What Have You Being Doing With Your Non-triumph Today?

Just 64 miles for Helmut and I on our Ducatis today to the Honey Cafe and back home again. It was very damp, chilly and murky and the roads are extremely muddy and gravelly, so it was a fairly steady ride, but it was still very nice to get out. My whole last set at work I kept checking the weather for my rest days and it looked warm and sunny....then they arrived yesterday and have so far been wet and gloomy . Tomorrow looks nice, but I have to take my car for a new windscreen, so fingers crossed for Tuesday .

 

A run out on the mud plugger on some familiar routes. Just as in Mrs V’s ride, plenty of mud from runoff and “organic fertiliser” on the backroads. I’m convinced our farmers get a subsidy for spreading sh1t on the roads. Less of a big deal on the Husaberg off course although mud on smooth tarmac is approaching ice in adhesion levels!


Magnificent views over Houndkirk Moor, just use you imagination.

 

Yesterday (Monday) rode the VT600 to Veliko Tarnovo to the only bike shop that I know to order a float bowl service kit it will be here end of week it currently weeping fuel from the float bowl joint and the fuel tap. Fuel tap is in the post from UK currently running with out air filter as it' clogged up runs better without it it is that clogged new one on way from UK tried getting one here factors quoted 75 euro for a damned air filter!!

Did purchase 4 new NGK plugs and 2 oil filters over 13 euro for an oil filter prices are getting silly. Anyway the young chap who dealt with my order is a Honda Shadow 600 fan and asked if it was outside and could he come look at it when outside he asked to hear it and if he could sit on it. Then while it was ticking over he spotted a growing puddle under the bike ........................ petrol flowing out of the float bowl breather. After putting the breather hose almost vertical and topping the tank up at the petrol station about 300m across the road rode it home as quickly as possible when arrived at home it was no loner leaking from the breather. My thought is that a bit of the trainer than broke up from the fuel tap found it;s way into the float owl and stopped the needle valve for shutting the fuel flow off.

While checking the bike over noticed the right fork leg is pumping it's oil over the bike:-





Went online and ought new seals, new air filter and the throttle cable for the Trophy off ebay UK they should be here in about 3 weeks then last night found and ought a Honda shop manual for my bike and bought that too. Will probably drain the fuel tank as it's leaving a wet patch under the bike and petrol stains the alloy of the engine cases.

Plezier

 

Removed tank and removed the vacuum fuel shut off valve seems these are a problem so much so Honda did a recall on them mine obviously got missed:-



This is it the brass outlet is 8mm and of course Honda do not make it easy the inlet spigot on the carb is 10mm the outlet on the fuel tap is 8mm so when in town bought a brass barbed adaptor 10mmto 8mm Honda used a stepped down hose:-


The piece sticking up is the end of the Honda hose that was cut off.

Just getting the new piece of hose onto the car spigot is a chore as there is no room the amount of stuff that had to be moved aside just to get to this is stupid but got there in the end removing the vacuum valve means sealing off the vacuum feed from the read cylinder luckily had a suitable screw in my tool chest. Now here is where the vacuum vale was fitted:-



The hose clamp seen to the right is on that 10-8mm barbed adaptor, There is a Chromed cover that hides valve.

So that's it for today.

Plezier

 

Another day on the rough stuff in glorious unbroken sunshine!
Very busy roads in the Peak District, the area round Castleton and Winnats Pass was heaving.


Top of Sir William Hill at Bretton repeater and not a NIMBY, ..erm…..I mean, walker in sight.



Houndkirk road at the Roundhouse, overlooking Ringinglow with Sheffield town centre in the distance.

 

Back tyres starting to look ripe @Pegscraper but nice lanes around there for a flowing ride out

 

It looks worse than it is, just over 8mm left which isn’t much for deep mud I grant you but passable for loose gravel etc. Metzeler MC360 mid-hard. It’s the PITA, necessary tarmac road work that really scrubs them off, don’t you agree? I reckon a couple more good runs out will see it off. I’ve previously run soft/mid soft compound tyres which do offer better grip on wet tarmac but they last no time at all. I may go back to a Mitas C02 Stoneking at the next change which do offer much better longevity.

