Mike's Blog

Category: Motorbike

  • Do you use your mobile phone while driving?

    You know, I can TELL when a driver is using their mobile phone – well, it’s either that or they’re drunk! In fact, the level of distraction created by using your phone is equivalent to the negative effect on your driving ability of being just over the legal alcohol limit for driving! Now, if the…

  • Risk Appetite vs Risk Perception

    A wee incident on the ride into work this morning got me thinking. Has my IAM training altered my risk appetite or my perception of risk? The incident itself was nothing too dramatic – I was filtering through traffic in Edinburgh, coming in on the A90 Hillhouse Road between the two lanes of traffic, and…

  • It’s work Jim, but not as we know it

    Define your idea of fun. Does it involve some laughing and shouting? Well my idea of fun these days is getting my hands absolutely manky while working on my motorbike. Odd? To a mechanic that’d be work, but for me it’s fun – granted, I probably don’t look like I’m having fun, what with the…

  • The bike repair sagas continue

    Blast and double blast. Wednesday evening I rode the bike home only to find when I went to get my bag out of the top box that the rack holding it had broken. In fact I was bloody lucky – the other side of the rack had almost gone too – that would have meant…

  • Bad parking leads to near miss?

    So on my way home form work today (Wed, April 17th 2013) a car pulled out in front of me. A lady driver, who had parked on the ‘wrong’ side of the road (no law against it! – well, I think there is, but only after dark!) so that when she then went to pull…

  • A bike run in the Scottish Borders

    This weekend I enjoyed a lovely bike run down to the Borders with 6 mates on our bikes. We gathered at Bruce’s over in Fife in the morning and then headed off across the Forth Road Bridge, around the Edinburgh bypass, and down the A7. We had an early lunch in Galashiels, then went down…

  • A year of motorcycling

    One year ago today I bought my ZZR1100, and it’s been a packed and busy year. I’ve put just over 11,900 miles on it, and that’s inevitably brought a certain amount of cost in wear and tear… Actually, quite a lot! But maybe some more on that later – if I can face it (sometimes…

  • New rear shock for my ZZR

    Well, what a busy couple of days this has been. Some time ago a group of us had a good old bash at adjusting the rear shock absorber on my ZZR1100, but the adjuster rings absolutely refused to budge no matter what we did, so eventually we had to give it up as a bad…

  • Thread Lock

    So, following on from my post about a brake caliper mounting bolt on my motorbike working loose and falling out, Nick (aka Muddydisco) suggested threadlock. Now as it happens I recently got to know a nice chap Tom who is a professional motorbike mechanic, and he’d invited me over to his garage yesterday to see…

  • Balls!

    No-one to blame but myself for this, but having taken the front brake calipers off the bike, I refitted them, and as they aren’t the original Kwak brakes I don’t have any torque settings for the bolts, so just as I’ve done before, the mounting bolts were done up to ‘very firm’. Well, apparently not…