SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

[sv-wolf]

You know, there are phases in your life when everything starts to feel like a bit of a drama - and you're not quite sure whether it's a tragedy or a farce. Well, my life has phases like that anyway. A surprisingly large number of them, in fact. I guess, if I think about it, that says something about me. I'm just not sure what.

I was up again at 8.30 this morning, getting ready to ride the SV over to a local dealers and hoping that this second attempt would be more successful that the first. I'm not yet ready to abandon the SV, and I need to know if it is worth spending some money to rescue her from the scrap heap. Besides that, with the winter coming on fast, I want to keep the Daytona off the road as much as possible. So a second bike will be very useful. Before setting off I had to put the battery back into the bike. (I'd left it on the smart charger overnight.) I slipped the battery into place under the seat, wired it up, took a deep breath and poked the ignition switch. She fired easily, nice and sweet.

But that was the only thing that happened this morning that was either nice or sweet. The short fifteen-minute ride over to the dealers that followed must count as one of the hariest of my life.

It is just three miles from my home to the dealership in the neighbouring town of Letchworth, but that's three miles of jam-packed North-Herts early morning rush-hour traffic. Until the roads start to clear at about nine-thirty, this is bumper-to-bumper, bad-tempered-commuter land - no place for anyone looking to relax.

And the SV was in a foul mood.

Her big problem was in the power delivery. All the way into Letchworth she'd lurch up and down the rev range, accelerating and decelerating abruptly without any imput from the throttle. (She's done that before, but only on occasion; today, she was lurching round the rev counter every few seconds.) Crossroads were particularly stressfull. When the lights turned green, I'd open the throttle and she'd crawl slowly across the centre of the junction. Then suddenly, without any warning, she'd lurch forward and jerk me backwards in the saddle.

It was while I was coming to terms with this interesting behaviour that I discovered the tickover had unadjusted itself too. The moment I let go of the throttle at low revs I'd hear that annoying little whizzzz-click and then nothing - the engine had cut out. Apart from the obvious dangers this posed in heavy traffic, I was worried that, on past performance she might decide not to start up again. I had visions of being stranded, immobile, in the middle of all this motorised mayhem.

The tickover issue gave me a problem with the brakes, too. Because I had to keep the throttle at least slightly open all the time, I was having difficulty operating the front brake. (I had something of the same problem on my first day on the Enfield in India). Eventually, I gave up trying and relied entirely on the back brake to keep me from running into the car in front.

And keeping the throttle just slightly open is not quite as easy as I had previously imagined - at least not on the SV. At odd moments, I'd get it slightly wrong - usually while giving some input elsewhere, and I ended up revving her accidentally at odd moments and that made her rough old engine rattle and bang in an alarming way.

I did think of stopping to see if I could make an adjustment, but I had a major meeting at eleven o'clock in Hatfield, so I couldn't spare the time. I just had to keep going and hope for the best.

I got to the workshop in one piece, handed over the keys, and got a taxi back home. That part of the game went reasonably well. The next job was to eat breakfast, then get down to Hatfield on the Daytona.

Everything remained hunkydory until I wheeled the Daytona out onto the road and fired her up - or tried to. She wouldn't start. The battery was flat! How can you have two bikes with a flat battery simultaneously? It was a fairly new battery, too. I dashed back into the house, got the spare one off the charger, grabbed the tool kit and went back out. (I've had a history of battery problems with these two bikes, so I've taken to keeping a spare one permanently on charge.)

If you are lucky enough to own a Daytona 955i then you will probably know what a pig it is to get the battery out of it. The battery sits in a neat (i.e. tight) little space under the seat. And running over the top of that space is a thick web of heavy-duty wiring. Getting a hand hold of the little black bugger to lift it out is hard enough, getting it past all that wiring requires an advanced mathematical intellect, or a genius for three-dimensional puzzles. It took me a little over twenty minutes. In that time several well-meaning passers-by stopped to 'help' me with a lot of running advice and commentary (but not much else).

Finally, I got the job done. I fired up the engine and... No, she still wouldn't turn over. So, the next ten minutes were spent helplessly punching the ignition key, wondering if there was something obvious that I had overlooked, and trying at the same time to phone people at work to let them know what was happening.

Well, it all ended happily. The newly charged battery held out and at length the Daytona graciously decided to fire up - suddenly and without any particular fuss. (I can only think she was flooded, but can't see how.) From that point on all went well.

