Weekly Update 8 – 02/10 – 10-10

Hello all,

This week saw the first ever MOT done on a motorcycle that I have owned, surprising as I’ve had so many older bikes but hey, it’s down to timing I guess. I took the beastie for its first MOT on Tuesday at a place just up the road a Suzuki garage. I went there based completely on a colleagues recommendation (he’s had mostly Ducati’s but as there’s no Edinburgh Ducati dealership, he has to go here to get his bike serviced etc).

It’s easy to find but the actual area outside the showroom is a shambles. There’s bikes everywhere and the surface is similar to a place who has had a boo-boo with a cement mixer. Lots of quite high raised blobs of concrete make riding up to the service doors tricky. Winter services would be bum clenching riding in to there.

I head in to the showroom and am immediately met with two girls whooping and some bloke chortling. A good joke shared there then. I walk up to the service desks and a youngish looking chap says hello, and I mention I called him earlier about my MT. He seems a bit confused but his brain kicks in and he gets on to his computer. Sure enough there I am, “do you have the keys and we’ll get it in to the garage.”

I suppose the good thing about this place  is they do this thing called the Preliminary Check, which is basically an MOT before the MOT but it’s free. This way

we can discuss the bikes needs with you and your needs. from here you have full control over the jobs direction, and with your input we can establish a very clear picture of the way forward giving you the peace of mind that costs are under your control and giving us enough information to prepare the job, ordering any parts required in time for a mutually convenient date that we can accurately forecast.

So I asked them to have a look at the front tyre as well,  as it’s getting a bit low I said. No problems, 15 minutes they say. I hear them firing up the beast and they drive it in to the workshop and sit for a good few minutes just revving it. All the while the whole showroom is vibrating.

20 minutes later I am on my 8th rotation of the showroom. There’s only so many times you can look at a Suzuki Gladius before being thoroughly fed up. Anyway I get called over and the mechanic visibly winds up for his performance.

“Ok, well I had a good check and the tyre is adequate to pass the MOT.”

Great! I say. Just go ah….

He butts in.

“But. I had a look around the bike and noticed that, the Chassis was dry. The calipers too were dry and the chain is dry. It could do with a service”

Right. I don’t even know what the ramifications are with a dry chassis…is it bad to have a dry chassis? Will my bike stop working unless my dry chassis is quickly hydrated? “no thanks, I’ll just go for the MOT please.”

“I would suggest that your bike comes in for a service as soon as possible as these things tend to develop blah blah”

Well no, I think I’ll just stick to the MOT if that’s ok?

“…..yeah its ok but I just wanted to make you aware of these issues.”

Great! Thanks for that, and he starts writing down some stuff on a bit of paper (a print out job sheet thing) and rotates it around so it’s facing me and he walks away back to the workshop (which you can see by the way as it’s got a window in to it).

So I have a look at this sheet, fold it up and put it in my pocket. He’s away to do the MOT that should take around 15 minutes to complete.

“I could just sign an MOT sheet now, but I’ve got to run it through the computer and that takes 15-20 minutes.”

I watch him go in to the workshop and light up a cigarette, as he proceeds over to my f*cking bike!

So I begin my further 10 rotations of the showroom because I can’t watch, including a wee trip out to see the bikes in the lot. When I come back in I go back to the service desk/youngish looking boy and ask if he was able to get the Metzeler Z6 front in for me if I needed it.

“I know this sounds like a hard sell”…

Here we go

“…but I would seriously consider getting that tyre changed. I’ve had so many blokes coming in here with a tyre like that and they give it all the “nah it’ll be fine” and then come back the next day all sheepish like. You would be stupid not to change it. It’s only £100″

There’s something about this whole situation that I can’t handle. I don’t know whether it’s the cautionary tale, told to me by some youngster(!) or the fact that they offer this “free” check with the “free” advice only to pump all these advisory pointers in to your brain with their sausage fists.  It’s like they are basically saying, because they are wearing a Suzuki branded T-Shirt in a Suzuki shop, they can tell anyone that comes in that they know best.

Anyway, I’m not going to make a big deal about it. I have ridden with no brake disks and a bald tyre before so I am sure I can get from here, back to my office with 2mm of tread in the dry thankyouverymuch.

The boy sits down and looks like I’ve just told him his mother is actually his sister, his face visibly angered.

Whilst I am kicking about, watching the lunchtime countdown diminish to nothing, I see this bloke getting his gear on in the showroom, followed by some Suzuki boy coming over and, in the only way I can describe, starts rubbing him off.  It’s crude but it’s absolutely true.

