Posts Tagged ‘ Honda Camino ’
Got a voicemail from Hatfields of Crowthorne, my rear wheel is ready for collection.
The weather may be crappy but it is a bank holiday weekend Whig is perfect to take my mighty steed out on the road.
I’ve got an early start in Southampton tomorrow morning but I hope I can collect the wheel afterwards. I might even be able to fit it before I’m due out at lunchtime.
Just looked and it is on the instructions of the service manual. They make it seem so easy!
And as per the good old Haynes Manual, Installation is the reverse of removal, Except with Torque figures to tighten the bolts to.
The tool-kit I have at the moment doesn’t have a 12mm spanner so I might have to treat myself to a Halfords special and get some to allow me to work on the bike.
So I start my first journey and already something isn’t right. It sounds like there is something stuck in the spokes so 50 yards down the road I jump off the bike and look at my back wheel.
Flat.
Bugger.
I think about making my way onto Tesco’s (the destination of the maiden voyage) but I decide this would be dangerous to other people on the road and me. So I hop off the bike and wheel it back to my house. I’ve got a bike pump for my mountain-bike so I think I can see whether it is a ‘general’ flat or puncture.
There doesn’t apppear to be anything stuck in the wheel so I start pumping. The air is leaving the tyre as quickly as it was going in. The valve appeared to be leaving so I tightened the nut at the bottom close to the wheel. This helped and I was then able to pump the tyre up to 20PSI but the moment I stopped it began leaking out.
😦
If I squeezed the tyre then the air came out from the edge of the wheel/tyre.
This isn’t good.
Its the back wheel so to change the tyre I need to take the wheel off, with the chain and all the shit. I’m going to have to get it to a bike shop and get them to change the tyre. Perhaps it needs ‘tubes’ or something like that? I’m not a bike person so I don’t know what the score is. I might have to take out the service manual and see what the score is.
Bike 1 – Twon 0
I was really looking forward to its first journey out as well.
Helmet – Check
Insurance – Check
Today I do my first ‘legal’ ride…. If I don’t update later, Call an ambulance.
This is the 100th post on my blog and I thought I’d celebrate it with a REAL video of my ACTUAL jogle bike.
The weather today has been shocking. Occasionally we might be bathed in glorious sunshine and then 30 seconds later we’d have a massive down pour. I think part of this is because of the pub crawl I went on yesterday. After not drinking for 5 odd years I managed a very respectable 14 pubs and even a can of 4% Stella when I got back to my house. I have paid for it all of today and have had a dreadful hangover all day. The hang-over stopped me from going to try to get a helmet (see the post #99 for more info).
Inbetween the rain I started the bike up. It was working and even though it hadn’t been run for a week, it started no problems. I thought I’d video it so that I had proof that it did run – I don’t have a great track record with vehicles lasting very long in my ownership but I need this moped to last until at least the end of the trip.
I do need to get a helmet so I can start taking my moped out. Although it hasn’t been a great weather day, today felt like a day where I should have been out and about on my moped.
I will be soon, and I’ll have to get used to riding in the rain, I’m pretty sure that Scotchland will have enough rain to wash away a large army.
…but an evening of heavy drinking has meant I’m not really wanting to leave the house. I’ve also got no money so I really do need to wait until payday which should be next friday.
I think there is a shop nearby which sells them. Tri-Counties Motorcycles should sell helmets but I’ll check with my friend Dave the Cat (Who owns a very nice lookin KTM bike – Its white, thats about all I can tell you). Once I have the helmet I will get the bike insured and will start my practice riding.
The heavens opened up today so the bikes got a bit wet. I was going to try starting it up as I’ve not done that for a week – I’ll give it a go in a bit.
I put my handlebars back on properly (we’d only loosened 2 nuts to allow them to ‘lean back’) and started the engine.
This involves flipping a switch which converts the bike from cycle mode to motorcycle mode. I know what you are thinking…this is essentially the ‘Super Pursuit’ version that my moped has. Next up you have to pedal to start the engine, which is nice.
With the engine running I hesitantly blipped the throttle.
It rev’d.
I blipped it again.
Rev.
Blip
Rev.
