Skeggy or bust

Summer's here so it made sense to make a dash for the seaside. Having already done the close beaches we decided to have a run to Skegness, because, well, it's there.

Do-it-Dave roared up and backed it in to the driveway just in time for the obligatory greasy spoon breakfast to tide us over on the journey. Lard requirements taken care of we spent all together too much time attaching the go-pro cameras to the bikes. The roll-bar mounts we've invested in allow the camera to me mounted on the front forks nice and low down giving a good camera angle. They are buggers to get on though as the screws are on the inside of the forks not the outside.

Cinematic requirements taken care off, a quick fill up at the station to allow "progress to be made", then off we went.

Do-it-Dave prepares to make progress

 
The first leg was up the A1 to Peterborough where we fell at one of the first hurdles when the road I thought we wanted to take was actually closed. It turns out my superb navigational skills had temporarily let me down though and the road was open. The closed one was nothing to do with us. D'oh.

What do you mean we drive on the left here?

Finding the right road (the A16 which leads most of the way to Skegness) we were on the home stretch but this bit of road was full of tractors all doing 5mph. In both directions preventing overtaking!!! (only one direction at a time, they weren't quantum tractors). Luckily when gaps did appear the horses under our control sprang into action making short work of getting past things.

At Boston (the English one... my navigation skills aren't that bad) a run up the A52 took us right into Skeggy itself. Which was full :(

Having looked on the web for bike parking and failing miserably before setting off a random carpark was chosen (the fact it was next to the donut stall is mere coincidence). However, during a wee break it turned out not to be the optimum one (see map later for the free bike park).

Donuts (did I mention them) were taken care off in short order, and some pics taken to prove we got here.

Top Donuts!!!

On my right... the sea.

Setting the world to rights.

Bless.. he's all worn out.

To avoid tractors on the way back we headed over to Grantham and the roads were empty (who would want to go to Grantham anyway) allowing good progress to be made. After a minor discussion at the lights about which was the A1 south (they could mark it "The South"... that would help) we successfully negotiated Grantham and escaped alive. Do-it-Dave made a run for the border and I caught up with him having a kip in a lay-by several miles later. Yoof of today eh. No stamina :p

Made it back with just over 200 miles on the clock. A grand day out!


View skeggy in a larger map

Fiddling with cats.

In a bid to ride longer and longer journeys on the bike in preparation for "Bikerhux does France" I took Monday off and embarked on my longest journey to date. Cambridge to the Cat-n-Fiddle in the Peak District.

The journey started with a brimming of the tank at the local petrol station before realising I'd left the GPS at home (D'oh) necessitating a small detour back past Chez Hux.

From there there's a lot of motorway miles, 143 to be exact taking the A14, and then the M6 up over the top of Birmingham and until I reached Sandbach Services for a wee break. This is just before the turnoff onto non-Motorway roads so was a good place to stretch the legs. From there it's off to Congleton and then Macclesfield which brings me out on the west end of the A537, the Cat-n-Fiddle road.

Unfortunately, just as I left Macclesfield it start raining which didn't help on this twisty windy road. I pulled over into a lay-by, donned my wooly neckwarmer and thermal top over my jumper (think "spiderman's really let himself go") and gave my visor a good clean as the rain stopped before heading off again. The road is lovely to ride and definitely worth another visit when the weather is better. There's some very tight turns, some straights up the side of hills, and cracking views all round.

The Cat and Fiddle Inn is on the top of the hill on this road, and as I arrived just around lunchtime, it would have been rude not to stop for a bite to eat. Cracking steak and onion baguette with a pint of coke to wash it down with and a couple more bikers sheltering from the cold in there too.
 

Bikerhux on tour - Peak District episode

This is the sign you're looking for

From there it's more twisty-windy-ness along to Buxton, then heading south down the A515 to Sudbury, A50 to the M1, then warp factor 9 all the way home.

Hmmm.. it wasn't like that this morning.

View Cat and fiddle in a larger map

A map of where I went.

A grand day out and it's increased my previous maximum daily mileage by 50%. Roll on the summer and some more long rides.

Brum Brum.

The long way to Long Melford

The British Summer, being what it is, needs to be used up when it eventually arrives so I reluctantly(*) put a days holiday in for Thursday and arranged with BikerFrank to have a ride out.

(*) Not reluctantly at all.

