The Weekend

Posted on August 11th, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

This weekend I went down to Cheltenham for a couple of nights to visit my mate, Pete.

I had picked up some bike bits earlier in the afternoon on Friday from the Derby Kawasaki centre, so planned on sorting them at some point that weekend (probably Sunday evening back home). Thankfully Pete’s offer to fit them there and then came in very welcome as it turned out to be a bit more tricky that I first thought to install a new speedo drive. The new oil seals on my leaking water pump also had no effect, but lucikly Pete had a spare water pump off of his spare ZZR1100 engine and as if by magic, if fit perfectly into my ZX10

So end result is my bike is no longer leaking oil, my speedo actually works and there was also the added bonus of draining the coolant as part of changing the water pump which turned out to be a bit contaminated anyway with rust and other crap, so a few flushes of that have helped and I just need to get some proper pre-mixed coolant to replace the water in there now.

The ride to Cheltenham is just under 100 miles from my house, and all motorways (M1, M42, M5) so having a good constant run at about 70mph in sixth gear does my bike wonders, as short rides to and from work aren’t ideal. The bike was handling very, very well (even with the Bridgestone tyres that I haven’t been that happy with) and if it wasn’t for being loaded down with panniers on the side, I would have added some frersh scars to my knee sliders on the way back on some of the slip lanes and other roads off the motorways (as it was, my panniers would have scaped the road before my legs, and as they’re canvas then I wouldn’t fancy them ripping open and my pants causing a crash from the driver behind me.

One thing of note about my travels this weekend though - FUCKING CARAVANS!. Having them trundle along at 50 mph on the motorway is a pain, but it’s more of a pain when lorries have to overtake then, effectively shutting down lanes 1 and 2 and then other caravans doing 1 mph faster try to overtake as well so you’ve got two lanes reduced to 51mph for a few miles. Then the dipshits all tailgate each other, so when a lorry or another caravan finally does overtake, they can’t pull in anyway! Gahhh!! And also, thank you for the caravan owner who never secured his push-bike on the back. I really enjoyed having to dodge that when it hurtled towards me on the M42.

Anyway, my stay in ‘Nam (aka Cheltenham)

- Friday evening was a catch-up, some booze, a ruby and watched “Don’t mess with Zohan”
- Saturday was helping move a washing machine, an overhaul on the bike, more booze and a pizza and playing the Xbox until 4 in the morning
- Sunday was a trip out to a Biker friendly pub outside Tewksbury for a pint of ale and a carvery before heading home mid-afternoon

On the subject of bikes, I finally found a system for my Sat Nav that works a treat, which is simply using the normal car windscreen mount (however with some superglue to make sure it doesn’t vibrate off). The position means I don’t have to look down or take my eyes of the road and thanks to my screen design it’s also protected from the rain. All I need now is to get a power socket that I can attach to my fairing and wire it into the battery so I cn have it on charge at the same time.

Anyway, my bike is pretty much all sorted now on the mechanical front. The only other possible change I may do is replace the tyres with some Avon Storms, as I’ve never been that comfortable running Bridgestone Battlaxes. There is the temptation to get sports tyres rather than sports tourer tyres, however with the miserable weather we get all year round then even in the height of summer I still need something that grips in the rain. Bah.

And then it’s the cosmetics and bodywork, with the first step being to repace all the bolts with the new ones I have, so no more cursing trying to remove a zinc bolt that has corroded onto the nut. Methinks I will be spending one evening this week repairing any cracks and then replacing the bolts.

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