Month: August 2013

Categories
Clothing/Protection Maintenance Motorcycles

One Year Anniversary Giveaway – Motorcycle Care Goodies

To celebrate one full year of riding since passing my DAS test, I’m kicking off a little competition to win some handy goodies useful to all bikers out there:-

First Prize: NikWax Leather Care Kit. Featuring leather cleaner, leather restorer, aqueous wax for footwear, glove waterproofer and visor water repellant. Ideal combination to see you through wet weather. I reviewed this leather care kit earlier in the year.

NikWax-motorcycle-leather-care-kit
1st Prize

Second Prize: Can of ACF50 anti-corrosion spray. Halts existing rust and prevents new. Perfect for protecting you bike through the winter.

ACF50-anti-corrosion-spray
2nd Prize
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Categories
Riding

One Year of Riding

image Exactly one year ago I passed my direct access test, and what a year it has been. Thrown in at the deep end, straight onto my Fazer 600 and commuting into central London every day, then onto some long ride outs like my jaunt up to Shrewsbury. I’ve put in 7000 miles odd, numerous sorties to the Ace Cafe and unfortunately a couple of offs.

I’m definitely a better rider than one year ago, far more confident and a dab hand at filtering. It’s inevitable all new riders will drop their first bike a few times, maybe an un-faired bike would have made this less painful on the wallet, but hey-ho, I’m loving my Fazer.

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Categories
Motorcycles

Fazer Spotted on Holiday

image

Spotted this nice looking Fazer 600 on holiday whilst in Bognor Regis. Very similar to mine, but with added fairing lowers and some side panels colour coded in blue.

Categories
Maintenance

First Attempt at Spray Painting

SprayPaintFirstAttemptAt the weekend I started my first attempt at spray painting. The ZZR400 was missing a small piece of the tail fairing. We managed to source this off eBay cheap, however the part was the wrong colour. So how hard can it be to spray paint it the right colour?

I started by giving the item a really good sand down with some 800 grit wet/dry paper, washed and dried it. I then sprayed it with primer (pictured). Slowly building it up coat after coat, with about 10-15 minutes between them. After leaving 24 hours, I then sanded it gently with some 1200 grit wet/dry paper, washed dried it, then set it up for spraying the top coat. Working in a similar fashion, building up the coats. Things were progressing well until the piece fell off my cardboard stand and got a pile of newspaper stuck to it! Doh!

Start again. Will let it totally dry and sand it down and have another go…

Categories
Riding

20,000 On The Clock

imageMini milestone, just broken 20,000 on the click of my Fazer. It had a mere 13k on it when I bought it last September. But being ridden everyday to commute to work in central London has really piled on the miles.

Categories
Riding

Back to Biking: Essex Ride Out to Finchingfield

Essex Ride Out - Finchingfield
Finchingfield, Essex

A day of annual leave booked, kids with childminder, mid-week, quiet roads, lovely sunny weather – ah! the perfect ride out and chance to take in the best motorcycle roads Essex has to offer. The intention for the day was to go for a reasonably long run on the bikes, get my wife more accustomed to her new ZZR400, build up her confidence after returning to biking from several years off bikes. The day should have been a chilled Essex out ride, culminating in a picnic in Finchingfield.

The route was fairly straightforward. From Dagenham: Hainhault → Stapleford Abbots → Chipping Ongar → Leaden Roding → Great Dunmow → Finchingfield. The route is very scenic, especially the stretch North of Great Dunmow. Undulating fields, twisty bends and corn in the fields being harvested. Total length is just shy of 40 miles and easily doable in under 1.5 hours. If you fancy a longer ride, you could continue North through Haverhill and onto Bury St Edmunds, which is another 28 miles.

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Categories
Clothing/Protection Gear Reviews

Hein Gericke Bullson Cycko Boots Review

HeinGericke-BullsonCyckoBoots1These boots are made for riding. I purchased these boots almost a year ago during the ‘closing down’ sale at Hein Gericke when the UK arm of the company went into administration. As such they were heavily reduced at cost me around £60. Consider this a long-term review of how they have fared as I’ve worn them 5 days a week for 12 months during my daily commute.

I was initially drawn to these boots as I was looking for something I could wear during the day at work without looking too obvious as motorcycle boots. The discreet black leather design fits this bill well. The Sheltex layer promised to provide waterproof protection and reinforced sole for impact protection. I took a size 11, but do have narrow feet. The fit of the boots was pretty good, but a little wide, so did necessitate yanking the strap pretty tight. The next size down was too cramped on my toes.

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Categories
Maintenance

Making Good Bent Fairing

Four-Blue-Fazers-Fettling
Four blue Fazer’s in for a fettle

Today I attempted to make good the damaged fairing from last weekends off. The damage isn’t too bad, just a big crack and scuff on the right hand side. However the fairing brackets are bent and thus the headlights, clocks and fairing all point to the left somewhat. 🙁

Enlisting some help from the decent chaps on the FOC forum, we spent the morning removing the fairing and bending everything back. In the end there was four of us Fazer owners, all with blue bikes and having a good fettling session. It turned out rather straight forward to remove the fairing, but bending the brackets and gauging when it was true again was not. After a lot of errming, arring and lots of judgement by eye everything sits pretty much straight again now.

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Categories
Riding

Fazer’s Owner Club, Lofo Ride Out

FOC-LofoRideOut-4thAug-1I went for my first ride out at the weekend with the FOC (unofficial Fazer’s Owner Club), London lot (LoFo). We started off in High Beach, Epping at the well known tea hut, then made our way North up through Great Dunmow, Saffron Walden and finished up near Royston.

The the plan was to meet up with the (slightly more) Northern branch of FOC and then ride back to Epping together. Everything started off well, but the day didn’t continue as planned.

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Categories
Uncategorized

London Shard Mini Adventure

Not really motorcycle related, but definitely London related; here’s some snaps from a recent mini adventure I had up to the top of the London Shard to check out the view across London.

Thankfully, the weather was top notch and the view stunning. Could pinpoint landmarks for miles around. Tickets aren’t cheap at £25 a pop, but you won’t get a view like this anywhere else. Definitely worth checking out if you’re in town.