The 25 miles to his house warmed the bike up nicely and with the temperature being in the high 20's it didn't cool down much as we had a quick drink while planning where to go.

The route started with a filling of the tanks at Chez Tesco in Saffron Walden before heading off to Steeple Bumpstead (no sniggering at the back please). From there it's country roads all the way through the Clares (Clare and Stoke-by), Cavendish, and finally in to Long Melford itself. BikerFrank was much quicker through the corners taking the lead but my FZ6 "makes good progress" out of them quickly catching him up. All the little villages on the way were really quant (think Midsomer Murders type places, villages greens a plenty and corner shops). The roads are nice and twisty all the way there but there are a couple of patches of potholes to watch out for.

Eventually we rolled into Long Melford and parked the bikes up, catching our breath.

And... relax.

Long Melford, as it's name suggests, is, well, long. It's a long street with ye olde worlde shops on both sides, and as luck would have it, no lack of pubs eager to serve us sustenance. The Cock and Bell did us a couple of top Ciabattas and drinks, and the barmaid forced us to order clotted cream icecream for afters. No really. She did :p . I'm pretty sure clotted cream is a vegetable so that counted as one of the five a day, as did the salad I left at the side of my plate (you don't eat that do you?)

BikerFrank enjoys his pud.

We rode back again the same way with a little detour through Wimbish for me to play scarecrows.

Worzel-Hux has his biking head on

View Long Melford in a larger map

After a refreshing cuppa and a choccy biccie at BikerFranks it was off home, arriving with 103 miles on the clock since I left in the morning and a nice tinging sound coming from the engine. Brum Brum :)

Getting the paper.. the Long Way Round.

Sunday is paper day, and the bike needed a top up so I took it on an outing to the petrol station 1 mile away. However, it was 25C, not a cloud in the sky, and I was in the mood for "making progress" so it was the scenic route back for me after brimming the tank off.

My cunning plan involved a bit of boring riding to warm the bike up before getting onto the road at Abington (see map later) which has some nice sweeping bends which makes up for the plethora of low speed limits and signs saying don't speed.

From there Haverhill looms large so bearing swiftly left to nip round the back of it the A143 beckons which is a lovely country road all the way up to Bury St Edmunds. There were dozens on bikes in this road and we all nodded at each other while grinning manically inside our helmets while enjoying the route. I obviously wasn't the first one to find this road :-)

After reaching Bury my arse was complaining so I took the quick way home along the A14, making it back to the petrol station I left earlier a mere 90 miles later, and needing to refill the tank yet again.

The bike could be heard sighing to itself when I finally rolled up on the drive as the engine went "ting ting ting" as it cooled down.

A grand day out and a top road found for future rideouts.


View Cambourne-Linton-Bury in a larger map

Now available in HD

Do-it-Dave and I finally succumbed to the irresistible urge to purchase cameras for our bikes to record our ride outs. That nice chap Tim at Pashnit did us a cracking price on two GoPro HD cameras plus mounting brackets and today was the first day without snow, rain, sleet, other generally horrible weather so we could try them out. 

There are enough brackets in the kit that comes with the camera to mount it in almost any place on you or the bike but I've gone for the helmet mounted option for the moment.

The main issue with helmet cam is that you can't tell when it's lined up correctly. However, with the aid of a laser pen from eBay (£2 in my hand) and two squares of velcro you have BikerHux of Borg, now with laser targetting.
 

 You can see it's attached to the side of the camera and the dot just to the left of my head is the laser. Before a rideout this lets you line up on the garage door and lock off all the bolts before popping the pointer in your pocket and heading off at high(*) speed.

(*) Not actually high speed officer.

Dave has gone for the side mounted helmet cam and also a mounting bracket on the front brake master cylinder for a bike mounted forward shot (the same position on my bike gives you a lovely view of a light smoke windscreen but his just pokes round the edge). 

The first ride out (after bacon and sausage butty rations were consumed) just took us on a loop out to the dual carriageway and back again to check all the alignments. As we were about to pull off the drive a police car drove past, and then as we headed out it had done a spin round the roundabout at the end of the road to follow us. Unfortunately for him, we'd turned the opposite way. Better luck next time mate :p

A spin up onto the A428 gave nice straight and emptyish roads where I could overtake dave and he could overtake me getting some nice passing shots.

