20. At least the snow has gone...!

It's been dam cold thanks to the "Beast from the East" and we haven't had so much snow for some time, I'm a great lover of snow as long as its over the Christmas Holidays only, for the rest of the time it can just **** off..

I can't wait for the better weather so I can get back out on Doris in the meantime I have been keeping an eye out for some hard luggage liners so that I don't have to keep detaching the bags, I'm lucky that in even though the bike is nearly 20 years old and has not been in production for many many years the bags are still made. Low and behold I found some which turned up yesterday, I am really impressed with them.

As you can see in their expanded state they are bigger than my fight suitcase which is good at least I wont have to load the bike like I did on my trip to Spain last year which ended up feeling a little top heavy. 

A couple of other things have been done to the bike this week the first of which was the arrival of my screen bolts from China now I had already bought some from my local Yamaha dealer but these new screen bolts were coloured oh yes so I had to change them over didn't I?

They look so much cooler than the plastic black ones...little things and all that, right the other thing was I didn't notice that my tank bag was expandable until I had a good look  yesterday when I found yet another zip so I undid it and wow the tank bag just about doubles in size, looks like luggage space wont be a big problem any-more!

Not sure if I will ever be able to see over it but the capacity is there if I need it,all we need now of course is some dry weather ho hum!

19. It's been a few months.....

Its been a strange few months, I haven't taken Doris out for a while, there has just been far too much salt on the roads, and we know what that does to motorcycles and of course it has been far too cold as well. I have  been thinking about what to do with Doris, there is so many problems now with emissions / pollution and every council and Government trying to come up with new ways of taking money from us.

I wasn't sure whether to keep her or put her up for sale, but either way I had a few things to sort out first. Number one job finish rim tape on front wheel or she will look silly.

That took a bit longer than I had hoped for, a real fiddly little job if you want it to look right. Second job refit the screen, I nearly fell over in the garage a couple of weeks back..it is getting rather full in there now, anyway I grabbed the screen to stop myself from falling and broke all the little plastic bolts that hold the screen in place.

Third job refit tank cover, the little darling cost a pretty penny so its going on, I need it on to fit the new tank bag as it is designed to fit onto the tank cover, now these two little ten minute jobs took me an hour each to get it right, another fiddly job.

I have to admit I was a little surprised by the size of the tank bag, it is huge not that I'm complaining as there is never enough room LOL.

I then ran her up for a wee while and sat on her for a few minutes and thought "what the hell" I'll keep her. now all I have to do is hope for some decent weather, roll on Spring.

18. It's nearly that time of year again...!

The temperature is dropping fast and I have already had a frost on the windscreen of my car. A few days back while driving back from Somerset along the M25 there were signs light up telling all drivers that gritting was in progress. Gritting!! well its about this time of year that I stop riding the bikes, we all know what damage grit can do.

But before I out away Doris there is a few things I want to get done first, the first is to sort out the little bit of surface rust that I found under the fuel cap when I removed it, if I deal with it now it wont get any worse if I leave it it may get to the point where the tank will fail, so this afternoon armed with Loctite rust removal I removed the petrol cap again and blocked off the open hole so no dust or bits get into the fuel, I used a wire brush on the end of my drill to clean-up the area and then painted on the rust remover waited for it to dry and then gave it a second coat.

Tomorrow I will rub the area down with some fine grit paper and then paint on some enamel paint it wont look particularly good but then no-one will ever see it I hope, the next job I wanted to do was to put the rim tape on the wheels, now I am not one for blinging bikes up but reflective rim tape can help with the visibility of the bike sideways on, I had no idea how dam awkward it would be to keep the tape where I wanted it, but got there in the end well the back wheel anyway.

After I have painted over the rust in the morning I will do the front wheel I really need to move the bike back a bit to do that, the other thing I wanted to get done today was to permanently stick the knee tank protectors on, even though I have a full leather tank cover I still wanted these as I may one day get rid of the tank cover and bits are becoming harder to find already for these bikes anyway that little job didn't take too long at all.

Because the tank cover is off at the moment while I sort out the wee bit of rust under the fuel cap I can't try out my new tank bag, now when I travelled to Spain a little earlier on I used one of those bayonet fitting types of tank bags but! with the leather tank cover that wont fit so I have ordered a new tank bag that fits on the clips on the leather tank cover.

The old tank bag,,"Old" I have only used it once was a bit smaller but did the job it will be going up for sale this week, the new tank bag is made by the same people that made the tank cover so there should be no dramas there.