After all that, getting to Hatfied was easy. It is a twenty mile ride up some reasonably free-flowing motorway. It was a relief to sling my leg over the saddle and get going.

And, of course, a large sportsbike offers its rider quite a number of ways to deal with a belly-full of annoyance and frustratrion.

[sv-wolf]

There was a lot of fundraising for the 'Children in Need' charity in the office today. Somebody came into work dressed up as an owl (don't ask my why an owl), there were several raffles, and Lee from Tenancy Services agreed to have his legs waxed in return for sponsorship money. Lee, it was quickly noticed, had very hairy legs, so the entire office trooped down to the ground floor to hear him scream. Someone put up a massage table in between the work stations, Lee took up the position and two of his female colleagues got to work. It was not a pretty sight.

I, however, was sitting up on the first floor mezzanine, and too happy to pay much attention to the yells echoing up from below. Earlier that morning I'd had a phone call from the dealers. They told me they'd fixed up the SV. The work would cost me, they said, a mere £113. As several wise heads had convinced me that nothing less than a complete engine strip down was going to be required, I'd been budgeting on something more like £600 to get the old girl up and on the road again.

So, good news!

I didn't get the full details of what was wrong with her from the mechanic, though. I had to cut the conversation short because just as he began to tell me. a colleague chose to trip and spill a cupful of scalding hot pumpkin soup all over my trousers (didn't I say life can get a little farcical at times). As my attention rapidly disintergrated after that, I missed most of what the guy on the phone was saying. What I did pick up was that the forward piston head had corroded and the electrics had been affected. I'll find out more when I collect her tomorrow.

With Lee's screams rising up the central well and my yells travelling round the mezzanine walls it was pretty noisy in the office this morning.

But the discomfort didn't last. I was in too good a mood to worry about sore thighs for very long. Downstairs, I expect that Lee was probably nursing his own thighs rather more attentively through the day. I can think of less painful ways to raise money.

Welcome home SV.

[sv-wolf]

Well, it turned out that all that was wrong was that the plugs needed changing. £113 for changing a couple of plugs doesn't sound like quite such a good deal. But I guess that is what you have to pay if your practical skills extend no further than changing the battery or the oil or adjusting the chain. Most of that figure was probably billed for the time it took to get the fairing off.

And even though the SV is now running smoothly again, the engine still has its rattle. But I guess that's OK. The best cure for that, I've decided - and the cheapest - is to buy myself a pair of earplugs.

But, I've got the bike back again and am glad to be riding her.

[thelighterthief]

I find that htere are a couple of things that provoke that level of fear/hate. I once had a relative screaming in my face, with a look of pure rage and hatred just because my nan mentioned in passing that I was a vegetarian

[jstark47]

Well, it turned out that all that was wrong was that the plugs needed changing. £113 for changing a couple of plugs doesn't sound like quite such a good deal.

I think your SV and my V-strom share the same engine. Don't know how the SV is put together, but the V-strom requires removing the fairing and half-removing the radiator to get to the plug on the front cylinder! Personally I haven't the talent, time, or tools to fool around with the radiator - unless I'm flat broke I'll pay a shop to do that chore. I'm a Luddite- I liked the "good ole days" when the plug was out in plain view on the top of the engine.

[noodlenoggin]

I can commiserate. I currently have a barked knuckle from changing the headlight bulbs in my wife's van (check the avatar) this weekend. In typical American car fashion, one bulb took two minutes to replace, the other took about a half-hour because directly behind it, Dodge decided to wedge in some sort of control module, the fuse-box and a finned aluminum heat-sink dealey for something. I had room for two fingers of each hand, but needed to use three...thus the barked knuckle.

[sv-wolf]

Sunday
Do you know the kind of cold that knifes its way through your muscles and then lodges itself in your bones so firmly that no matter what you do to try and warm yourself up, it won’t go away? If you ride a bike in an even moderately cold climate such as we have here in the UK, then surely you’ll have had this experience.

I’m asking this question right now, because that’s what I’m experiencing - and being all on my lonesome tonight, I need someone to share my misery with. TMW will fit the bill nicely. I’ve spent the last hour eating hot soup and snuggling up to the radiator in the living room as though it were my oldest and dearest friend. But it’s no good. The only thing it has achieved is to make me feel like ‘baked Alaska’: my skin and muscles are throbbing like tingly hot meringue straight from the oven, while my spine is still pure dairy ice cream. C’mon, you must know this sensation – or is it only us skinny bastards who suffer like this?