Me passing Dave. Sights you don't see too often.

After passing Dave we did a loop round the next roundabout to come back again and got some nice knee down action of BikerHux.

 A loop around the roundabout brought us back again and up to the police, yet again who were camped out, for safety reasons, nothing to do with revenue generation, behind some trees trying to catch speeders on the dual carriageway.

 

They might be slightly less visible if they didn't have a large arrow with POLICE on the top of it ;-)

Just round the corner I spotted yet another of their chums, this time on a bike, pulling onto the next roundabout. I saw the exit he came on at so had a pretty good idea he where he was going, but the sneaky bugger did a 360 so I had to stop at the roundabout. They were obviously out to try and trip people up. Grrrr.

 

Move along now. Nothing to see here. No naughty bikers. He's gone .... spank it!!!!!

Dave was obviously ready for another cuppa and a sandwich as he pulled a cheeky overtaking manoeuvre, complete with a nice backfire on the way back to Chez Hux .

 

After cups of tea were brewed we played back the video from the cameras to check the alignment of them was correct. Mine was a bit too much up in the air capturing more sky than stricly necessary and Daves just catches the front of his windshield so slight tweeks later we headed out again. 

This time we got caught in a downpour but Dave-cam comes with automatic windscreen wipers (he leaned forward and wiped it with his glove). Mine on the other hand is on top of my head so I have to go fast to blow the raindrops off it. Officer.

The backroads were covered in mud, gravel, potholes and misc things not conducive to bimbling along on bike so we took it gently on this route. 

Dave caught me up at the junction here and lulled me into a false sense of security. 

 

 As I pulled out gently (missus) he spanked the arse off his bike and headed off at warp speed into the distance leaving me chuckling merrily.

By now, toasted sandwiches were calling so we attended to that and checked the footage of the 2nd ride  before heading out on the last and longest ride. This was out past cambridge, hopping off the A14 towards Newmarket for some nice sweeping bends. 

View Newmarket and A11 in a larger map

Coming back up the M11, one of the boys in blue was doing 71 mph and watching for people overtaking him which stacked the traffic up no end. Ho Hum. Dave drove past him at 72 mph but I just sat and waited till he turned off before "making progress". The rain then started so I headed straight home while Dave made a dash for his garage making it just as the rain got heavy. I meanwhile did 10 miles in the spin cycle up the dual carraigeway and sat drying off while reviewing the days footage. 

All in all the quality of the footage is really good. On full HD (1920x1080) it's churning out 100 MB per minute which means a 16 GB card won't be full before the battery runs out (or you need to stop for a wee, whichever comes first). Now we just need some nice weather to go for longer rides and gets some movies of knee down action. Roll on Spring!!!

Hux has got the Horn

I've noticed that the horn on my FZ6 is, how shall we put this diplomatically..... shite. This came to the fore when riding along a dual carriageway when a car joined from the slip road on my left so I moved over into the fast lane as it looked like he was coming straight out in to me. He did that, but also swung straight from the slip road straight into the fast lane in front of me as he wanted to overtake a car somewhere in the distance I guess. I hit the brakes and laid on the horn and a sound a bit like a gnat farting came out which he completly ignored :(

To remedy this I invested in a Stebel Nautilus Compact air horn which raises the sound level of the horn from the original aforesaid gnat fart to 139 dB. Ouch!

Those friendly chaps at eBay provided one of these for £20 and another tenner got me all the wiring kit (well I could have bought a bag of 100 spade connectors, but I only needed 6).

This morning saw the installation of this little puppy, after some dedicated reading on the FZ6 forum to see how they did it. The inside left fairing appeared to be the favourite option, so I set to work on that. The immediate issue is that there are no mounting screws in a sensible place that allow the horn to be secured. However, have cordeless drill, will travel, resulted in the below.

You can see where i drilled a small hole in the fairing, the ouside of which is covered by anothe bit of fairing, and the inside of which is hidden by the inner fairing. Move along now, nothing to see here :)

The horn itself then nestles in the side there, and a cable tie is there for emergencies while I run it in in case it works loose.

With the fairing back in place you can only just make out the logo sticking out the bottom.

And looking up from the front wheel you can see the pisspoor original (now disconnected) and the new HORN.