After I have finished all that off I shall be giving the old girl a final clean and polish up before putting her away for the winter which means pouring some oil down the bores making sure the tanks is full and putting plastic bags over the end of the silencers, this is the recommendation from Yamaha, once that is done there will be little if any more new posts on this blog till spring.

17. Luggage and other things

So it looks like older bikes are going to be squeezed out of central London soon unless they conform to Euro3 minimum and of course the Divvies don't, I wont let that put me off I did read an article recently that some of the older machines are producing far less pollution than some much newer machines but of course the politicians don't want to see that do they?

OK so what have I been up to then? well I have been very lucky in that I have managed to find someone selling a luggage set well panniers anyway. Kappa to be exact these were not on a bike but in plastic bags in the back of his car as usual the hard cases are marked as they have been used, which I am not too bothered about as I will explain later.

So I go the bits home and then set about trying to find out how it all went together, first job strip the bike down, saddle off, side panels off, grab rails off, and then after a couple of hours of experimenting I got one pannier on....

As you can see the bag does not sit straight and on top of that when I tried to refit the side panel I couldn't I had to disassemble most of the rack to get it on then found the rack touched the side panel so...brute force and some bar bending later I got it all back on and wired up the replacement rear indicator, that's where I left it till the next day. Later the following afternoon I worked up enough courage to try and finish the job which took me another couple of hours of sweating and swearing and bending, but the result was worth it I had to put my old Givi top box plate on so I could use my top box but I like the result.

So I now have two 40 litres side boxes and one 50 litre top box much better than just attaching a huge case to the rear seat, the only problem was the nice shiny parts at the top of the boxes were rather scratched so I bought replacement parts and will get round to fitting them soon a lot cheaper than buying a new set of cases which I saw at around £360 for the pair.

I still have a few things to do on the bike like fit adjustable foot pegs, rim tape on the wheels tank bag and I would like some hand guards as well, I also have a wee bit of rust to clean up under the petrol cap, thankfully it's not too bad at the moment. But all this is for another day.

A couple of days ago I took my old Harley out for a run to the London Motorcycle museum but never made it there as I found oil leaking out of the engine..

So it looks like I will be a wee bit busy over the next few weeks stripping that motor down so Doris will just have to sit there until I am finished which will mean putting her up for winter I reckon.

16. Wow! this year has flown past...

I can't believe its October already, for me it will soon be time to put the bikes to bed for the winter, and before I get any "Fair weather biker" jibes remember I have ridden bikes all my life in all weathers but these days I don't need to, I am lucky in that I have other forms of transport to use in inclement weather conditions and we all know what road salt does to our beloved motorcycles don't we? So Doris will be saved the worry of getting a rusty frame this year at least, I know some of you use your machine all year round and that's good I will say be careful though as even at this time of the year falling leaves can be as slippery as snow.

I did say "nearly time to put the bikes away" so what is (are) my other machine(s)? at this moment in time Doris shares the garage with just on other bike and that is my faithful old Harley Heritage Springer funnily enough she is also a '99 model, I have had Harriet for about ten years now, other bikes have come and gone but Harriet remains, If her throttle cable hadn't of snapped it would have been Harriet I'd have ridden to Valencia but then I would never have bought Doris...fate as they say.

Harriet and I have been to France a couple of times and we did a tour of France and Spain pulling a trailer a couple of years back, she has never broken down on me, been dam reliable and even though I spent some money on her for cam shafts, hypercharger, twin choke mikuni straight through pipes etc etc I still wouldn't part with her if I could avoid it,

Two old girls together

Over the last week I have been to work on the front brakes on Doris, I could pull the lever all the way in so it touches the handlebars, so first thing check pads, hmm they look brand new still, so take master cylinder apart replace seals fill up with new fluid and bleed and what do you know? I have a brake lever again, feel a little more confident now.

My handlebars are looking a bit crowded now as I have the sat nav, 12v axillary power outlet and a phone holder on them but all of this is necessary if you want to do some serious touring. 

I am still hunting luggage for her though,I realise that having proper hard side panniers is far more desirable then just chucking a big bag on the back seat but! as a lot of you are finding this luggage is as rare as hens teeth as the stopped making it for the Divvie years ago, but i wont give up just yet as I have a lead at the moment more in that later, for the time being it's clean and polish time for the bikes.

15. A little work

So got soaked the weekend before last and again this weekend as I took the bike to Santa Pod to watch some more racing. Luckily the weather improved dramatically later on Saturday and so the bike and I dried out eventually, It was dark by the time I left to go home and this is when I found out that maybe the headlight beam on Doris need adjusting, even more so since I put the high power Osram H4 bulb in her, I had cars moving over to get out of the way of the beam and one guy who got out of his car at a set of traffic lights to vent a little at me till I got off the bike where he suddenly remembered he was late for some reason or other and shot off.