I rode the Daytona up to Birmingham today, to the ‘International Motorcycle and Scooter Show’ at the NEC (National Exhibition Centre) to… Well, to do what exactly? A good question! Because, now that I think about it, I’m buggered, if I know. Perhaps I go because I just do - ‘Go’, that is - every year!)

Actually, it is a kind of pilgrimage. I go each year to pay homage to the gods of motorised consumerism. Usually, I spend more than I should, and come home with bright cardboard boxes full of interesting packaging. And nestling inside the boxes are the little biker goodies that briefly (ever so briefly) gladden my heart. I try them out and then put them away for some future time when I might need them. After that, I spend the next two months regretting the purchase and waiting for my bank balance to stop looking even skinnier than I do.

But at the NEC today, I spent almost nothing. In fact the only thing I bought was a pair of winter gloves. And I only bought them because my hands were so cold on the way up I wanted something to keep me warmer on the journey home. Ho-Humm! But they are nice-looking gloves. (That was the clincher!) They are Revitt ‘Fahrenheit’ gloves – very warm and comfortable, in thick black leather with few seams. The wrist straps are on the front, where I like them (much safer in an accident), and they have quite long gauntlet bits to keep out the rain. So I’m pleased with my modest purchase. And for a change I think I have bought something immediately useful. I got them a size too big so that I could wear my inner gloves comfortably inside them. On the way home at least, they did the job: my hands got only a weenie bit cold.

And that’s the strange thing. None of me got anything more than ‘a bit cold’ on the way home - I’ve been far, far colder on a bike - but that bit of cold has slid very deep into my core and it won’t go away.

I guess I had another reason for going up to the NEC - to say hello to the Global Enduro crew. These are the guys that run Enduro India. They have a stand there every year. I got a photo of Nick and Gemma. Here they are, two people who have landed the job of their dreams: they spend half the year riding all over India, Africa and Italy for a living – lucky bastards! (Do I sound like I’m crying out for a new job? No, surely!)


Nick and Gemma from Global Enduro

If you've had the stamina to wade through my posts you'll know that I took part in the EnduroIndia rally earlier this year, and on the back of that, I’ve signed up to do the Enduro Himalaya in September 2008. So now, whenever I feel a bit low, I think of that ride through Southern India and of the Royal Enfield Bullet I did it on. I’ve grown attached to the little machine – a real fun bike for Indian roads.

Somewhere deep inside I can’t wait to get out there again next year. But that’s the problem; the excitiement is so deep inside these days that by the time it percolates up to the surface it is only a shadow of its former self. Since I got back to England, the rest of me has been weighted down with boring daily stuff and a persistent moodiness I can’t seem to shake off. So, up at the NEC I headed for the Global Enduro stand to talk to the guys in the hope that it would bring it all back and make it real again. I wanted to throw off my ‘baked Alaska’ of the soul.

And while I'm on the subject, here she is: the 350 Bullet, the little beauty, looking a bit dowdy among all the sharp modern metal at the exhibition, but a great bike for all that.


"The Enfield - a gutsy little bugger".

And here are a couple of other pics from the show.


This one made me think of Sev, in his ‘younger days’. Can't think why.

This is a customised Triumph Scrambler. Now this is what I would call a beautiful bike. You can keep your glitzy, stretched-frame, clever-concept jobbies with their weirded-out looks and impossible handling – this is the one for me. Just look at its classical proportions – all neat and and beautifully balanced. What a gorgeous understatement it makes! Mmmm! One for the stable, methinks.


Customised Triumph Scrambler

And here is something else I would love to own.


Beautiful Bennelli

This is a very different kind of beast. This one I’d install it in my living room and just look at it (and never watch another DVD as long as I live!) A Bennelli Tornado! Yikes! The Italians know how to make beautiful bikes too. Far too beautiful to ride. Far too beautiful to get dirty. As I admired its looks, I kept thinking of some lines from Much Ado about Nothing.

No, my lord, unless I might have another
For working days. Your Grace is too costly to wear
Every day.

(Shakespeare is somehow appropriate for a bike like this. The scrambler would probably need something a bit more hard boiled.)

