Form before function?

I’ve always prefered to put function before form. To that end, I’ve always wanted the KTM to handle as possible on the open road, but this means it sucks at just about everything else.

It sucks when dealing with motorway traffic and city riding in general. -it’s hard on your wrists, and the bike gets hot, then the radiator fan blows hot air all over you.

These days, I’m now using the bike every other day beause my oldest daughter borrows my car often during the week.

This means I need to make the KTM a more practical bike for everyday use.

Some of it’s issues is the difficulty to strap anything to it easily, and my kids reluctance to ride on it’s pillion seat.
(to be fair, it’s not a comfortable seat and they keep sliding forward all the time)

Towards that end I’ve added a packrack to the back of the bike to solve these problems.

Now I’m wondering why I bothered struggling to tie stuff on the back of this bike all these years, when it could of been so much easier…

But with a packrack, life is so much easier..

The day started… eventually

I usually give the DR350 a run the day before just to make sure it’s all good, but this time I thought ‘she’ll be right, mate’

A combination of old petrol, colder mornings,and a good month before it last ran, ensured that my right leg got a good workout.

Forty something attempts with that kick starter later I had the bike running. By then I was too buggered to even smile about it.

The day went typically well after that. Youngest daughter spent the day riding around the learners track with no incidents on a bike we hired for the day for her.

I’ve worked out she’s prone to crashing, unless we pay attention to keeping her well hydrated with good food. In particular we have to be mindful during the hotter part of the day.

It’s taken a bit to get her to understand this, but I think we are getting there.

This is the story of how two brothers stole their dad’s old motorcycle without his knowledge, had it restored, and gave it back to him for christmas.

First, a bit about me..

I’ve been riding motorcycles since Noah was a lad. I got into it when I started work as an apprentice.

Money was tight in those days and buying an old slow secondhand car and then spending my weekends fixing it, wasn’t an attractive idea. So I got into motorbikes and enjoyed easy parking, the wind in my face, and all that other good stuff. Rain is a bit of a nuisance of course, but in those days, I just put up with it and took it as part of the experience.

I joined the only motorcycle club in my town in those days, who were into Classic motorcycles, and so my interest in older motorbikes grew imenensely.

This was in the 1980’s at a time when Japanese motorcycles had largely taken over, and non Japanese bikes were mostly ridden by enthusiast’s and gang members.

1970’s British bikes like Triumph Bonneville’s and Norton Commando’s were very sought after then, because of their speed and superior handling to the new-fangled Japanese stuff.

Anyway, onto what I was going to write about…

Motorcycling Mecca for me has been going to the annual classic motorcyle races in Pukekohe every year.

In it’s hey day, the event has hosted some very prominent ex Grand Prix winners and their bikes from around the world.

The likes of Giacomo Agostini, Sammy Miller, Ginger Malloy, Hugh Anderson, Surtees, Corser, Baylis, and numerous other ex grand prix riders have been to Pukekohe at some point.

This year will be the last event ever

The racetrack is closing and is destined to become a dedicated horse racing track.

I think it’s a shame for Pukekohe in general because once upon a time, it had it’s own unique identity and motorsport was a major part of that. It wasn’t just the racetrack by itself of course, because there were all these motorsport engineering bussinesses who specialised in motor racing.

Anyway, I’ll let the photo’s do the talking.

The clutch on the Honda XR125 has been a bit hard to use lately, so I had a look at the clutch cable and found…

Some broken strands in the cable. these will slowly unwind themselves, and make it harder to use the clutch.

Plan A
no problem I thought, just buy another cable off Trade me (similar to Ebay), fit the new one and all good.

Except that the new one has a longer inner cable and I can’t get it to work..

Plan B
Buy an original cable through a Honda dealer. I contacted a dealer down country, and the new one arrived on my doorstep 2 days later.

To change the cable is a fairly simple task.
loosen off the adjusters at each end, so the cable is real loose,
Pull the cable out of the clutch lever, then pull it right out of the bike, taking note of where it ran through the frame, etc.

it’s sometimes worth looking at the manual to see how the cable was run originally.

The old one was installed incorrectly, and used to catch on the steering lock.

It should be adjusted as below according to the manual

It’s normal for the cable to stretch a bit in the first few weeks, but it’s only a five minute job to readjust it.

happy riding!