Today is a day that I will remember as being bitter sweet. I had some great news, I had some annoying news and I had some news that has downright pissed me off.
Lets start with the annoying first shall we? Following my RoSPA test yesterday, I was wheeling the bike back into the garage when I heard a slight scrapping noise from the front end and past experience has told me exactly what that was. One of my break pads has had it. When the bike was MOT'ed a few weeks back the pads were worn down by about 60%, but looking yesterday, the material on one of the pads had all but disappeared. Not good, but as I was going to get new pads before July it wasn't the end of the world and I'm glad I noticed sooner rather than later, especially with a trackday next week. So, a quick call to Mike and yep, he had some pads in stock. Great. Rock on up, one full set of pads; £230+ please.....errrm, excuse me? For a full set of Brembo pads, its over £230.00. Errrm, I don't think so, I'll have some EBC pads instead please. So after a quick call around, by Mike, not me I have to add, we found some at the KTM centre in Hemel Hempstead at a much more reasonable £25 a side. Sold to the man in the red jumper.
Now the really bad news. You may have been following my fortunes with these track fairings, well I set about getting them on the bike at lunchtime. I changed the screen over for an identical Airblade one and the mudguard was swapped pretty quickly. That is where the good news firmly ends. The nose cone doesn't fit. Not even close. I even removed gauze over the air ducts just in case....it turns out I put those on rather well. Anyway, nope, still no joy. What was doubly annoying was that Ducati use M6 bolts as standard to hold the nose on, these replacements want a M5 bolt. In the words of Kurt Russell in The Thing. 'Yeah f#ck you too!' Okay, lets try the tail. I attached the rear light really well and was pleased with the result, but the actual tail doesn't fit to the back of the bike, its just fractionally the wrong shape underneath and I broke a tap on the heat shield underneath in the process. Yeah, awesome!! You can imagine, I'm really annoyed now. The person who sold them to me, must have known. I wasn't best pleased with him to start with to be honest as he well oversold the condition of the parts. I won't go so far as to name him, but he's automatically used up all forms of discretion in my books and I will not have dealings with him of any sort. Ultimately its a £200 lesson. Just because you happen to be part of a very friendly forum, joined by a similar passion, it doesn't mean you won't get screwed over in the process by assholes. Let my lesson be a warning for all.
So finally onto the really good news. The July issue of Fast Bikes magazine www.fastbikesmag.com hit the shops today and inside I have my first article published where I documented my recent Desmo service. I wrote it back in February, but I'm so glad it finally got published and I can now tick off something from my bucket list.
Lets start with the annoying first shall we? Following my RoSPA test yesterday, I was wheeling the bike back into the garage when I heard a slight scrapping noise from the front end and past experience has told me exactly what that was. One of my break pads has had it. When the bike was MOT'ed a few weeks back the pads were worn down by about 60%, but looking yesterday, the material on one of the pads had all but disappeared. Not good, but as I was going to get new pads before July it wasn't the end of the world and I'm glad I noticed sooner rather than later, especially with a trackday next week. So, a quick call to Mike and yep, he had some pads in stock. Great. Rock on up, one full set of pads; £230+ please.....errrm, excuse me? For a full set of Brembo pads, its over £230.00. Errrm, I don't think so, I'll have some EBC pads instead please. So after a quick call around, by Mike, not me I have to add, we found some at the KTM centre in Hemel Hempstead at a much more reasonable £25 a side. Sold to the man in the red jumper.
Now the really bad news. You may have been following my fortunes with these track fairings, well I set about getting them on the bike at lunchtime. I changed the screen over for an identical Airblade one and the mudguard was swapped pretty quickly. That is where the good news firmly ends. The nose cone doesn't fit. Not even close. I even removed gauze over the air ducts just in case....it turns out I put those on rather well. Anyway, nope, still no joy. What was doubly annoying was that Ducati use M6 bolts as standard to hold the nose on, these replacements want a M5 bolt. In the words of Kurt Russell in The Thing. 'Yeah f#ck you too!' Okay, lets try the tail. I attached the rear light really well and was pleased with the result, but the actual tail doesn't fit to the back of the bike, its just fractionally the wrong shape underneath and I broke a tap on the heat shield underneath in the process. Yeah, awesome!! You can imagine, I'm really annoyed now. The person who sold them to me, must have known. I wasn't best pleased with him to start with to be honest as he well oversold the condition of the parts. I won't go so far as to name him, but he's automatically used up all forms of discretion in my books and I will not have dealings with him of any sort. Ultimately its a £200 lesson. Just because you happen to be part of a very friendly forum, joined by a similar passion, it doesn't mean you won't get screwed over in the process by assholes. Let my lesson be a warning for all.
So finally onto the really good news. The July issue of Fast Bikes magazine www.fastbikesmag.com hit the shops today and inside I have my first article published where I documented my recent Desmo service. I wrote it back in February, but I'm so glad it finally got published and I can now tick off something from my bucket list.
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