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22/12/02   Clutching himself !

The first thing that I would like to tell you about is a tale of caution unless you know what you are doing stay away from home mechanics. You see we have this customer who, at the end of last year bought a brand new Suzuki DRZ400E, to have a play around off road with. The first thing that happened was that he decides to pretty it up a bit with an Acerbis Tank and a set of alloy bars with a bit more of a rise to them. Wrong!!! His first day out was rewarded with a burnt out clutch :-( Unfortunately the extra height of the bars pulled the clutch cable tight making the clutch slip all the time (not good) and his day out was cut short when the plates finally burnt out.

A quick trip back to us (with much piss taking ;-) by us) a new set of plates and it is back with him in the midlands just before Christmas.

25/01/03       A word about starting your machine on winter mornings

Every dealer at time of year is inundated with reports from customers that their machines become impossible to start! This is not good either for them or us, because although we understand their frustrations, from bitter experience it generally is caused by rider error and is very difficult to explain to the owner with out upsetting them. Typically the rider gets to their machine after it has been stood out in the freezing cold all night and thinks 'CHOKE' (Ok so far!) they then put the choke open the throttle (Not Good!!) and press the button........... nothing! Repeat this until the battery is flat, normally not so long on a cold morning as batteries rely on a chemical reaction that functions best when warm. This is the equivalent of throwing a bucket full of petrol at a candle, sometimes if you are lucky (or unlucky depending on your point of view) you are rewarded with a satisfying explosion, however 9 times out of ten the sudden influx of fuel puts out the flame. To understand this you need to consider the fire triangle, a fire requires three things in correct proportion to burn air, fuel and heat without any of these three you get nothing, but more importantly if you have too much fuel for either of the others to cope with you will snuff it out. Remembering this the correct procedure for starting is 1). Pull the front brake and give the bike as good a shake as you can manage, this seems to make the petrol more likely to burn, then put the choke on full 2). Leave the throttle well alone 3). Check your lights are turned off, press the button (or kick the starter) 4). When the engine fires, gently catch it with the throttle until it runs smoothly. Some machines take much longer than others to warm up enough to take the choke off, so if you find it cutting out at roundabouts etc. only back the choke off  to about half way until the engine is thoroughly warm. A final word of caution though if you leave the choke on for too long you will foul the spark plug (too much fuel again). I hope this helps, best of luck !!!

You remember the customer with the new DRZ400 enduro that killed his clutch on his first outing? Well we got another phone call from him the other day that went something like this.... "Hello... I think I've seized my bike..." Oh how did you do that?" "Er..., I was out with it the other day and I drove it into a river..... and now it only makes a clicking noise when I press the starter button" It transpires that he was following his mate through the wilds when he came to a river with his mate standing on the other side. Assuming that it was safe to follow he proceeded, full chat, straight on. Wrong! The crossing was about 20 foot upstream! 

 As many of you will know I am a committed motorcyclist, indeed at the moment I don't even own a car. The thing that drives me mad is the almost total lack of attention some car drivers pay to their surroundings. The other day I was out having a pleasant ride through the mountains, when I got stuck behind a Mondeo with a woman driving, as she was driving along she was smoking and chatting to her passenger, this is bad enough as you have to wonder how much attention she is paying to the important business of driving, when to add insult to injury she starts flicking her fag ash out of the car window right into my face!!!! Bitch!! Any way after about three miles of this, yes you've guessed it, out comes the still lighted dog end with out even a look over her shoulder, it sails through the air bounces of the clocks and my visor, which, luckily, by this time was firmly down!! Then she answers the bloody phone. Arrrghhh!!!! this was too much, I DROPPED IT DOWN A COG AND SCREAMED PAST HER AND SLOWED DOWN TO A STOP IN FRONT OF HER. Mustering as much composure as I could I explained to her what had happened to be met with "Oh I'm so sorry I didn't see you!" Now there's a surprise, when I pointed out to her that this was because "she hadn't been bloody looking" she got all offended and threatened to call the police!! I ask you!! So I offered her the use of my mobile as I thought it could well be a good idea, considering what had been going on and unsurprisingly she changed her mind. But, in retrospect, I wonder what the outcome of that would have been in this day and age of aggravated vehicle crime, I bet it would have been me who got the grief.......