And that’s just the point: I don’t have the kind of dosh to maintain an Italian bike with all its delicate, highly-bred, manners and fragile (= dodgy/costly) engineering. This little beauty doesn’t come cheap. And look at the detail: it’s a triumph of style over practicality. As I sat on its none-too-comfortable saddle (it’s not only the frame that is rigid), I noticed the ignition which sits at the bottom of a completely inaccessible recess in the front edge of the tank. One of the guys on the stand must have seen me poking at it curiously, because he walked over and silently produced the key. First he held up the long plastic fob. Then he clicked some little button and the key shaft shot out the end of it like a flick knife blade. So that’s how it’s done! Beautiful! But daft! And quite beautiful in its daftness!


You can just make out the ignition at the bottom of its ridiculous well. It's actually much deeper and in a narrower slot than it looks in this photo.

No, I could never afford one. But I did find out from the guy on the stall where I could take one out for a test ride. My motives are purely exploratory, of course. I want to see how the triple engine compares with that of the Daytona.


Worth a second look, I think

I suppose I ought to tell you that I got lost coming out of the NEC. In my defence I will say that it was only partly my fault The signage around the exhibition centre is so appalling that I’m surprised it doesn't happen to everyone. [Edit: Most of the people I mentioned this to afterwards admitted that they had got lost there at some time or another] So I have a good excuse. (But despite that, I don’t think I should have ended up in Henley on Thames.)

My route up to the NEC that morning had been straightforward: northwards up the M1, then north again up the M6, finally turning off onto the M42. The M42 leads directly up to the NEC entrance. So going home, my rather simple-minded brain told me that, in the absence of more precise information, I should go back out on the M42 - just in the opposite direction. My brain also told me that as I ultimately wanted to be heading southwards on the M6, I should avoid the sign indicating ‘M6 North’

I suppose, at this point, I ought to tell you something else (and this is more difficult). I get lost coming out of the NEC every bloody year.

Solving the puzzle that the Highways Authority has set is surely not that difficult. All you have to do is to abandon formal logic and follow the signs that appear to take you in the wrong direction. But every year up to now, my memory has let me down - I'm getting older. It happens! I forget what I did the year before and try to reason my way back home. All the previous year’s trial and error – and bitter experience - goes to waste.

It occurred to me later as all the boring motorway miles went slipping by that if I were a laboratory rat, I might go a bit hungry for a while until I worked out how to get the goodies. I could of course explain to the researchers that it was just poor memory and a common-enough feature of increasing age. They would probably buy it! Researchers like simple parameters like that.

So yes, half an hour later I ended up in the back of beyond – in Henley on Thames: a pretty place but not exactly where I wanted to be. My problem is that I’m bloody minded. When I get lost I hate going back on myself, and prefer to find another route home. But on this occasion I had to admit, I wasn't doing too well. It occurred to me that if I carried on like this I would end up in the English Channel.

Eventually I stopped to ask a middle-aged couple how I could get back on route. I asked them with little enthusiasm because, by that time, I knew exactly what they were going to say: I should turn around and follow my route all the way back, past the NEC (18 miles away by this time) and then follow the ‘M6 North’ sign which would take me southwards and home. I nodded my thanks and turned the bike. It had started to rain.

Monday
I woke up this morning feeling lousy (not sick, just lousy). I rang into work and took a day off on annual leave. Feeling like death warmed up was only one of the reasons I needed some time off. The day before I'd put the washing machine on just before I left the house for the NEC. When I got back to the house that evening I found that the hose had come off the machne and there was water everywhere - all over (and under) the kitchen lino. A great homecoming! At least it didn’t go all over the carpet on this occasion. Yep, this is the second time in three months I’ve had a flood. The DB who was staying in the house while I was in France managed to let the downstairs bath overflow. The kitchen lino now looks less like lino and more like a bank of sand dunes.

By late afternoon I’d managed to dry most of it out, so I got to go to the bike club pub night by 7.00 pm. That's really early for me. There weren’t many bikes there tonight – maybe half a dozen. Most people had come by car. Even big D had transferred to four wheels – but he had an excuse, at least: he’d just had an operation on his foot. Big D is Rocket III man. He rides semi-naked whatever the weather (“Cold? What cold?”) and can leave any sports bike rider eating his dust in the twisties.

And inevitably, the club joke was taken out of its wrappings once again and began to get passed around the pub: the Stevenage & District Motor Cycle Club had once again metamorphosed into the Stevenage & District Light Van and Car Club. Oh dear! If you’ve heard me tell that one before, think what it is like to hear it 50 times every winter. Just passing on the trauma, folks!

