December 2008
“It’s Christmas don’t you know!” said one of my friends today.
Christmas. 2008. It’s over AL-FREAKIN-READY!
I guess as you get older the years get shorter. I need something to slow me down or I’ll just speed up till it’s over. I am looking forward to the week and a bit I’m off over the Xmas holidays. Looking forward to eating so much that I’ll burst. Looking forward to chilling with Blair.
Got my new chain and sprocket kit on last Thursday. I went to Jacksons bikes to see Stuart and have him fit my kit for me. I was hoping I could watch him do it and I did, so that was ace. I asked him what would have been pretty idiotic questions but for me they were important.
One such question was about adjusting the chain. “I haven’t really thought about it because I need a torque wrench.”
Stuart laughed and said “Eh…no you don’t. Tighten that thing till you can’t turn it anymore, then give it a few kicks as well and that’ll be more than enough. I can get the manual out the now to check what torque setting it ‘should be’ but I bet you it’ll be a bawhair* more than what you can physically do.” Excellent.
So he began by getting the back wheel off and then the rear sprocket. By the time I had made it to Jacksons, my chain was practically hanging off, something which Stuart found pretty funny. I said that there was some clicking going on and he burst out laughing, “I’m pretty sure it has something to do with your chain.”
So upon inspecting the rear sprocket there were a few missing teeth, something which would have contributed to the clicking I felt through my pegs.
The chain was wasted, and some links were seized, again contributing to the noises.
The front sprocket was pretty good, but the new Renthal one went on anyway.
I learnt about a “Cush Drive” which was new to me. I noticed that when Stuart was removing the old sprocket, the whole hub came out of the wheel! I said, “Bloody hell, is that not attached?” and he said, “no….it’s the cush drive.”
“What the feck is a cush drive?”
And it turns out that the sprocket is sat in to a bed of rubber blocks, with opposing rubber blocks on the sprocket side and this “cushions” the drive train, removing any unwanted stresses or vibrations etc from the throttle/gears. This is all held in place by the axle/swing arm. Every day is a school day. Never forget it.
So he assembled the wheel back on, with the new chain fed through which looked amazing. Whilst he was fitting that I had a look around his workshop at his race bike. Stuart sponsors a race team and there was the racing R1 bike. He said that it’s got about £25,000 worth of stuff done to it. It looked amazing and it had a similar chain to mine.
Once Stuart had finished I made my payment of £15 and off I went. Immediately the bike felt smooth again, but it highlighted the throttle issue that I’m having just now. It’s not the usual jerky throttle issue, but it’s the idle speed. When I close the throttle the bike revs to 2,500rpm. If I roll the throttle forward i.e. negative throttle, the revs die to where they should be sitting. It’s weird but I haven’t been able to fix it yet. It’s not the idle or the throttle grip, I think the cables need re-setting.
Anyway,
Today is Christmas eve and I had the worst ride in. I have a cold. Cold + Bike = Eating your own snot. It was pretty bad and the only positive thing was that I managed not to sneeze. It was crap.
I am sitting in work, its quiet and I feel shit. I want to go home, but talk of the management releasing us at lunchtime is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Anyway, I’m signing out.
I will post before 2009, so have a wonderful Christmas and Santa is good to you…
thanks for reading all,
Gordon
