September 20th, 2015

Whilst I still can (i.e. as the temperature is still reasonable before 06:00) I'm doing my level best to take the bike to work at least once a week. This is a bigger decision than you would expect, as it takes me nearly two hours to get to work in the morning. Long story. This weeks ride was weird because its the first time since December in which I've actually ridden in the dark. Like proper blackness. So hi-viz it was. Personally, I don't care if its 'uncool' but with the only real light on the back of my bike being around 6 inches wide, I'll happily take any additional reflective material I can. 
For the ride home, it was out onto the fun roads and even after work, being able to ride along some of the best biking roads in the South of England, just to get home, really works for me. 
This weekend I had a bit of time, so I headed up to see the team at Conquest Motorcycles in Three Cross. They've always treated me and my bikes well (very much like the team at Metropolis in Barnet in fact) and I went there to have a Pirelli Rosso Corsa 2 added to the rear.

I really love bike workshops. There is just something about them. The smell, the look and the feel of the places just make me feel, I guess, happy. On the way home I managed to incur the wrath of a white van driver who I overtook. Was the overtake safe? Yes. Was it necessary? I thought so - better air quality and better vision - for me anyway. Did I briefly exceed the speed limit? Maybe, but his reaction would have been funny if it wasn't so scary. I mean who goes ape shit at somebody because you pass them? Dude's going to give himself a heart attack.
And so on to today. At some point during the ride home from work last week, this happened.

Two of the screws holding the screen down, lost their tops and as a result, weren't supporting the screen. Bit of a pain, but without needing any real reason to add some unnecessary bling to my bikes, I ordered up a stainless steel fairing bolt kit from Pro-bolt.
The delivery was quick and I'm really pleased with the quality. Pro-bolt say that their bolts are a direct replacement, but in reality, they're not identical. The bolts come with loads (and I do mean loads) of plastic washers to make up the correct dimensions of the original bolts and all in all, it's not the end of the world, but it does leave a minor level of confusion as to which bolts are supposed to go where. 

Despite this, I'm really happy with the silver finish as this replaces the standard silver ones originally on the fairing. As you can see, the previous screen bolts were black, but the silver works fine and it's not like you can hide these sort of things. I certainly wasn't going to go pink, blue or some ghastly shade of orange.
Despite the slight confusion regarding the exact bolts you have and the ones you're supposed to change (I changed both sides of the mudguard, but left the bolts holding the front of the seat unit in place for example) I'm pleased with the quality of service and parts from Pro-bolt. In my opinion, even if money were no object, it would have been a waste of money going for titanium, and experience has taught me that aluminium bolts don't like being removed on a regular basis.
I'll check over the finances at the end of the month and see about replacing the fairing bolts on the 1098s. Going to stick with black for those though.