You know those really good blokey days that you have from time to time? A day where you fuck the world .... the washing up ... the chores ... and it's all about, well, you??
I had one today, and feel on top of the bloody world for it!
First thing this morning, and it's bright blue skys, so there's only one thing for it ... Yep ... I (mechanical genius that I am) am going to embrace home diy, grasp the nettle and change my tyres
So armed with fresh coffe, and wearing the catalogue trousers that my mother gave me for Christmas (that are so dire that the only thing they're good for is getting oil on), I set to work.
I have promised myself that I will turn a new leaf in mechanical DIY. No more will I part job / Heath Robinson / cluster fuck my way through something, So I diligently line up all my tools, and get everything now so that I won't be mid pirouette with lever and tyre and suddenly decide that I need something that's still in the kitchen drawer. So to that end, I get the 'tyre lube / pastry brush' out too ..
The rear comes off easily, I toy with taking off the chain guard, but it doesn't need it. I even (surgeon that I now am) right 'R' with my sharpie pen on the right chain tension block thingy, (I was impressed with my forward thinking - knowing that there would be no chance of me muddling them, only to find out that the left chain tension block thingy is welded to the axle and the five minutes of trying to find a pen was wasted ..
)
A special not of praise at this point for my newly acquired spanner from Garry H. It's as light as a feather, (although it doesn't stick to my magnetic tool strip Garry FFS ...
) and is a nice snug fit on the axle nut. This is important friends - no rounded off edges to Cato's nuts in this house hold.
I will now be brutally honest with you.
It took me two hours to get the old tyre off and the new tyre on
Fuck me! I was sweating like a bloody rapist ! This is my first ever attempt and .... ummmmm .... I think I was being too cautious. I desperately didn't want to feck my rims, I'm aware that there's a rim strip / air seal in there somewhere (don't know what it looks like yet so don't really know where it is and if i could catch it with a lever) and of course there's a TPM 'valve' that I didn't want to bugger up. All in all, my tyre 'technique' left a lot to be desired.
But hey ... we learned as we went along
The motion pro rim protectors were ... ummmm ... OK, 6/10 I reckon. And it was getting the road tyre off that caused me the most grief. I'm aware from my mountain biking days of 'getting the opposite side of the tyre in the well of the rim' to give me slack at the working side, but I still struggled.
Eventually .... we got there.
.
Paradoxically, I found getting the stiff walled Mitas E10 Dakar on pretty easy, and the 'bead buddy' was definitely a great purchase. Stick that in and just nibble at the rest. Easy life ..
The tyre 'soap' was ummmmm ... a bit fiddly if I'm honest. It was more like hair gel (Mellors - this is stuff you put in your hair when you've washed it, combed it, and plan on looking nice ..
) than what I've seen in Watling's. And the whole brush on thing was a pain - I may look into a squeezie bottle of something and discreetly putting the pastry brush back. She'll never know ...
And so it was friends, that eventually, we were cooking on gas.
(Not without a few casualties to the rims mind ..... )
The front. I tell you no lies, it took me ten minutes from calipers off, to calipers back on again! Honest!!
Sooooooooo ..... (remember the bit about all the tools out that I need .... ?), I drove to Tool station and bought a compressor
Holy Moly, this is a bloody good bit of kit. Once I'd worked out that it wasn't filling 'cos the drain plug underneath was open (five minutes), I re-egg whited the pastry, took out the valve cores and nuked the fuckers with 100 psi ..
Now I know, I know, that some of you are a bit handy, mechanics, engineers, bike builders in your free time, but I'm not. And I couldn't stop inwardly laughing to myself that in the space of a couple of hours Cato was ready to forage on the local green lanes. It felt bloody brilliant to be independent.
With 25psi in both tyres, it was pretty shite on the road, but only a few miles away my by-ways start.