Disconnecting the original horn leaves two wires with spade connectors on the ends, one being ground, and one being the horn control signal. Luckily the relay that powers the new horn needs two signal, one being ground and the other being the horn control. And by feeding the wires back into the frame on the left hand side they just reach the relay which nestles in front of the battery. So that's one easy bit of the wiring done. The more complex part is getting a 12V from the battery, via a fuse, to the input of the relay, and from the output of there to the horn. While I was routing that I decided to route the horn ground back the same way to the battery ground rather than the frame. The wires all get sheathed in nylon ... errr.. sheathing (you can see it coming through the plastic clip behind the horn in the first picture on here so it almost looks professional).

When I work out how to get video on here I'll take a clip of it. But it's loud... damn loud!!!!!!!

Lets see the motorists ignore the horn now :)

Edit:-
Thinking about how the horn was perched on a screw through the plastic I decided to make something a bit more robust. When I say "make" I of course mean standing in the bracket aisle of B&Q trying to work out what I could cannabalise to do the job. It turned out that two right angle brackets coming to a wallet friendly total of £1.90 were just the job. One goes on the inside of the frame to go vertically up and then over the top of the horn. The horn then securily bolts onto to like this.

To provide support for this, I hacksawed the other bracket to produce a flat plate to go on the outside of the fairing. This is small enough to be covered by the outer-outer fairing, but large enough to spread the load across an area of the plastic instead of a small point where the bolt goes through. Like this.

Everything fitted back together with a bit of fairing jiggling so I'll see how it is on my road test tomorrow in to work.

Pick a place with a silly name. Ride there. Why not?

The bike was down to the reserve as I pulled into the garage after work on Friday night, and with a bit of fine weather this morning a fill up, collecting the sunday papers at the same time, and then a mornings ride seemed like the right thing to do.

I fancied a bit of speedy riding on good roads, then some twisties, so had a look at the map and found a place with a suitably sniggerable name (Helions Bumpstead) that I could work into such a route.


View test in a larger map

The first bit leaves from Morissons petrol station and heads at legal speeds, honest officer, along the lovely new A428, devoid of all traffic and with no speed cameras on it :). This helps warm up the bike and the tires, and blow the cobwebs out of my head. After a stretch on the A14 which gets a bit busier around Cambridge, I hopped onto the Bottisham road, which runs parallel with the A14 but is empty and has some nice sweeping bends on it as well as some long straights. From there it's doubling back slightly onto another long straight road through Six Mile Bottom (snigger) and onto the A11 for a couple of junctions which allows for "progress to be made".

Left turn towards Linton takes me onto another road with nice sweeping bends, and bits of dual carraigeway to get past the slow lorries. This goes all the way to Haverhill, avoiding it, which is always a good thing :p.

With hindsight I should have turned right towards Steeple Bumpstead one junction later allowing for three snigger-worthy names en-route but turned to Helions Bumpstead instead. This was a twisty windy road with bits missing out of it and evidence of horses (or someone randomly carrying buckets of horse-muck and dumping it on the road) so gently does it all the way.

Then a right turn to Castle Camps and a nice ride through the countryside to Bartlow, and back onto the Linton road. By this time the munchies were setting in so I took the fast route home down the A505 and M11, again making good progress.

A celebratory pork pie called to me from the fridge once the bike was safely put to bed in the garage, so I attended to the aforesaid pie immediately.

In total that's 80 miles so approx half the tank of petrol I just put in it this morning.

Off to see Inspector Morse

In preparation for the epic France fest planned much further down this blog, I've taken this week off to get some miles in on the bike on longer trips, and also play with loading it up with luggage, riding with extra weight on the back.

Today's ride out started at the crack of just after 8am with my light luggage pack of backpack with cereal bars, extra t-shirts in case it got cold, paper map and garmin GPS in case I got lost. My target for the day was Oxford which is about 80 miles away and all was well until I hit Bedford where the roadworks started and it was 30 mph for about 10 miles which slowed me down somewhat. Bah Humbug.

Eventually I made it to Milton Keynes where they appear to have no signs on any of the roundabout exits. I guess if there were any everyone in Milton Keynes would leave ;-). A quick stop in a Walmarts car park and my GPS was fitted and ready to get me out of there. In no time I was whizzing through Buckingham, speeding down the M40 which my GPS thought would be fun for a single junction, and somehow into the centre of Oxford itself. More by luck than judgement I found myself riding along that wide street that Morse/Lewis always drive down. Following random signs for parking, I found myself at a car park just next to the bus station and after parting with all my change (£2.30) I had an hour to wander around and stretch my legs.

