Thursday 18 July 2019

Bikes sold - Scottish summer again

So first the good news, both the VFR and sidecar have gone to good homes, the sidecar took ages to sell and of course if you drop the price low enough someone will buy it, thats what happened and we took a fair hit on the money invested in it but we had a great time so now someone else can enjoy (at a more affordable price)

There is no bad news and last weekend was pretty good, always the threat of showers but warm enough, typical Scotland (apart from the warm enough) Saturday we exercised the modern bikes with the ER6 and the newly acquired 865 Bonneville getting an airing, all good and a useful chance to see how the Bonnie works on the ploughed fields marked as roads in Scotland, maybe Scotland as well as being the best place for manufacturers to test waterproofs and midge repellent could also be a great place to test suspension! Of course it's summer so the council are busy chipping all the back roads so its a great place to test resistance to stone chips as well. The Bonneville is growing on me, I need to put it to a real test so it will be my transport on our forthcoming Euro tour, a full report warts and all when I get back (on the Bonneville not the warts!)

Sunday we had a wobble around some of Perthshire's finest on two Commandos' Fi on the mighty Fastback and me on the JPN complete with traction control in the form of a slipping clutch, on inspection I was reminded that I'd replaced the plates with Rodgers Hi Torque plates, its all cleaned up and if the issue happens again the plates will be replaced with standard ones and Rodgers renamed No Torque plates and consigned to the shelf until I forget and fit them to another bike in future.
There is an ongoing saga with Bill Parr's Fastback, I won't report for now until it plays out to its conclusion, needless to say it involves much "last of the Summer wine" type antics and stupidity but we are getting there, I have learned some things as I'm sure Bill has, just a tip, if someone says "can you check my clutch" just reply with "good god, is that the time, I must be going" all good stuff though and Bill has kept my sanity up with some nice whisky, there will be a story in the NOC newslettter in future.

Oh and in other gossip, Eric of Smokeytoon fame was reported to me by more than one person to have broken down with his outfit in Tesco car park Friday evening, I rushed up to offer abuse but he was leaving on the truck of shame just as we arrived, apologies for not getting there sooner Eric, you could almost have freewheeled to my workshop and after abuse we may have got you going again, remember in future. Hopefully all is good again.

Enough drivel, some pictures....



Layby in the sun
Glen Quaich from Kenmore
and again
JPN looking over the Tay Valley
Fiona looking at the camera
Classic Nortons in a Classic setting 

2 comments:

  1. Hi Fiona and Gino, thank you for promoting our embarrassment especially on my birthday, we couldn’t believe when we saw you just as we were leaving with the Guzzi outfit on back of recovery flat-bed. Mind you we’d already met half the motorcycling population of central Scotland previous to that. It wasn’t a roadside fix (not for me anyway) fuel pipe blew itself off the pump spigot. Sounds like an easy fix, but it’s not, pump is at bottom of tank under 19L of petrol! Anyway she is now up and running well again, Amy and I are having lots of fun and are now getting quite used to the 3-wheel lark . Anyway thanks again for dropping by even though it was to scoff at our predicament!
    Glad to see you’ve managed to shift the Beemer, hopefully see you soon. Eric and Amy.

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    Replies
    1. Could have been fixed in my workshop, mind you there would have a couple of hours of abuse as well, sad to see the outfit go but happy at the same time. We'll no make the 4th, hopefully in France at some point that day , back at the end of August.
      Regards
      Gino & Fiona

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