Categories
Riding

Mersea Island Essex Ride Out

Essex Ride Out - Mersea Island

The only thing worse than being stuck at work, is being stuck at work when there is perfect biking weather outside. So, the other day my wife and I booked the day off, dropped kids off at school and then just hit the road. Life’s too short.

We took a gentle bimble out into Essex with Mersea Island as our destination for lunch. Fairly familiar motorcycle roads Essex offers, but a good opportunity for my wife to continue building back her confidence and also test out her new Garmin Satnav. Here’s the route (though we plotted this in Garmin’s Base Camp app and then downloaded it to the satnav, which all worked perfectly).

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Categories
Gear Reviews Hardware

Maplin USB Power Socket Review

USB-Motorcycle-SocketThere’s nothing more annoying than being far away from home with no battery life left in your camera or phone. It’s sods law that at this point you’ll really want to capture some video footage from an incident, need to phone for recovery or just witness the perfect shenanigans to go viral on YouTube next. All of which are easily resolved with the addition of a USB power socket on your bike.

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Categories
Videos

ELAM Ride Out Video

Some highlights from a recent ride out with the East London Advanced Motorcyclist (ELAM) group I’m with. A great day blitzing around Herts and Essex. Hope you enjoy it!

Categories
Riding

Marshalling Hackney Half Marathon

A change is as good as a rest, so the saying goes and this Sunday on the bike was most definitely a change from the norm. I volunteered to help marshal the Hackney Half Marathon with the East London Advanced Motorcyclists (ELAM) group.

HackneyHalfMarathon01

12,000 odd runners barely a hundred metres behind us.

Our role is to ride the race course in advance to ensure it is clear, the road closures are adhered to and route is generally safe for all the runners to come through. It was an early start, but lovely weather and warming up fast. Roads closed at 7am ready for the race start at 9am. We donned our high viz, took radios and trackers, and made some slow circuits of the course. Finally we rode out slowly in pairs just ahead of the race leaders with 12,000 odd runners barely a hundred metres behind us.

HackneyHalfMarathon02Lots of slow speed control, some polite warnings to public trying to leak onto the course and overall, a nice change to do something different and helpful. Also, a big congrats to the winner Mark Kibiwott, who managed 12.6 miles in 1hr 4mins, in the heat!

Categories
Maintenance

Thumbs Up: Squire SS65CS Padlock

Squire Padlock ReplacementLast week when my wife tried to take her bike out she discovered the Squire padlock had seized, leaving it chained to the ground! Neither key would unlock, we tried dousing it in WD40, GT85 and Halfords Shock’n’Unlock spray, even after been left to soak for a day or two. We tried tapping it with a hammer, but nothing would make the key budge in the lock.

Upon contacting Security For Bikes who we purchased it from, they informed us it was covered by a 10 year warranty and put us in touch with an engineer at Squire. They got back to very quickly with some advice, mostly what we had tried already, but as a last resort suggested applying pliers to the key to force the lock. This worked and the padlock opened, however it wouldn’t unlock again subsequently.

As per Squire’s advice we sent it back for repair/replacement. A couple of days later a brand new padlock arrived through the post with a cheque to refund us for postage.  So, a big thumbs up goes to Squire, for their top customer service, prompt responses and a warranty that really is worth the paper it’s printed on.

You can purchase a Henry Squire SS65CS padlock from Amazon here.

→ Check out our full Motorcycle Security Guide

Categories
Gear Reviews

CBF500 RedFox Fender Extender / Flick

CBF500 Fender Extender - 1Our little CBF500 is very much a commuter hack and needs to run in all weathers. In an effort to winter-proof it I fitted this RedFox fender extender (or flick) a little while ago.

It’s a very similar affair to the Pyramid fender extender I fitted on my Fazer some time ago. A small plastic extension to the front mudguard to help ward off dirt and crud being flung up against the front of the frame, radiator and engine. After having a struggle to remove the oil filter last service, I’m hoping this will help matter somewhat.

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Categories
Riding

Where The Streets Have No Room

Where the streets have no room

I want to run
I want to ride
I want to tear down the kerbs
That hold me inside
I want to filter past
A touch of vroom
Where the streets have no room

I want to filter, make good pace
See that dust cloud disappear without a trace
I want to take shelter from the packed lane

Where the streets have no room
Where the streets have no room
Where the streets have no room

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Categories
Riding

London Cabbie’s Right Arm

London Cabbie's Arm

It’s when a cab driver nonchalantly sticks a hand out of their window, when you really need to stick the anchors on. As you soon learn in London, a Cabbie’s hand out of the window is a profound gesture of biblical nature, for it will truly part the seas of traffic, across all lanes and denominations to allow the Londoner’s saviour, the black cab to perform a U-turn. Come what may, no matter time of day or Sabbath, with no fear of other infidel road users present, the tarmac in front of that cab will be thy blessed and none shall interfere nor blaspheme. Thy shall let that cab perform thy holy U-turn decreed. Upon completion of this latter day miracle the tides of chemical emissions will crash forth, the sea of traffic will return and no enemies shall follow thy holy black cab as they deliver another fair paying city apostle to the promised land.

‐ Christopher. Licensed Taxi 40666.

Amen

 

Categories
Hardware

CBF500 Rear Hugger

CBF500-Rear Hugger - 2
Rear hugger, painted & fitted

Following the absolute nightmare I previously had removing the rear shock from our CBF500, I was adamant not to let the newly refurbished shock also get ruined by the elements. By default, Honda, in their infinite wisdom, leave the shock completely unprotected from the rear tyre and all the crud and wet it flings up into the wheel arch – yeah, nice one. A rear hugger is a perfect solution to help keep the swingarm, shock and most of the wheel arch protected.

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Categories
Maintenance

Hel Braided Brake Hose

CBF500-Hel-Braided-Brake-Hose-1The front brake on our CBF500 had been feeling a bit spongy since we bought it, and just didn’t inspire much confidence. At first, we dismissed the poor stopping power due to a single disc and two two-pot calliper with some basic organic pads in. But no, it was most definitely spongy with either old fluid, air in the system or duff rubber hose.

Since I was planning to drain the brake fluid, replace and bleed the system, I picked up some Hel braided hose to fit at the same time. With just one line to one calliper, replacement hose would be cheap and didn’t make it worth my while not changing them at the same time. With some forum discount codes floating around, they came delivered directly from Hel for £23 – bargain! Although I was a little boring and just opted for basic black lines with default silver banjos, rather than any of the multitude of other colours they are available in.

The hose fitting was a doddle, all bolts and banjo joints fitted perfectly. Bleeding took a little more effort and some persistence to finally expel all the air bubbles out of the system. The results were much better though, brakes with a nice solid bite

Hel braided brake lines definitely get my recommendation. I’ve been using them on my Fazer for the last year and now they’ve vastly improved things on the CBF.