A customer bought his recently purchased machine back to us a week or so ago on a trailer, complaining that the gearbox had packed up and we 'had better do something about it'. Well a quick examination of the bike revealed the problem wasn't the gear box at all, and to be fair to the Japanese these seldom go wrong in any serious way. But that the front sprocket was rather badly worn, if you check out the picture on the left you can see the worn one on the far left with a new one for comparison, notice the broken teeth and elongated valleys between them this allows the chain to jump over making a right racket and seriously reducing the forward motion at the same time hence the assumption the gear box is jiggered. But more importantly this machine was only a couple of months old so why had this happened? A correctly adjusted and lubricated chain is one of the most efficient methods of transmitting power to the back wheel (95+%), which is why you see them on all the supersports bikes.

That time of year is upon us again, its gone mad!! It always seems that all motorcyclists want their bike back on the road on the same weekend after the winter, so the demand for tyres (worn out at then end of last year), batteries (dead after a winter of standing in the freezing cold shed with an alarm draining them slowly) and panic requests for services has gone through the roof. Unfortunately what also tends to happen on the roads is that we are hit with a spate of motorcycle related fatalities. Indeed locally we have lost eight motorcyclists in the last three weeks!! :-( (Now 10 !!) So is it any wonder that the police are currently enforcing a Zero tolerance policy as far as bikes are concerned, so be careful out there!!!! On the right is a link to the arrive alive web site which shows planned speed traps, so have a look before you go out.

Just when you think you have seen it all along comes something you haven't!! A customer books his CBR600 in for a start of the season service and check over. Nothing unusual in that you may think, but when we got the tank off to balance the carbs we found a birds nest just behind the carbs!!! Yep.... a birds nest all twigs and moss and stuff!! Well we gave him some stick about riding so slowly that birds had time to nest, removed it but not before taking some photos to embarrass him with, so here they are!

Well the motorcycling season has certainly arrived with a bang, every body seems to decide to either change or get their bikes back on the road at the same time which is why I haven't added to this column for a while. So here I am on a rainy Saturday while the FA Cup is on, always a quiet day, sitting up dating the website. 

Over the years I have worked in 5 bike shops and owned one myself and one of the things that constantly surprises me is the number of people who complain when asked for payment on specially ordered parts, before we order them. We like most dealers, find that because of the huge variety of machines on the road today, to carry anything more than the basic service items, plugs, oil filters, brake pads for example is impossible. So we have to order every thing else, now here is the difficult part, the manufacturers and parts wholesalers are not over keen on accepting parts back when they have been supplied correctly, normally giving us just 5 days from the date of delivery to return them and often charging 20% 'handling charge', added to this no-one will accept electrical spares back at all. The reason for this is obvious, a non-functioning 'black box' looks exactly like the working part they have just supplied, the potential for abuse is huge, so they protect themselves accordingly. So how does this affect me I hear you ask? Well last week against my better judgment following a plea of "OF COURSE I WANT IT, MY BIKE WON'T RUN WITHOUT IT WILLIT!!!" and "I haven't got my wallet on me I'll pay for it when you get it won't I" We just ordered an ignition coil for a 1982 Yamaha Scooter costing me £29.92+ vat. Three days later when phoning the customer to tell him his part has arrived I get "oh I'm sorry I've given the bike back to the person I was going to buy it from.... I don't need that coil any more.......". Cheers mate I can't send it back and how likely is it that somebody else is going to want an ignition coil for a obsolete scooter!?! This sort of thing happens too often over the years you would be stunned how many items people order and then never collect, so please understand that it isn't you but...... we need a substantial deposit on any specially ordered part.