So a few jobs to do on the bike.number one find out how to adjust the headlamp...I'm still working on that one.

Second job fit the new wing mirrors, the right hand mirror vibrates like hell and no matter what I did it wouldn't stop and if I rode over 75 mph the mirror folded in so I ordered a pair of new ones.....which work perfectly.

An oil and filter change followed shortly after and then I fitted a fly lead for my optimate trickle charger, so much easier to do that than take the bike apart to get at the battery all the time. 

Next job was to fit the risers, I found some that not only lifted the bars but also set them back a bit now I will admit that these were very expensive but I thought they would help with my posture on the bike, very good quality and id't take long to fit at all and I didn't have to muck around lengthening cables and stuff.

OK so now we are getting somewhere, I still need anew rear tyre as the old one is nearly square, I read on the forums that the tyre to get is a Michelin Road Pilot but! the price for that tyre has gone up and up so I bit the bull it and bought one anyway, and at the same time got the guys to check out my front pads, they are like new I was told,hmm I must have another problem with the front brakes then.

I might still have to fit adjustable foot pegs and maybe get a new seat made, slightly taller with a comfort pad put in. but that's for another day I have to admit that Doris is looking rather fit at the moment.

Tonight's job was to fit a new throttle cable to Harriet the Harley, this may seem like a simple job but is has turned out to be a pig, the first cable was the wrong one so I had to order a new one at least this time its the right one, I still have to sort out the over flow fuel pipe and but she runs again after taking ages to adjust both cables up properly. tomorrow will see this job finished then I will be back to two bikes again.

So with a bit of luck I will be spending the weekend doing nothing other than cleaning and polishing oh deep joy I can now see the attraction of a rat bike....!!

14. It's not going to rain is it?

So home for a few days and I get a call from my brother,"are you coming to the Hot Rod Drags at the weekend?" dam I've still not recovered from the trip back from Valencia yet, for those that don't know Drag racing is my other passion in life, I wasn't too sure, then on Friday I checked the weather not just the BBC but the Met Office and three other apps I have on my phone and everyone of them said a bit overcast but dry, I phoned Dave back and he had done the same thing so I said OK I'll see you there in the morning. Now also bear in mind I had spent hours cleaning Doris after my epic trip so he was really clean and shiny, so up early in the morning around 5 am and check the weather again...all OK a quick text to Dave and I got myself ready.

Shakespeare County raceway is about 140 miles from my home and is near to Stratford Upon Avon I left around 7 am about an hour and half later I was riding up the M40 where I hit a light rain shower..hmmm now that wasn't forecast and as I got nearer to my destination I noticed very dark clouds it looked ominous. I paid my entrance fee and found Dave and parked up next to the Stones racing team, friends of ours and wet stuff continued to drop from above. not huge amounts just light shower after light shower.,anyway racing got underway eventually and Dave and I sat on the banking and watched..however the dark clouds remained, threatening dangerous looking.

I really can't believe that only a week ago I was looking at a completely different picture  in a place where they are now praying for rain as they have had a surprisingly long dry spell. I think I know which scenario I prefer

Big sigh... I know where I would rather be at the moment! anyway we watched some racing had a walk around the pits and it was good to catch up with some of our fellow racers as our race car is still in bits, but I kept one eye on the clouds and no matter how I looked at it I knew I was going to get wet!

The inevitable happened and at the end of racing for that day the heavens opened and it poured down, I was lucky in that I did pack my waterproofs and they were in the top box, I don't think I have ever worn my Harley Davidson one piece waterproofs before but bloody hell they work well when I got home in the dark in the pouring rain I was dry as a bone, not one amp spot and I had ridden through some really bad weather.

The downside of course is that the bike after spending hours cleaning it a couple of days before is now absolutely filthy again in fact even dirtier than the last time.

So yesterday I started the big clean again! and while I was at it I thought I had best connect the wires up for the  12v axillary power outlet so I took the saddle off the grab rails and the side panel then I looked at the mileage and thought well I have done over 2900 miles since I bought her so if I am stripping her down to clean I may as well take off the lower fairings and give the engine a clean up as well and change the oil and filter, I need to locate some front pads and a rear tyre as well.

And that was as far as I got before Lorni called me in for dinner so today's task is locate filter and oil first and then I  can get her back together again then locate rear tyre and front pads and buy some risers for the bars......it never ends!