Bloody hell!! I am so in love with this bike!! I'm pretty rusty off road and was doing alright about three years ago on a wr450, but that has gone and I've had a few wilderness years. So it's fair to say that to start with I guess I was a bit tight and my vision was down a bit.
What didn't help was that within a few minutes I was in some pretty snotty ruts.
230kgs was pretty hard work! Three years ago and on a smaller and lighter bike, whilst I wouldn't have whistled through this, I would have been feet on pegs, and trickling along reasonably happily with the odd dab here and there.
Bloody hell, not now! Eyes down, tight arms I really struggled. A good challenge and I'll re-visit that area again to practise. (In fact I sort of dropped the bike in the top pic after loosing my balance and my foot not able to touch the floor in the rut).
But .... Soon we were in simple gravel trails, and 100bhp on tap
Ohhhhhhh my .... Ohhhhhhh my oh my .... I am just amazed how light and free this bike feels for it's size and weight once it's on the move. Just brilliant. The motor is turned down, the ABS / TCS is put into off road mode (ABS on the front, double the spin up on the rear wheel and the ability to lock it up on the brake ..) and it's simply stunning. The KTM heritage just absolutely shouts at you and before long it gives me the confidence to start loosening up. My eyes don't stare at bits of wood or pockets of water, my elbows no longer have a vice on them and the bike rides the berms and squirrels the back about in the corners on the easier gravel surfaces.
I get petrol, but only stick 10 litres in. (fuck sticking 30 kilos of unleaded in it ...
).
We're now on the quicker stuff and the bike just floats along effortlessly. I've softened off the rebound and compression on the forks to the max, and the extra bounce means lifting the front end a tad is easy from its recoil. Every little rise and bump is met with a sink into the bike, bounce it back up and as it does so blip the gas from a shut throttle. We float over little mounds and drop offs;
(Actually, I say that ... but some of the time it would just spin up it's rear. That could be tyres, but I suspect that the softer delivery of say my old WR, made grip a lot easier ... ).
This section of the pilgrims way runs for about 10 miles between Charing and Maidstone. It's pretty easy stuff and there are certainly no technical sections. The bike is still a bit of a Bentley Continental though! It's heavy, and has momentum behind it when you pick up the pace. I remember this little flik flak on the WR used to be ... well that ... a quick flik flak with a bit of square off the corner on the gas. I am no where near that on this at the moment. It feels to me like an oil tanker that has to take it's time to turn ... I smoothly negotiate stuff like this at a respectable pace, but it ain't no EXC 350!
As the pace picks up I re adjust the fork compression and dial some in. It's bottomed out a number of times on this sort of stuff
Stuff gets easy, I relax, and before long that 'jam the knee into the tank, weight the inside peg, open your chest up into the corner and let the rear just brake away' all comes flooding back. Nirvanna .... it's fucking biking Nirvanna ....
I am particularly impressed with the bosche electronics. The front ABS is very very good. Why would you want to turn it off? I can 'emergency stop' on dirt by grabbing the front as hard as I can. There is very little percieved judder judder judder as the ABS kicks in, it just seems to haul you up in a smooth moment. It's really excellent. (useful to know as the Pilgrims way sees it's fair share of horses and cyclists).
I have been out for hours, and have also forgotten to put the clock forward on my dashboard. (How the feck do you do it ??) Thinking it was five when actually it was six, I push on home knowing I'll have to explain myself ....
Dirt becomes back roads.....
... and back roads get me home.
So what do I know now after it's first proper play off road?
It's an even better bike! The most beautiful clutch and gear box! Fuck me does it knock spots off the LC GS in that department! Great suspension, and brilliant Bosche electronics.
I now need the 'bad fuel dongle' (It's a pain in the arse to have to re-set the ABS every time you turn off the ignition), something on the rear brake pedal to raise it for my off road boots and one of those shoe things for the bottom of the side stand. Oh and I need some Klim trousers
I give Cato, my little orange friend, a big hug and wish him goodnight ..