I now need to get the bike off the stand. I did this and gentle pulled back on the throttle. The bike slowly went forward. I lifted my feet and now I was scootering. I went up and down my private test track trying to build up speed. I kept on with this but i didn’t have a helmet. An Astra reversed up my private test track so I jumped off the bike and walked it back to my house.
A good first run and I have at least now ridden a bike. I can call myself a biker!
I suppose it started on Friday night. I put a vote on VZi on what I was going to do on Friday night and the winner was PS3, Pizza & Beer. I ordered a pizza to be delivered while I was driving home and I knew I had beers chilling in the fridge. When I got home I cracked open the beer and threw on the PS3. I must admit I only had a quick game before flipping on the TV. I only had 1 beer before flipping over to coke zero.
The reason for the change was that I wanted to leave early to collect my bike. I set my alarm to 8am and managed to be tucked up in bed to allow me plenty of sleepy-sleep-sleep. Excitement meant I was up at 6am and I was on the road at 7.30am. I dropped the seller a text to say I was on my way.
I had the guy’s address on Email and I knew he was in Taunton which would mean an trip down the M4 and then onto the M5. I was going to risk not checking the address until I got to Taunton because I fancied the excitement!
Seeing as the journey was going to be well over 2 hours I decided to download some more stuff onto my iPhone. Off came the AIOTM podcasts, off came the Adam’s Big Mix Tapes, and finally the episodes of Adam & Joe’s 6 Music podcasts. On went Richard Herring’s Warming Up audio Blogs, the Glasto A&J Specials and I thought I’d try something different and I downloaded 2 Desert Island Discs.
The journey down was pretty eventless. There was a bit of a jam just after I joined the M5 but after 30 minutes it went away. I did the journey without stopping and arrived at the Seller’s address around 11am. Luckily he had said that his campervan would be on the drive so it would make it easier to identify his address. I did need to use the Sat Nav and my iPhone 4 made it nice and easy to get to his.
When I arrived the moped was parked up out front and the seller was quick to greet me. We had a long chat about the bike and it really did look just like what I was after. He told me some basics such as the switch that turns it from a pedal bike to a scooter. He also explained that there was a choke. I’m quite glad that he did as I wouldn’t have known.
As I had told the seller I had friends in Taunton he thought I was going to be riding round their house and come back to collect the car. I told him that I was going to put it in the back of the Scenic and he was suprised but happy to help. We wheeled the scooter to the car, I put the back seats down and we tried to put the moped in fron wheel first but it was having none of it. We turned the bike round and backed it in. The bike fitted EXCEPT the handlebars were in the way of the rear window – bugger.
The seller suggested dropping the handlebars and quickly nipped inside to get his spanners and we were then able to drop the handlebars down. With the bike safely in the car we went inside his house to complete the paperwork. Here we had a complete collection of documents for the scooter. There was the mot (just done at the start of July so not needed until July 2012), there was the service manual, the owners handbook and the Haynes Manual. The seller also gave me a florescent jacket and also a CD full of photos from when the bike was stripped down and rebuilt.
All the Items I was given.
We finished with a chat about Ortha-K lenses and not wanting to have our eyes lasered before I jumped back in the car and made the journey back home.
Around about 2pm I got back to my house. I did stop on the way back at the service station because I wanted a Starbucks Vanilla Creme. They are lovely, but very expensive. I was going to go to Burger King and get the new Angus burger but there was a little bit of a queue so I didn’t get anything. The journey back had no real traffic jam so I only had to battle with getting the scooter out of the car and I parked it in the front of my house
To get cashback through quidco it causes the cost of my insurance to go up £40 so I think I’ll ignore that option and just get the ‘standard’ £30 cashback offered directly through the Swinton website.
Thought I would get a price online. I searched ‘cheap moped insurance’ on google and clicked an advert which said £30 cashback. I entered my details and the quote was £58.95 for the year. But get this… with £30 cashback!
RESULT
I’m checking with quidco when I get home as they are doing £40 cashback through quidco and £40 cashback from the insurance company which works out as me being paid over £20 to get insured on my moped!
Thats if it all works……
twonjogle4brads 