Reasons to be thankful

It has been a while since I last wrote something, I haven't had much wrong with the girl for a while *touches wood*. I have however been clocking up the miles and have just passed 34,000 miles. Considering when I bought the bike she had only done just over 20,000 I think I can safely say that I have used it more than any other owner. Now it's in the middle of winter you would think I would be taking things easy and not clocking up the miles, oh no, not me, I have a 1000 mile trip planned for this xmas. Ho ho indeed.


The dates aren't accurate just a rough idea. So lets hope there aren't any worn out bits or broken parts waiting to stop me in the middle of nowhere, especially on xmas eve.

A few notes from Dublin

Due to a stag do I found myself heading over to Holyhead and getting the ferry over to Dublin for a couple of nights in the fair city. I was there a day earlier than the rest of the party so had a night on the town on my own to have a look around and chill out as I have been really busy the last few months. The ride there wasn't too bad, setting off was in mist and cold but it soon warmed up and by the time I got into Wales I was making good time and enjoying myself. The roads in North Wales probably aren't that great for cars as there's a lot of normal road with no dual carriage way but for a bike it's great, I ended up getting to Holyhead and the ferry a little early and had a nice crossing over to Dublin. I meant to get a picture of the bike strapped into the ferry but completely forgot in my excitement...

Above was the only bit of "crap" I had all weekend, I parked the bike in the bin/bicycle storage which was open to the sky but more secure than the street. When I got out of the hostel, which in all other respects was really nice and even gave you breakfast (as much toast, fruit juice and coffee/tea as you wanted) and there was a nice American guy in my dorm that had nasty feet but was really interested in what I was up to, I found the above on my seat. It was wet. It was green. It soaked through toilet paper like no pooh should.

After cleaning my seat I was off to the airport to meet the guys (everyone else had got the plane, wusses), Karting and then much guinessness into the small hours. Was a very cool, if expensive, weekend. The ride back was not so great and much of it in the dark once I got off the ferry but I couldn't really complain for this time of year.

Hated rust

I have been looking down at my clocks since I got the bike thinking that there was an ugly bit of rust there spoiling things, I finally got around to getting the clocks off and then the bracket, giving it a quick rub down and spray and then popping it back on. It does look a lot nicer but it's just making me want to sort out more of the bad bits, it will end up with a complete respray I can see it coming.

Some rear caliper action II

So there I was flying up and down the A4 to work and back, which by the way is not a nice ride and I have grown sick of it fairly quickly, anyway I was running up and down and everything seemed fine. I was just on my way home, about 100m from the house and heard a "pop" and then lost all rear breaking. After another quick swearing session I got off the bike and looked, the bleed screw had completely come out and had barely clung onto teh top of the caliper. The threads in the caliper were completely stripped and there was no way of getting the bleed screw back in without retapping the hole and getting a bigger bleed screw. The only thing to do was get another caliper, ordered on ebay a few hours later. At least it had got through the MOT though and it didn't stop me riding to work.


The caliper from ebay wasn't exactly as described, it was in gold for a start and didn't exactly look in good condition. After a bit of polishing and wire brushing it didn't look too bad though although I will have to spray it at some point before the winter otherwise it will be furier than a fury thing.

MOT Pass!

Heard this morning that all my work was not in vain and they have passed the bike on the retest. There were a couple of things that I was worried about, I didn't think the rear brake was as good as it could be and after going to the expense and hassle (I had to get it delivered to my old work and then pick it up by bicycle) of buying a new exhaust I then find out that the exhaust that is on there isn't a standard one and the link pipe is welded in place, the end of which is too large to fit the new end can. I will probably keep the new end can though as it was cheap (relatively) and the bike will probably need some new downpipes before too long anyway, hence a new link pipe and end can. So how did I get the exhaust through the MOT? I just ground the writing off. I think I made a fairly good job of it considering I only had a grinding stone in on the end of my drill. Not sure if it's going to rust now I have taken the finish of, i will wait and see. At least it solves my immediate problems of getting to work and back without a long and expensive train journey.

Some rear caliper action

It hasn't passed my attention that I seem to spend more time on my knees at the side of my bike than actually sat on it. Yet again I start a job that should take about half an hour and then end up spending an extra 2 hours because everything is seized and rusted and old and hasn't been off since the bike rolled out of the factory. Today's entry comes courtesy of the rear caliper. So I thought to myself "Oh yeah I'll just whack the two new rear pads in and that's another thing off the list for the MOT" my bike said "let's see how long this one takes him". I understand now why most bikers are heavy smokers, it's not the riding that's the stressful part, it's just trying to keep your bike on the road.

The first problem I encountered was that the pin that keeps the pads in had seized in place. In the end I had to take the caliper off the bike and hit the pin with a chisel to get it out. I was reluctant to take the caliper off as it would mean messing about bleeding the brake, something I had never done before and didn't want to cover new ground with so much to do to get the bike back on the road. As it turned out I would have had to take the caliper off anyway as there was more afoot than a simple seized pin....
You can see the left end where it was seized into the caliper and the right end where I chewed it up with pliers and chisels. Great fun. So I put the two new pads in and low and behold the caliper wouldn't go back over the disk. The piston wouldn't go into the caliper far enough. This resulted in lots of swearing and stripping the caliper down, furious sandpapering and then putting everything back together again.







It's pretty clear how bad it was one you look at the before and after. There was some pitting on the cylinder but I didn't think that it would make a huge difference.



















It really was only when I took the old pads out that I grudgingly admitted that the MOT guy was right about that bit of the MOT, the pads were nearly down to the metal, especially the outside one:
My first attempt at bleeding the breaks wasn't great. As usual the bleed screw, although not seized in the caliper, had lost it's dust cap some time ago and there was loads of rust and gunk in the hole where the brake fluid was supposed to come out. I gave up for the night, the pads were in, the caliper was back on and I hoped that it was now just a simple case of bleeding the system a bit more and we would be back with rear wheel skids.

New tyre

Woot!