But tonight was the annual pub quiz night. And our team won. Yay! We beat Trophy Dave’s team - that was the main thing. So, at last, an unexpectedly expensive education has come in useful for something - who else but a complete nerd would know the capital of Belarus? (My inner nerd was secretly pleased to have access to this knowledge, but my socialised bits were deeply embarrassed.) Fortunately, we didn’t have any clever questions about bikes on this occasion. We used to but, in recent years, so few people knew the answers it was beginning to get embarrassing. This just ain’t the 50s anymore.

Tuesday
I did something really silly today. I was coming from work. It was late (7.00 pm) and it was dark. It was also cold and the road was wet and I was stressed out after a long, long, day. I’d followed a 4X4 all the way down Hitchin Hill at 18 mph. Why this guy was driving at 18mph in a 30 mph zone I had no idea. It’s a twisty road so I had a good view in front of him and there was nothing. But it is also a narrow road and there was a load of traffic coming the other way, so I just had to trickle along behind.

I lost him at the crossroads in the centre of town, but then, to my complete frustration, picked up behind another car doing a graveyard boogie – even slower this time. What was it with motorists tonight! I lost patience and I did what I had never done before on this busy urban road: I stuck on my indicator and I pulled out to overtake him. Oh bugger! Unlike the other guy, this one did have a reason for going slow. He had a car in front of him that I hadn’t seen, and this car was indicating right and preparing to pull across the road into the car park entrance opposite (we’re driving on the left here, remember.) We saw each other just in time. He slowed and I accelerated past. But I could have caused an accident. Ngrrrrrgh! I felt very stupid. And embarrassed. Must remember to watch my riding when I’m in a bad mood!

Wednesday
An uneventful day! Absolutely nothing happened that was worth remembering! But while I was out surveying the ‘bike park’ (also known as, ‘the back garden’ - half of which belongs to my neighbour, and half to me.) I got this pic. My neighbour is a biker and his wife has also recently taken to the saddle, so things are beginning to feel just a bit cluttered around here.


Local bike park

Thursday
The Daytona is running well now; I’ve not had a single problem with it for several weeks. So that’s good news. But it’s a funny bike. I was listening to it today; the first thing that catches your attention is the gutsy purr of the upswept exhaust. Then there’s the fine humm of the engine. Finally, there’s the ridiculous agricultural rattle of the valve gear… (Oh well! nothing's perfect) As for the bike’s torque - it does notice hills. That was something the SV never did (“Hill? What hill?”) On the SV you could hit the hill, hold the throttle steady and not lose speed, but that’s not the way of it on the Daytona - loads of power; and some respectable torque, but not so much as I'm used to. I miss that. But I’ll soon be putting the Daytona to bed for the winter, so want to use it as much as I can now, before the real cold weather sets in.

But it was a nice sunny day, today – first in several weeks. I had an afternoon appointment outside the office, so got in a bit of a ride which was nice. It perked up my spirits no-end, it did! And for the first time in a while the roads were dry. There’ve been a lot of diesel spills around lately, so in all the wet, I’ve been careful on the bends. Today, riding in good conditions, I let the bike strut its stuff. Lovely!

[sv-wolf]

Famous last words:

Thursday
The Daytona is running well now; I’ve not had a single problem with it for several weeks. So that’s good news.

Friday

Wheeled the Daytona out into the road ready to go to work and tried to fire her up. No go! Battery flat as a pancake!

Me and my big mouth.

But there's more.

Tuesday (today!)

Went down to the car-park in the office courtyard after work to ride the SV home. Pressed the ignition button. Fuse went! Had to come home by train and leave the SV in the courtyard at work.

It's 10pm. I'm just about to kit up again and ride the newly recharged Daytona back into Stevenage. The courtyard will be clear by now so I can wheel the SV out of sight of the road. Stevenage is not a place to leave a bike unattended overnight, even in the council courtyard.

Sigh!

[Nibblet99]

Things seem to have been eventful of late... What are you doing to those poor bikes to get so many problems

Unfortunately I missed the NEC this year (Was moving house... yes again, to Leighton Buzzard), so having to go by your blog as to the highlights. You're right, that Benelli sure is beautiful.

[sv-wolf]

Hi Nibs

Well I approve of Leighton Buzzard - a bit of a step up from Luton, I'm thinking. Some good riding out that way too!

Good to hear from you.

Richard