 

Yes, agreed.
I'm running Michelin Trackers on the 450 now and they give far more bite in the dirt. Ironically, despite only being £130/pr, I'm finding myself using the bike less though due to not wanting to waste the centres on road miles.
The main benefit I find with the Kove 450 (probably like your Husaberg) is that it can do road miles ok so it alleviates the need for messing about with trailers or vans, yet the tyres are now the limiting factor

As the wife would say, "you're never happy" ..........or maybe I'm just a tight Yorkshireman

 

Understatement of the year

 

Factory seat height is 960 mm
Proper tippy toes

I've fitted a lowering link, thinner seat and played with the suspension to suit shorter legs
A lad I know rides his dads Kove 450. His dad has a 36" inside leg but the son only has 34" and said he would lower the bike it if it was his...... I'm nowhere near a 34" inside leg sadly

 

This isn't you is it?

https://youtube.com/shorts/sHm_wizutuA?si=FDB0nuaLZ7BB8BKb

 

No not me, but seen a few similar clips and you have to admire their efforts to enjoy what others take for granted

 

Or is this you
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1234757332096784

 

I did see that the other week as I'm a TRF member, so funny and appears genuine.

Bizarrely, quite a lot of accidents seem to happen near to zero miles per hour than at any other time.

 

Me too, seen similar vids with stature challenged ladies and just wish i had their bravery around a stationary/slow moving bike

 

I am on rest days from work and finally my days off have aligned with some absolutely perfect weather, so I took my beautiful Blade out in the sunshine on it's new tyres (fitted a while ago, but then the fork seals needed doing and the weather turned foul ). I also wore my brand new Motegi helmet for the first time and only one layer of coats, so it was a joyous occasion indeed .

First I went to Sally's place which is at British Camp in Malvern where I had a coffee and a nice chinwag with the owner of the red CB500 in my photo.



From there I went to the Piston Club which was really busy with bikers having seized the opportunity to get out in the sunshine. The man who did the custom paint job on my Blade (Wobbz) was there, so it was really lovely to see him as I haven't since he did the job for me .


I then went to see my friends who own the motorcycle training school for a chinwag and came home.

My new helmet is very comfortable and obviously very cool and the Dunlops feel like a huge improvement on the bike compared to the Bridgestones that I had on there previously. What a marvellous day, same again tomorrow, perhaps .

 

It was too nice not to be out on two wheels today. Especially if, like me, you are a retired soul. A friend of mine has just bought a new (to him) 26 year old Yamaha R1, so we (me on the STRS) went for a blast around East Yorkshire in the glorious sunshine, ending up at the Cow Barn Fraisthorpe, for a cuppa.

 

Nice.

Do you find with the new helmet, you keep questioning the various newness smells as you're riding down the road?
I wore my new Arai a few months back and kept thinking a plastic bag had melted on the header pipes ...... traumatised years ago you see from such an incident

It later took me bloody ages to scrape off and make good the header pipes, so never again..... hopefully!

 

I know what you mean about the newness smells!! I hope that I never have to experience trying to remove a melted plastic bag from the header pipes....the pheasant fat and guts was bad enough, as well as getting it all out of the radiator guard .

 

I got “something” on the RH header pipe of the Scrambler a few months back, absolutely no idea what it was or how it got there. I remember sitting at the lights in Glossop earlier in the day and getting that horrible, burnt clutch smell and thinking, “blimey, someone’s clutch is on the way out”. The resultant black splodge had set so hard that steel wool would barely touch it and it had obviously bonded to the stainless steel at a molecular level!
I ended up using a flap disc on the angle grinder, followed by fine emery and finally Autosol. Took flippin’ ages.