.. and then hit the Gin.
A good day, a very good blokey day ......
I had one today, and feel on top of the bloody world for it!
First thing this morning, and it's bright blue skys, so there's only one thing for it ... Yep ... I (mechanical genius that I am) am going to embrace home diy, grasp the nettle and change my tyres
So armed with fresh coffe, and wearing the catalogue trousers that my mother gave me for Christmas (that are so dire that the only thing they're good for is getting oil on), I set to work.
I have promised myself that I will turn a new leaf in mechanical DIY. No more will I part job / Heath Robinson / cluster fuck my way through something, So I diligently line up all my tools, and get everything now so that I won't be mid pirouette with lever and tyre and suddenly decide that I need something that's still in the kitchen drawer. So to that end, I get the 'tyre lube / pastry brush' out too ..
The rear comes off easily, I toy with taking off the chain guard, but it doesn't need it. I even (surgeon that I now am) right 'R' with my sharpie pen on the right chain tension block thingy, (I was impressed with my forward thinking - knowing that there would be no chance of me muddling them, only to find out that the left chain tension block thingy is welded to the axle and the five minutes of trying to find a pen was wasted ..
)A special not of praise at this point for my newly acquired spanner from Garry H. It's as light as a feather, (although it doesn't stick to my magnetic tool strip Garry FFS ...
) and is a nice snug fit on the axle nut. This is important friends - no rounded off edges to Cato's nuts in this house hold.I will now be brutally honest with you.
It took me two hours to get the old tyre off and the new tyre on
Fuck me! I was sweating like a bloody rapist ! This is my first ever attempt and .... ummmmm .... I think I was being too cautious. I desperately didn't want to feck my rims, I'm aware that there's a rim strip / air seal in there somewhere (don't know what it looks like yet so don't really know where it is and if i could catch it with a lever) and of course there's a TPM 'valve' that I didn't want to bugger up. All in all, my tyre 'technique' left a lot to be desired.
But hey ... we learned as we went along
The motion pro rim protectors were ... ummmm ... OK, 6/10 I reckon. And it was getting the road tyre off that caused me the most grief. I'm aware from my mountain biking days of 'getting the opposite side of the tyre in the well of the rim' to give me slack at the working side, but I still struggled.
Eventually .... we got there.
.Paradoxically, I found getting the stiff walled Mitas E10 Dakar on pretty easy, and the 'bead buddy' was definitely a great purchase. Stick that in and just nibble at the rest. Easy life ..
The tyre 'soap' was ummmmm ... a bit fiddly if I'm honest. It was more like hair gel (Mellors - this is stuff you put in your hair when you've washed it, combed it, and plan on looking nice ..
) than what I've seen in Watling's. And the whole brush on thing was a pain - I may look into a squeezie bottle of something and discreetly putting the pastry brush back. She'll never know ... And so it was friends, that eventually, we were cooking on gas.
(Not without a few casualties to the rims mind ..... )
The front. I tell you no lies, it took me ten minutes from calipers off, to calipers back on again! Honest!!
Sooooooooo ..... (remember the bit about all the tools out that I need .... ?), I drove to Tool station and bought a compressor
Holy Moly, this is a bloody good bit of kit. Once I'd worked out that it wasn't filling 'cos the drain plug underneath was open (five minutes), I re-egg whited the pastry, took out the valve cores and nuked the fuckers with 100 psi ..
Now I know, I know, that some of you are a bit handy, mechanics, engineers, bike builders in your free time, but I'm not. And I couldn't stop inwardly laughing to myself that in the space of a couple of hours Cato was ready to forage on the local green lanes. It felt bloody brilliant to be independent.
With 25psi in both tyres, it was pretty shite on the road, but only a few miles away my by-ways start.
Bloody hell!! I am so in love with this bike!! I'm pretty rusty off road and was doing alright about three years ago on a wr450, but that has gone and I've had a few wilderness years. So it's fair to say that to start with I guess I was a bit tight and my vision was down a bit.