Obligatory picture of an old college-y thing (All Souls apparently)



Another old building that appears quite a lot in Morse (outside all souls)



After my legs had a good stretch, and my bladder had a wee break, I jumped back on the bike again and plotted a route to Bicester, then across to Aylesbury, then home which would avoid Milton Keynes and also the roadworks that plagued me on the way down.

The GPS got me to Bicester easily but I hadn't plotted the next point and missed the turning for Aylesbury so after pootling around lost for a while admitted defeat, pulled over, and used the GPS. This took me back to Bicester for the second time along roads now looking somewhat familiar and then off to Aylesbury where I got lost once more and the GPS battery went flat.

Luckily, I'd planned for this and out came the cigarette adaptor for the GPS.



You can see the mobile phone holder that came clipped onto my tesco value backpack cunningly recycled to hold all the spare cable letting out just enough to reach the cigarette lighter socket on one side and the GPS on the other. It has Velcro on the back so even clamps on the bars.

However, and this is the one thing you don't notice till you ride with the charger in place, the observant will note the bars are cranked right over to the left. The speedo is easily visible. You can see what's coming next can't you? I didn't.


Yep. The charger completely blocks the line of site to the speedo so you only know how fast you're going on tight left hand bends. D'oh. Well that's my excuse... officer.

A bit more route entering and got me over to Luton to pick up the A6 which you could go too fast on quite easily if the GPS didn't keep flashing red "mobile speed camera location" warnings, which is probably a good thing. Right turn at Bedford saw me on the road for home, and just in time as my arse was starting to complain after so long on the bike.

As I pulled into the garage the trip meter was a couple of miles under 200 which is not bad for a days riding (and the longest I've done so far).

So lessons learned from the first long trip.

2 hours is pretty much as long as you want to sit in the saddle.
Your right wrist aches a lot when you're "making progress" all day.
A cereal bar in the pocket to nibble on is a handy thing to have so you can eat something while you try and work out where the hell you are.
GPS. A good thing. It just is.
Make sure the mods on your bike actually work and don't obstruct anything important, like your speedo.
Plan your route before you set off. It would make things much easier.

Tomorrow... well let's see what the weather brings :)

Hunstanton by the sea.

A cracking day forecast for Saturday so we left sunny Cambridge at the crack of 10am (no sense rushing up of a weekend is there) and headed off for the seaside. The route is straight up the A10 to Kings Lynn, and then the A149 to Hunstanton itself. Dave and Grandad took off at a fair old rate of knots, boy racers that they are, and were soon nowhere to be seen. I followed with Paul and BikerBabe Joan riding pillion trying to catch them up but it was a vain attempt.

The A10 has some nice straight bits and some curvy bits so nice variety (apart from the appalling surfacing in a couple of spots which almost jars you out of the seat just after Littleport). After being stuck behind some traffic I decided it was time to {cough} make progress {cough} and coming off a roundabout I popped it in 3rd gear and floored it past the cars in front. Looking down at the speedo I then realised that my previous "ton up" excursion was in a gear higher than it needed to be :o.

We made good time to Hunstanton and parked in the reserved bike park which is right on the sea front. Only a quid per bike and if we were any closer to the sea our tyres would be wet.


And..... relax. Dave, Grandad Frank, Paul (looking the wrong way) and BikerBabe Joan letting it all hang out.


Dave, Bikerhux, Joan, and Paul (right way round this time).


Do-it-dave replete with pristine knee sliders and his Bandit.


BikerHux and his FZ6


Bike Porn showing how close to the sea you are. Bikes all along this stretch!

After catching our breath we had the obligatory fish n chip supper while topping up our tans. The chippy is under that building you can see behind the bikes and well recommended. The more adventurous amongst us went for a plodge in the sea, while I took it easy watching the world go by (and a few people whose sunburn would hurt in the morning).

A quick loo break to cut down on excess weight on the journey back, and we scooted off the way we'd come down the A10 to Cambridge. Do-it-dave's throttle appeared to be stuck open as he took off at warp factor 10 while the rest of us took things at a more sedate pace.

A grand day out and has whetted our appetite for weekend rides and food cooked in lard.

