Mini 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.
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Author: Arthur
Seasoned London commuter, doing my best to stay rubber side down and never stop moving forward.
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 Mary 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 straight forward. 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.
These 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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Making Good Bent Fairing
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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Fazer’s Owner Club, Lofo Ride Out
I 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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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.
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Polishing Clear Motorcycle Screen
The clear screen on Mary’s ZZR400 was really showing its age when we bought it. It was incredibly misty, scuffed and well, just not very clear. Ideally, we’d like to swap it for a nice new screen, But in the meantime, I went at it with some Meguiars PlastX polish. This is a fancy plastic/acrylic polish with microscopic abrasive particles, designed specifically for all kinds of plastics. Perfect for lights, screens, indicators, I even used it to good effect on my turntable lid!
It’s no good against deep scratches, but it will sort out tiny scuffs and get plastic looking shiny, glossy and transparent again.
As you can see from these before-after shots, it has made quite a difference. I’m sure if I removed the screen and polished up some more it would look even better.
Over the weekend I fitted some R&G Crash Bobbins to Mary’s ZZR400. Sometimes more affectionately known as frame sliders, these lumps of hard plastic stick out from the side of the bike with the intention of stopping your precious fairing from getting scuffed or cracked should you drop your bike. Since Mary is a little on the short side and the ZZR400 is quite heavy (as it’s just a sleeved-down version of the ZZR600), we figured crash bobbins would be a prudent move.
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Replacing Clutch Lever
Mary replacing the clutch lever on her Kawasaki ZZR400. Still got the skills after all these years.
Was an embarrassing drop, but thankfully very little damage, just a scuffed indicator, mirror, bust clutch lever and slightly bent bars.
It was exactly a year ago today I began my adventure in biking. One year ago I took my motorcycle theory test, the first step into getting onto two wheels. Granted I could have done CBT first, but I knew from the off I wanted a full bike license and a big bike.
Looking back, I can’t believe how fast time has flown, how much fun I’ve had, for how long I put up with the stinky, hot, crowded tube! Most definitely not looked back, (other than the odd ‘life saver’ glance over shoulder!)