What didn't help was that within a few minutes I was in some pretty snotty ruts.
230kgs was pretty hard work! Three years ago and on a smaller and lighter bike, whilst I wouldn't have whistled through this, I would have been feet on pegs, and trickling along reasonably happily with the odd dab here and there.
Bloody hell, not now! Eyes down, tight arms I really struggled. A good challenge and I'll re-visit that area again to practise. (In fact I sort of dropped the bike in the top pic after loosing my balance and my foot not able to touch the floor in the rut).
But .... Soon we were in simple gravel trails, and 100bhp on tap
Ohhhhhhh my .... Ohhhhhhh my oh my .... I am just amazed how light and free this bike feels for it's size and weight once it's on the move. Just brilliant. The motor is turned down, the ABS / TCS is put into off road mode (ABS on the front, double the spin up on the rear wheel and the ability to lock it up on the brake ..) and it's simply stunning. The KTM heritage just absolutely shouts at you and before long it gives me the confidence to start loosening up. My eyes don't stare at bits of wood or pockets of water, my elbows no longer have a vice on them and the bike rides the berms and squirrels the back about in the corners on the easier gravel surfaces.
I get petrol, but only stick 10 litres in. (fuck sticking 30 kilos of unleaded in it ...
). We're now on the quicker stuff and the bike just floats along effortlessly. I've softened off the rebound and compression on the forks to the max, and the extra bounce means lifting the front end a tad is easy from its recoil. Every little rise and bump is met with a sink into the bike, bounce it back up and as it does so blip the gas from a shut throttle. We float over little mounds and drop offs;
(Actually, I say that ... but some of the time it would just spin up it's rear. That could be tyres, but I suspect that the softer delivery of say my old WR, made grip a lot easier ... ).
This section of the pilgrims way runs for about 10 miles between Charing and Maidstone. It's pretty easy stuff and there are certainly no technical sections. The bike is still a bit of a Bentley Continental though! It's heavy, and has momentum behind it when you pick up the pace. I remember this little flik flak on the WR used to be ... well that ... a quick flik flak with a bit of square off the corner on the gas. I am no where near that on this at the moment. It feels to me like an oil tanker that has to take it's time to turn ... I smoothly negotiate stuff like this at a respectable pace, but it ain't no EXC 350!
As the pace picks up I re adjust the fork compression and dial some in. It's bottomed out a number of times on this sort of stuff
Stuff gets easy, I relax, and before long that 'jam the knee into the tank, weight the inside peg, open your chest up into the corner and let the rear just brake away' all comes flooding back. Nirvanna .... it's fucking biking Nirvanna ....
I am particularly impressed with the bosche electronics. The front ABS is very very good. Why would you want to turn it off? I can 'emergency stop' on dirt by grabbing the front as hard as I can. There is very little percieved judder judder judder as the ABS kicks in, it just seems to haul you up in a smooth moment. It's really excellent. (useful to know as the Pilgrims way sees it's fair share of horses and cyclists).
I have been out for hours, and have also forgotten to put the clock forward on my dashboard. (How the feck do you do it ??) Thinking it was five when actually it was six, I push on home knowing I'll have to explain myself ....
Dirt becomes back roads.....
... and back roads get me home.
So what do I know now after it's first proper play off road?
It's an even better bike! The most beautiful clutch and gear box! Fuck me does it knock spots off the LC GS in that department! Great suspension, and brilliant Bosche electronics.
I now need the 'bad fuel dongle' (It's a pain in the arse to have to re-set the ABS every time you turn off the ignition), something on the rear brake pedal to raise it for my off road boots and one of those shoe things for the bottom of the side stand. Oh and I need some Klim trousers
I give Cato, my little orange friend, a big hug and wish him goodnight ..
.. and then hit the Gin.
A good day, a very good blokey day ......
)