As a bonus, when I filled my bike up this week I calculated the mileage and was pleasantly surprised. Normally I get 40-45 mpg, but with this ride out, where progress was most definitely made, oh yes, I got 55 mpg. So the next time you get pulled by the filth for speeding, just say you have to go fast to save the planet ;-)

MCN article

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Screens 1 - Engines 0.

After fitting the new double bubble screen I rode it in to work on Tuesday and the wind now pops either over my helmet when I'm tucked down, or onto the helmet if I'm not (which isn't as annoying as it sounds). Vast improvement on the stock screen so money well spent.. and it looks pretty sharp into the bargain :)

Leaving work in the evening however I got as far as the first right turn (stationary at lights) and noticed no indicators on the dashboard or the lights themselves. I cancelled them, reapplied, tried left and right but nothing. With a straight road all the way home I figured I could just ride it home not overtaking anything and fix it there. I made the turn, got on to the slip road to join the main road, got it up to about 70mph to join the traffic, and the engine cut out, all the lights on the dash went out, and I had engine braking to get me into traffic. Luckily my bowels held out and a hand signal got me into the margin of the slip road safely out of the traffic. After checking side stand (down-up-down-up... yes it's definitely up), engine cutoff (yep.. not that), I looked at the ignition key which was in the OFF position. All I can guess is that if you turn the key to ON (but it's not quite locked in place) it can move back to OFF, in this case at the worst place it could have.

Once I'd calmed down and managed to stop saying a word that rhymes with duck, I turned the key to the much better position of ON, fired up at the first attempt, and spanked the arse off the bike to get up to speed on the remaining 100 yards of the slip road before joining the main drag.

One to watch out for in future, but at least no harm came of it this time, other than to people with delicate sensibilities who may have been within earshot of me at the time.

Double Bubble action

I've been noticing that on the way to work, as I'm "making progress" the wind tends to hit me in the Adams apple which is annoying to say the least. To remedy this, and also pimp my ride a little more, I purchased a Puig Double Bubble screen from those lovely people at eBay. This is slightly taller than the stock screen so should divert the breeze over the top of my head if all goes to plan.

The stock screen looks like this.


It's a screen and.. well.. that's all there is to it.

The new screen looks like this.



You can see it is a little taller than the stock one, with the bubble in the middle (of double bubble fame). It's also got a Puig and FZ6 logo on the front... which is nice :)

This is it in place.



The changing is simple as the screen is only held on by two screws under each of the rubber boots on the wing mirror stalks, and one under the lights where the screen curves under. The only tricky part is the edging which is a plastic beading that you need to feed onto the edge of the screen. Swapping screens was 5 mins and the next 20 mins was fitting the beading, then taking it off to adjust it. If you're doing this then feed the first edge down far enough so it disappears under the rubber boot as that seems to look neatest. The excess is then trimmed with scissors.

Tomorrow should see this taking for its maiden voyage to work to see if it was money well spent, or just vanity on my part :p

You can never have too much lubrication

After reading a couple of articles on the FZ6 forum I invested in a cable lubrication do-hickey (to give it it's technical name) courtesy of those lovely people at eBay. Sunday morning was bright and sunny so I decided to do a before and after run to see if there really was any effect.

A quick trip the the local shop for sunday paper and a tank full of petrol gave me the reference point before I started to fettle with anything. Next was the tricky bit of getting the end of the clutch cable out along with the sheathing. Luckily I'd invested in a Haynes manual which explains how to do this and after a quick look at the pictures I set to on it.

First step was to take a picture of the cable adjuster before I did anything so I could put the cable back again exactly as it was to start with.



There's a cut out along one edge of this adjuster (and the large disc) which locks it in position against the tab you can see touching the top of the large disc. As long as I ended up with the same 5 threads visible when it was locked I knew I was back where I started. To get the cable out you must spin the adjuster so it goes tight into the handlebar bracket (moves to the right in this pic) and with the slot down one side facing forward lining up with the one in the bracket. By then wiggling the rigid cable sheath it pops out of the adjuster and the cable itself then can be fed out of the slot in the front. The small cylinder that locks it in the clutch lever then drops straight down and you have one free cable.

Next is the attachement of the magic cable luber which looks like this.


