I made a quick visit to the Ponderosa Cafe near the Horseshoe Pass, just outside Llangollen in North Wales whilst in the area for a family holiday. Unfortunately I was not on the bike, but still great roads and stunning views whatever you ride or drive.
Good turn out of bikes (not just these two old Brit bikes in the photo!) and a change encounter with a London Biker friend too. Do pop by and ride the pass if you’re nearby.
Yesterday afternoon I was down at Oval Motorcycle Centre (OMC), again, giving my forks a good service. The seals had recently gone and were leaking a lot of oil onto the stanchions and more worryingly down towards the wheel, brake discs and calipers. Not so good.
Stripping the forks down is not a simple job for a newbie, however with the expert guidance of Matt at OMC, I was able to perform the majority of the work and learnt an awful lot along the way. I splashed out on genuine Yamaha oil and dust seals, after being warning away from poor quality pattern parts. New circlips also went on, as the old ones were rather rusty. Oil wise, I opted for standard spec 10w, purely to gauge what the bike is like as standard, before changing things. However many Fazer owners prefer 15w oil to firm up the front end and reduce diving.
The Fazer feels a lot better to ride now, definitely gives me more confidence in it’s handling. Perhaps some tweaking of preload settings could improve things further, something I’ve not tweaked about with yet. But that’ll be another day, maybe OMC’s Suspension Setup clinic…
These last few weeks have been busy, but unfortunately rather mundane. A running theme of work, juggling kids, gloomy weather and being skint haven’t made for much excitement. Commuting through the winter is not a fun ride, but at least we’re starting to gain more light in the evenings now. Glad I went for the super bright Fluro helmet now. I am however getting more and more pissed off at idiots using mobiles whilst driving. See the shot from my helmet cam, this idiot was even stupid enough to opt for a super bright blue mobile that can be seen miles away! With the Met Police currently running their RoadSafe website to pass on the info, it’d be rude not to do something with all the juicy film footage I collect daily.
Spotting this shiny chop on my journey through London. Not your usual commuter hack.
Back home after tiring day walking around the London MCN Show down at the Excel centre. Pretty local, so seemed a good plan, however in hindsight it’s debatable if taking the two kids was also a good plan. Much moaning, whining, squabbling and numerous toilet stops later, we’re feeling pretty damned drained!
The MCN show is not huge, certainly not a patch on the Brum show at the NEC, but still visited by all the main manufacturers; Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, KTM, BMW, Ducati, Harley, Victory, Moto Guzzi. There was also an Ariel stand, some Lexmoto and Peugeot scoots on show too. No Royal Enfield’s this year though. No brand spanking new releases unveiled, but it did give me chance to check out first hand the new Yamaha R1 and Tracer, the Kwak H2 (No H2R on display though).
What a productive day, down at OMC (Oval Motorcycle Centre). Booked myself a bench and with the expert help of OMC’s Matt, I replaced the Fazer’s chain, sprocket and rear shock. Sure, I could have just dropped the bike off at a regular garage to do the work in a couple of hours, but down at OMC I not only got the work done well, but learnt how do it myself for the future.
If you’ve ridden in the cold or wet you will know full well how big an issue a steamed up visor is. A whole cottage industry has grown up around this issue, with the Raleri FogStop being one such solution. Raleri kindly sent some of their products in for review, but I shall endeavour to keep this review honest. The FogStop works in a similar fashion to the popular Pinlock, in that it’s a secondary internal visor providing a double glazed setup to prevent your breath condensing on the cold exterior visor. I’m going to compare against the Pinlock a lot, as it does cover a huge chunk of market and is more commonly available and known. The FogStop inserts fundamentally differs in that no specialist visor with specific pins is required, it simply has adhesive edging to stick straight onto the visor. Great if your visor isn’t Pinlock ready or isn’t available for your lid (e.g. my Bell M3R). Oh and the FogStop is cheaper too.
I commute into London every day all year round, so when it comes to helmets I need something that didn’t just look good but also practical. Spurred by previous helmets being noisy, leaking rain, lacking Pinlock and other annoying niggles, I decided to splurge out on a premium lid. I was drawn to Schuberth due to their rep for being good quality and really quiet as being big into my music, hi-fi and home cinema I was keen to keep my hearing in good shape. I also wanted a design that would stand out and help me be seen on the road. Helmet City had a number of Schuberth lids heavily reduced last Autumn (~£200 off!), so I just had to check them out.
For my birthday my lovely wife signed me up for the IAM Skills For Life course, something I’ve wanted to do for a while which should really help improve my riding. On Sunday I attended the first day of the course – the machine control day. Out on North Weald airfield I was practising some key riding skills; low speed riding, balance, emergency stop, counter steering and so forth.
The riding was not easy, but really useful to practice in a safe environment off the road and quickly highlighting some bad habits I’ve fallen into (in particular how I cover my front brake). There were loads of IAM observers on hand to help, give encouragement and ask the right questions to aid us pinpointing our own mistakes.
