it in my insurance premium (Carole Nash) so why not use it?! I’m making good money sense, right?! We tried everything we could think of to get the bike working but she just wouldn’t start so we had to call them. When he arrived, the recovery man couldn’t get her started either and so loaded her into his van and took us home.

    Come Saturday after purchasing a new clutch lever, costing £20.30, we removed the old one and replaced it, she worked again! At least the experience gave Gary a chance to show off his manly mechanical skills, well done :)

    Zuki is fine again; all ready for the next ride!

     
  • The Givi Upgrade

    Gary 08:24 on May 29, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: Givi, , Mechanics, , ,

    My Givi luggage arrived this week and I spent a couple of hours yesterday putting everything on the bike. A word of warning to anybody trying to fit both the Givi top case mount and the Givi PLX side case rails; don’t try and fit the top case mount first, you’ll end up having to unbolt everything you just bolted on because the side case rails need to be attached first!

    I don’t claim to be an expert mechanic; I never manage to pick up the right spanner first time, but I do like to have a go. I know fitting a couple of pannier rails and top case mount isn’t exactly rocket science, I also know most people wouldn’t even class it as mechanics but anything I do to the bike that needs a spanner or a torque wrench makes me feel great; I’m a real man, tinkering out in the garage with my tools, you know what I’m talking about guys.

    It took me about 2.5 hours to fit both the rails and the top case mount, everything is now fitted and feels pretty secure. I’ve uploaded images to the gallery so you can check them out there. This is the first modification I’ve made to the Albino, the one that absolutely needed to be done and I’m pretty pleased with the results; the boxes look good and I’ve now got 122 litres of storage space, a tad more than the 30 litres I had on the Monster.

     
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