The inner cable feeds through the centre of the rubber bung and the bottom of the rigid sheath goes into the bottom of this. The clamp is then closed which seals against the bottom of the sheath allowing the top of the cable to poke out (you can see the cylinder on the end which locks it in the clutch cable). A can of WD40 squirted into the hole in the side then can't go out the top and must go down the gap between the clutch cable and sheath lubricating it. A couple of squirts, a couple of pulls on the cable to let the lube go down, and it all felt much looser.

After wiping everything up (lube near tires... not a good idea) I fired the bike up again and went out for a quick spin.

The clutch felt much smoother than it was to start with so it looks like the WD40 has done the trick. It also appears the bike can knock on the door of 80mph in 2nd ...... which is nice for overtaking coming off roundabouts as I found out on the way back :-)

GPS... mark II

The handlebar mount, after being lost by the postie for 2 weeks, finally turned up today to allow me to mount the Garmin Nuvi on my handlebars.



In this position it doesn't appear to be blocking my field of view of the speedo so I just need to take it for a test drive to make sure it looks OK and we're sorted.

I also took the extra safe option of securing it with a quick release strap to the handlebars in case the mount comes loose.


The Nuvi itself has a pad of velcro securing it tightly to the holder, then a cable tie provides me with a loop to hold on to the cradle. The quick release strap, after I trim it down to make it neater, holds this to the handlebar so if the mount goes, or the ball joint that the Nuvi holder clicks onto goes, I should still have it dangling an inch below the bars rather than bouncing off down the motorway.

Grand total of £4 for the mount, £2 for the quick release and velcro, leaving me with £394 saved from the price of a Garmin Zumo that would do the same thing.

So really I could buy that GoPro Hero wide camera and I'd still have saved money ;-)

Show me the way to go home

This week I have mostly been experimenting with GPS related solutions for my bike. There are three main approaches to take with this.

1. Buy a Garmin Zumo 550. This is designed to work on a motorbike, is waterproof, has bluetooth so you can hear directions in your helmet, and is perfect for the job. It also costs £400, so we'll put that on the "maybe" pile.
2. Use the Nokia N95 which comes with Nokia maps already installed. The phone isn't waterproof so it needs to go inside my tank bag. With some velcro strips to stop it sliding around I fashioned the holder (free with screen protectors) and a velcro pad inside the bag.

This is the holder with velcro on the back.


And in situ with the phone inside the tank bag.


I used this on the way to work and back on the bike this week and found the following slight downsides to this as a solution.

• It costs £6 per 30 days (or £60 a year) in subscriptions for nokia maps to do routing and voice navigation for you. They do give a free 7 day trial which is what I used for this test.
  
• You can't see the screen very well (if at all) and can only hear directions at low speed.
• It is convinced you are riding off the road despite being on it, so won't give you directions thus defeating the whole idea of using it as a Sat Nav.
  

So I think this is consigned to the emergency "where the heck am I" role when I'm lost on the bike as GPS positioning is free and does work. It's also handy when used with the other Nokia freebie, Sportstracker, which will create a gps log of a route for you so you can tell where you bimbled.

3. Garmin Nuvi. I already have this so the cost is nothing. I already have the velcro strips off eBay to attach it to the inside of the tank bag (£2).
   

On the test ride to work and back, this had the distinct advantage that

• It knew I was on the road
• Routed correctly
• Was audible coming up to roundabouts and the like where you need it
• Doesn't cost anything in subscriptions.
• You can see the screen (if you tilt it slightly back with a carrier bag under the far edge, proper solution to follow)

So the clear winner is the Nuvi. The price is right, and it works :-)

Brum Brum.

D'oh... a deer... a female deer.

Today happened to be a days holiday and as the snow forecast by those chaps at the met office never materialised it was a shame to leave the bike in the garage so arranged to meet up with Frank (the elder) down in sunny Saffron. Before leaving I checked the outside temperature with my latest eBay purchase (infrared thermometer with laser pointer because... well... Dave has one), and it was a rather brisk 0.6C in the back garden. Ouch!!!!

A quick change into thicker socks (and an additional thermal layer in the tank bag just in case the two jumpers and bike jacket weren't enough) and I was off. Once on the M11 and "making progress" it was getting a bit chilly but as it was only a 20 min trip from there I held on and defrosted my hands courtesy of a cuppa from Missus Frank ;-)

Once Frank had his mittens on, had wiped his nose, and promised to do his homework when he got back, the boys were allowed out to play, Frank in the lead, and me playing catchup.