“I love those boots on you”

“yeah they’re really comfy. I think I might get some Rizla Suzuki leathers as well.”

“oh yeah, they would look fab. really nice…”

Right. This is really awkward for me watching this so I decide to have a closer look at some Suzuki cruiser’s dials, with a bit too much enthusiasm.

The mechanic comes back in and asks me if I have seen the white sheet he wrote on. I take it out my pocket and he says, oh that’s mine…well why did you leave it on the desk?

Then I hear this almighty rumble and here, it’s this guys GSXR-1000 Rizla Replica. It’s sounds gorgeous and looks pretty good, with some Leo Vince double cans out the back. Two and two together and suddenly it all makes sense.

In between all this, a woman arrived, probably the manager I couldn’t really tell, and she was giving it the big licks, loud talking and tonnes of swearing. I mean every second word was the f-bomb. She was saying how the “Gixxer 750 was the one for her because it’s so manageable.” Even after I had walked over and stood there for 5 minutes waiting for her to finish so I could pay for my MOT, she still garbled on with this boy, occasionally looking at me to agree with her that race bikes are sexy. I have a 1700cc V-twin sitting outside love, you aint getting appreciation from me.

So the two blokes go out to this gleaming blue rocket and the Suzuki bloke starts lovingly running his hands over the tank, and the seat fairing. He notices the number plate is slightly squint and starts manoeuvring this in to place. He continues rubbing the non-existent dust off the seat cover before starting it up again.

They have a chat which is inaudible over the howl that this thing is making at idle and then the bloke gets on it and warbles forward a wee bit. I am a bit excited to see how he makes it out of this minefield of a garage surface and he opts for the tried and tested (amongst weekenders) run along with the bike between your legs technique. There’s a few high revvers as well as he makes it up the steep incline to the main road and then he’s off, giving it a bit of rev as he goes.

The Suzuki boy watches him ride away and gives himself a small smile, another good job done.

I couldn’t help but see him doing that when the beastie came out of its MOT and all I could imagine was me punching him in the face.  Why are you feeling up my bike? Leave that numberplate alone. I am allowed to rub my bike, not you.

My MT finally arrived outside and I got my certificate of approval and my keys back. There was some awkward “eh…aye…tyre….do you want it?…..ah……oh…..£29.63 for the MOT then….eh….” from young gun.

I got on my bike already late for work, and I felt really harassed. Not only had I stood around for an hour and a half, been told that I couldn’t ride and I would probably fall off and have to come back tomorrow with a sheepish look on my face and say sorry to the childman and lick his feet…..but I felt a bit…violated. I seem to have a real connection to my bike, a relationship that is created the moment I first sat on it. I’m sure a lot of bikers will understand this. But my relationship is further developed than most, because I do spend a lot of time on my bike. So to have some bloke rubbing and treating it like it was his own, to some may be “good service” but I just felt violated. He looked a bit greasy as well.

I don’t know.

I had a parting thought about this place and it went as thus.

This Suzuki garage seems to be the place to go if you like the concept of bikes and biking, and like to stand around talking about how you did a wheelie through parked cars, or a burnout along the street whilst the police chased you. It’s a place to go if you like waxing lyrical about the beauties of carbon fibre footrests and the joys of getting your knee down, with leathers and helmet matched to your custom paint job. It’s a place to go if you have too much money to care or have no balls, because unless you know your way around a bike, or have done it long enough, I’m sure you would heed all their free “advice” and end up spending an absolute fortune in there. A dry chassis seemed a bit desperate as a reason to get a full service don’t you think?

I mean I guess he was only trying to keep me from decking my bike (and making his monthly target on sales) but he didn’t know that my bike is going SORN at the end of this month. And he certainly went the wrong way about it, by saying that they give free un-biased advice, and then make you feel so damn guilty or afraid to get on your bike that you get the jobs done to their recommendations. I said to him, “you’ve planted that subliminally in my mind, so I probably will go out there and crash now” and he smiled and said “no, I’ve just seen it all happen before. and you will come back all sheepish.”

There’s nothing more infuriating than having some guy behind a desk tell you what’s best for you.

So the MOT is passed without a hitch! I am glad that I will now be able to put the MT to bed without worrying about spending a lot of money. I can now do it all over the next 3-4 months whilst the MT is snug in the garage.

Phew! That was a biggie.

Speak to you all next week!

YamYam

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