Month: September 2015

Bike update

It’s been taking ages and loads of faffing about, but I’m getting there. I finally got my mudguard from Australia, after a week’s delay as they bitchslapped me for import tax then wouldn’t deliver on Wednesday, (when Wendy’s off) and wanted an extra £12 to deliver Saturday. Anyway, I got it. The small back light and number plate holder arrived on the same day, after taking 13 days to travel from Germany! By tortoise, presumably. Then the was the small matter of getting the old lot off and rewiring. It turns out, after much fannying around and endless combinations and experiments, that the new back light had one of the cables loose. The solder was crap and had snapped off. Super. All the better as I’d started the change over after work one night, and was still struggling with it the next morning. I had to leave for work by 11.35 latest, I I got it working at 11.26. Loads of time. While I was at it I thought I’d do a proper job on the electrics and ordered a cheap bag of male and female connectors (as opposed to the twisting wires together and taping it up approach). The ballast (thing that soaks up excess charge so LED indicators flash at proper rate instead of going like the clappers) on one of the indicators had come undone, I thought, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to do it right. When I took the mudguard off to expose the electrics (run under the mudguard on standard bike) I found out one of the ballasts had been ripped off. The new mudguard as well as being shorter is slimmer. This means I can run the wiring invisibly up the side of the mudguard under the seat and have them all safe and sound, as well as readily accessible, sitting on top of the mudguard. The ballasts arrived yesterday so I got cracking on doing a proper job on my lights and indicators, with proper connections, today. After a bit of messing I realised on end of the ballast is wired into the power circuit, the other has to be earthed. I got it all sorted then realised the back light dimmed in time with indicators. An MOT fail. I thought it was probably a bad earth as it wasn’t on the power circuit. Quick google confirmed it. I moved the earth and Bob is indeed your uncle. A few weeks back I did a partial baffle-erectomy. I managed to extract the heavily muffled standard baffles from the exhaust and replace them with a bit fruitier cheap Chinese ones. Here’s the before and after: Before (Incidentally that’s before the shocks upgrade as well. A small point, but if you look at where the back light is attached by that arm to the mudguard you can see a black bundle underneath. Looks like shadow in the picture. That was a big, ugly bunch of wires. Couldn’t notice it until you looked, then […]

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A series of unfortunate events.

I decided to buy my gorgeous bike after debating retro Triumph Bonneville, Harley Davidson Sportster and Kawasaki W650. The Bonny: (referred to as a Hinckley Bonneville) Plus: has the general look of the bike. You get the ‘authentic’ badge. Negative: look at those not-very-convincing engine fins, ugly. No kickstart.   Then the Sporty: Plus: pretty, nice sound, authentic. Negative: mag wheels (not spoked), no kickstart, not very weather resistant, thief magnet.   And the W650: Plus: looks great, kickstart, Japanese build quality and reliability, same pull and sound as Brit. Negative: Not authentic, handling (shocks) underwhelming.   What swung me, you’ll recall, is seeing how simply someone had cafe racer-ed one. Hump seat, acer handlebars, smaller indicators and a slip on exhaust end can.   So that was why I bought it. Looks great, sounds great, gets you home at night, and has the potential to make a beautiful cafe racer. I have ironed out the flat spot on the revs (simple fix), put on acer bars after I pranged it, and upgraded the shocks front and back. Now I have a sweet handling, pretty bike. I have been looking for the last 14 months for a decent cafe racer seat. The trouble is, the frame under the seat is sort of diamond shaped so you either have to find a seat made for this exact model of bike, (few, and mostly crap) make one yourself (tried and failed) or have someone cut out the rear frame and weld in a U shaped arse end (a bit extreme). Then last week I stumbled across this site in Thailand. (I thought it was the States as they take US dollars for payment.) Omega Racer. Amazing kit, made from scratch, to order. I saw this seat and new that it was *the* seat! Then it was just a matter of saving up for it. I looked at it all night. And all the next day. By the night time I broke and ordered it. £291. Not cheap but a one-time purchase and basically perfect. Then I took to looking at the rest of the site. The only tank to go with the standard seat size (the one I’d ordered) was this: Note the lugs on the side of the tank for knee pads. Or smooth like this: Nice, but not soul stirringly beautiful. Then I saw the Norton style tank. Just look at it! The contours are on both sides, can’t see that from these pictures. I realised this was the tank I wanted. But it was longer than standard, therefore requiring a shorter seat to be made. In a panic last night I emailed the guy, asked him if he’d not started making my seat could I change it. I literally lost sleep over it last night. I was worried sick I’d bought the wrong seat and would have to make do with second best. It would have ruined my chi, resenting my bike every time I saw it. He got […]

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