The roads were pretty twisty, and covered in mud, grit, stones, misc crap (thank you Mr Tractor) so there was no knee down action (and if there was it would be followed by shoulder and head down action I reckon) but I had fun accelerating up the straight bits and plenty of gear changing action (although it seems the Fz6 will do anything from 10-70mph staying in 2nd, which is nice). The 10 miles up to Balsham saw us ready for a pub lunch and a sit in front of the fire to defrost again, so we did courtesy of Mike in "The Bell".

Coming back we dropped onto the A11 where the bike again doesn't appear to need all its gears before coming back through the villages again heading for home.

Not 1 mile from my front door, a Muntjac Deer decided to run across the road right in front of me and I had visions of the chicken episode all over again, but on a much larger, and more painful scale. Luckily I slowed enough to let it sneak in front of my front tire and across the road and Frank was far enough back to not run into the back of me. Fresh underpants were donned at home, and a cuppa made things all right in the world once more.

Roll on spring when the weather warms up a bit and we can get out for more bimbles in the countryside.

Ally Pally. Home of the BBC and bike shows

The return of the Ally Pally bike show and Paul, Frank and I headed down there with two wheels each as the weather was cool but not cool enough to wuss out and take the car.

Due to rather poor navigational skills on my part, I took the wrong exit at a roundabout on the A10 so had to play catch up with them for a few miles, which is surprisingly easy on a FZ6. On a nice straight bit of road where you could see for miles, and there were no other cars (but their bikes in the distance) I opened it up and the speedo tripped over into 3 digits for the first time ever. :-)

I then realised I wasn't in top gear so changed up. Twice!!!! Chuff me, it does a ton in 4th and still has two gears languishing in the comfy chairs smoking pipes and drinking Port.

We made good time all the way down to London until the google map directions suggested we turn down a one way street, so we passed on that and made our own way up to the house on the hill. Cracking views over London from up there and you can easily see Canary Wharf and the Gherkin.

Coffee (and a Danish Pastry for the fat git.... guilty as charged) saw us refreshed and ready for a wander round the halls. The stands were much more spread out than the Excel show earlier this year and there were far more stalls selling tools and bits n bobs (rather than whole bikes which my wallet doesn't stretch to). A break for lunch in the on site pub refreshed us and we went off for round 2 picking up some bits n bobs.

The ride home was more eventful in that there was a traffic jam for what seemed like several miles trying to get onto the North Circular. Paul and I (novices that we are) followed Frank (the elder) in filtering past all the traffic. I used my standard assumption that cars will suddenly turn right across your path randomly here, which they did, so made sure I could "make progress" quickly past each car so I was never in their blind spot. We saved loads of time doing this as the cars were pretty much stationary.

The route out of London saw us all split up due to random traffic lights catching us out and Frank and Paul headed off into the distance. Eventually, just before home, I looked in my wing mirrors, and did a double take as Paul appeared in them. They had stopped at a garage thinking I was mile behind, and apparently I whizzed by pretty much straight away.

All home safely, cups of tea, and possibly a biscuit or two, are the order of the day.

100 miles down. Many more to go this summer hopefully :)

Brum Brum.

But now I'm dribbling

Tuesday I decided to get the bike out and start riding it into work to get some more miles under my belt. The round trip is 25 miles so I can easily get 100 miles a week in even if I wuss out when the weather turns.

The ride is a few twisties out of the village, a bit of a blast down the straight road into Cambridge where I can have a bit of a grin with the acceleration of the bike, and a bit of sitting in traffic at the far end (which when I get more confident about filtering I'll be able to breeze past).

The ride went fine but when I parked the bike in the garage that night, I went out an hour later to find this.



That blue coloured puddle is scottoil :(


And that slight blue tinge? You guessed it :(

It transpired that the exceedingly small under seat storage area meant that my disc lock slid forward and just slightly dislodged the joint where the lube tube attaches to the scottoiler resulting in half a tube of the stuff running out, down the frame, along the swing arm, and forming a couple of puddles. Bah humbug.

Mopping everything up it didn't leak overnight, nor again all today in the car park at work, so I'm hoping it was just teething troubles.

On a more positive note I'm managing to "make progress" better each day ...... Officer ;-)