Pressing F5

Now a proud owner of a BMW F800GS motorbike I’ve been trying to find information about BMW’s service or repair manuals for the the bike. Truth is, unlike other manufacturer they don’t make them readily available. Instead they seem to charge owners for them and will ship the information on a CD or DVD. I guess the alternative is a Haynes manual :)

Unwilling to give up I eventually found a copy of the CD / DVD on a torrent search engine here.

NOTE: I haven’t downloaded the manual, therefore I cannot confirm that it is the actual manual. Also remember that this information is likely to be the copyright of BMW and by downloading it you will in all likeliness be breaking some law (I’m no lawyer!!).

Good luck servicing your F800GS.

Ha,… imagine Danny and myself beavering away, without a clue whether or not it would work.

Two weeks later I found out that there is somebody else who has done is successfully and has even posted a tutorial online for everyone to follow. Excellent.

I’ll post pictures of our handy work shortly.

How to fit a Ninja 636 rear shock onto a Kawasaki Z750

So let me get this right… in this BBC segment 6 clips of motorists speeding are shown, two of which end up in horrible crashes. According to the presenter this is because the motorists spotted the Police camera vehicle and “jammed on his breaks”.

BBC Video

Do I need to point out the obvious?

Some good memories of my bike still in one piece!

The crash at Brands Hatch left me with a crumbled tank, bent clutch lever, smashed front cowl and headlight unit. Due to the gravel the engine also suffered some cosmetic damage, but I can’t do much about that.

I almost choked to death when receiving the quote from my Kawasaki dealer in Watford. Are you ready? … £1200 for a tank, headlight unit and cowl. I remember shouting “my bike is only worth £3000!” in disgust over the phone to the poor chap giving me the quote. I asked whether or not the bike’s unique colour of orange had anything to do with the extortionate quote. To my surprise Kawasaki charges the same no matter what the colour.

So this is what I’ve settled on:

Tank – ebay.co.uk bought for £70, however the colour is red
Headlight unit – Kawasaki
Headlight cowl – Kawasaki
Exhaust bracket – Kawasaki
Indicator – Kawasaki

Grand total: ~ £650

Technorati Tags: Kawasaki, Z750

Truth is I don’t know the answer to either, however the two photos below should help us find the answers. ;)

A Gatso speed camera I found burnt out on my way to Merton College (more on why I was going to College later)

I took this photo at work. Our company has recently started recycling batteries. Somehow I don’t think the employee fully understood the service was only suppose to cover batteries used at work!

Technorati Tags: Gatso, speed camera, bike battery

Andy Barnes and I headed down to Brands hatch on Tuesday for our first track day (actually Andy’s second but that’s another story!). We arrived on time and got assigned into our groups. Fortunately we were both give yellow wristbands so we could ride (ahem,… race) together.

The day started out just fine with both of our bikes passing the noise tests. Neither of our bikes have after market cans so there was never any doubt, but as it was the first time the bike was I was slightly nervous. So nervous in fact that I stalled my engine when attempting to head out of the pits. Embarassing to say the least. Nerves aside we started our scouting laps. Three laps in total following an instructor who pointed out the entries to the corners and the right apex. It was great fun but we were all waiting for the go ahead to give it some and warm up our tires properly!

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Andy, myself and the lads in our garage lined up with our pride and joy! Taken moments before the crash :(

The second time out was a different experience entirely. More confident having completed the scouting laps and knowing how to take the corners, I pushed myself to speeds that got my adrenalin pumping.

On my fourth session I could hear myself screaming with joy when I finally got my body in the right position round Druids Bend to get my knee down. It took a while, but the my brand new Dainese pads were scuffed! Woohooo!!!

Annoyingly it didn’t stop there, foolishly I pushed myself further and further thinking I was some wunderkind and had something to prove. On the fith and final session I awoke being lifted from the stretcher onto the bench in the medic’s centre at Brands Hatch. I had lost control and crashed just above Paddock Hill Bend. They found me unconcious so I don’t have any recollection of what happened. Needless to say I spent a night in hospital and the bikes needs a bit of tender loving care before it will race again…. which it will!

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The aftermath… thanks to Dan for helping me fix the bike!

I’m currently exploring the west coast of America with my father on a Harley-Davidson. For more information please go to the dedicated blog: www.harleyboys.co.uk

Back from Lydden Hill after having spend spent two days watching Bemsee racing and celebrating Red’s birthday.

Word of advice! Sleeping in Recaro bucket race seats isn’t fun! Especially when you are six foot three :(

Here are some of the best and coldest moments from the weekend:

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Red “digging” in to some birthday cake!

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Jen waiting for her warm-up lap in the rain. Note the new fairing ;)

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One of the Palmer brothers being chased.

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Our very comfy beds for the night. NOT!

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Turned out these guys were the World Champions and it showed! They started from the back of the grid and beat everybody. Simply amazing to watch!