No more bouncy bouncy

After bouncing halfway round the world with a duff rear shock and being to mean/lazy to get around to replacing it in the 12 months since I got home, it took being told that when I went into bends the arse end of the bike "looked like a hippo having a shit" to get me to bite the bullet.

£440 of my fine British pounds later (delivery delayed by ordering in August when the Italians are all on holiday).

A bit dirty, but then it has survived 68,000 miles.

A quick oil and filter change, new front brake pads and the ride is significantly better.

Naked again !

Late last year I mentioned the bike was getting a rest, it was a very short rest and most of the work I was going to do never got done.

She was pressed back into service in January, when the XJ900F went away for an engine overhaul, that eventually took 5 months. During that time I have been working away and commuting on her up to Harrogate.

Then last week the XJ900 came home, and the Peg was resigned to the back of the garage again. But only for a week as the XJ900 is still burning more oil than an Iraqi oil field when the USA visit.

As my commute has now switched to Leeds, and it is fun on my 3rd bike (an XJR1300), I have decided that the Peg will just have to soldier on. But to make filtering less "interesting" the highly useful panniers have been removed.

It has been a while, but she is naked again !

(And here she is fully dressed)

Back of the garage

The Peg (I don't call her the "Bastard" as often as I used to) has been relegated to the back of the garage, pending some items that  need investigating and fettling, so my 21 year old XJ900F is back in service for the winter.

Recently the Peg decided to not start after a damp cold night (ok, probably the battery) while I was working in Gloucester. And it is also chewing main stand springs, which is currently more annoying than major but needs sorting.

Still running

After 74 days, four breakdowns and 17000 miles the Peg came back home, the trip blog is here.

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/tstories/2prats

She was running rough on the final legs, he chain was stretching at a rapid rate, 14 spanner "faces" per day (around 500 miles per day on the last 5 days).

With some gentle tinkering she has continued running, now with ore than 62000 miles under the belt. Recently I had a day out with another Peg own in the hills and lanes over Macclesfield.

 David showing me how it should be done.

With one good spill myself

 It's winter again, so the Peg is going into hibernation while I use the XJ900F to get around. It is a better bike for filtering on the M6 between home and Birmingham.

Off on another long ride

My Peg has been "resting", while I have been playing (and working). I am off on another trip, this time a RTW. Northern hemisphere. And I am taking the "bastard" as my steed.
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/tstories/2prats/

I should have put it in earlier for a service, but as I was playing on a Funduro in South America over the winter I put all preparations on hold.

Now, with the Peg due on a RoRo to Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the 18th April I am waiting for some shock bushes.

Mine fell apart on inspection.

Some fresh ones have been ordered, but they are not due to arrive until 2 days after the RoRo leaves.
Jean to the rescue, she has allowed me to strip the ones I need from her bike.

All fixed and ready for an MOT ?

Ever since the rewire in baton Rouge I have suffered a combination of no dip headlight or no full bean and at various times no horn. (And driving through Bolivia without one, where they use them to signal right of way at junctions, is an experience in itself.)

Last year I was warned that my Peg would fail the MOT unless I could get the full beam and dip to show at the same time.

I've spent a bit of time recently reworking the wiring.

I've had to buy another left hand control (the one on the bike has been well bastardised) but it was only £10 off Ebay. And with the horror that was the headlight loom I decided to buy a new one of those, at only ?25 for a genuine one it was a bit of a bargain.

Then I stripped Jean's Peg to check out how the wiring should be, as the diagram is not easy to follow, and set about mine.

I roped in a friend to help and we spent many hours tracing the wiring diagram on the garage floor, re-reading the notes I had taken from Jean's bike and checking the photographs I took to triple check how things should be. All to no avail, as we either blew more fuses as I got the 2 greens mixed up with the green with a white tracer or failed to have lights working when we expected them to.

Each time we needed to test things out, I had to refit the tank, the pump electrics and the fuel pump. Forgetting to refit the fuel line leads to a lot of petrol on the floor.

Eventually after drinking a lot of tea, we concluded that despite having all the wires in the right place that the relay would not kick in properly to switch on the dip beam once the engine had started up. (Who ever came up with this over engineered piece of crap needs shooting). Therefore there was another error/fault somewhere.

So, after some trial and error I decided the best bet was to send power direct to the lights when the ignition was switched on. I've now wired a new switch in, fitted to the bars, so I can knock the lights off if the battery is low or if the ignition is being left off.

Of course the full beam needed a similar workaround, but that works from the left hand control.....
But now all seems hunky dory again, I just hope I don't need to take the tank off again soon, its a real PITA.

Bikes that know the weather forecast

A couple of weeks ago I was setting off to the Horizons Unlimted UK meet to give a presentation on our trip "Down the World" on two Italian bikes.

I loaded the Peg up, pulled her out of the garage, started her up, and swa the ECU light come on. Then she stopped.

08:30 in the morning, electrical trouble shooting time.

I've got used to this behaviour now and pride myself on being able to trouble shoot pretty quickly. I was straight in to the electrical connector blocks near the ignition and quickly found the culprit(s).

However at 09:30 I wasn;t really in the mood to do some rewiring, so I dragged the old faithful XJ900 out (103,000 miles and counting), repacked and set off.

That day, Thursday was glorious. Sunshine and heat.

However, the summer rains re-appeared and I really don't think the Peg would have been happy. She does have a bad record of throwing a hissy fit in the rain now. 16 hours of rain later the site was starting to look like it would be under water.

Oh no, the service/spanner light has come on!

It has been a quiet winter for the "bastard", mainly due to me working away in Peterborough. I like riding, but with the cold, snow, wind and rain over Xmas I wussed out and hired a car for a couple of weeks.

However, I have been using the Peg again over the last few weeks to work down in Birmingham. This afternoon as I started her up to return home, the spanner logo appeared on the dash.

What now ?

I looked around for other telling lights, and listened for unusual sounds. But then I spotted the mileage. 550 miles.

It was telling me to have it booked in for it's 1st service :-)

Silly bike.

The curse of rain

Aprilias never seem to fare well in the rain, and April has been a very bad month.

But on a bright note, this time it was Jean's bike to suffer :-)

Last Sunday after her Peg spending about 5 hours in torrential rain it refused to start. The clocks/ignition would go off after 2 turns of the engine.

As soon as the bike was recovered home I opted to switch the clocks for a spare one I had, as I suspected she had befallen the same fate as mine last year.

The bike started after about 4 turns, but took a while to sound right.

I switched the clocks back and it fired 1st time.

Fingers crossed it was just waterlogged electrics, but that means the bike is back at the back of the garage awaiting my attention.

The armchair rides again

Last week I got around to putting the bike back together. I found the missing pliers from a few days earlier, balanced on the exhaust and set about putting everything back together. I kept checking the dash/keys worked ok at each stage. After neatly wrapping the wiring loom up in tape I failed to get it to follow the correct route through the fairing and had to resort to the "bugger it, it fits OK here" method.

Anyway, new clocks fitted. Bike is back on the road. Sitting back in my armchair again.
It has been a while since I had a set of clocks at zero. Well, not since the XJ900F went from 99,999 to 00,000 last year anyway :-)

All I have to do now is start on Jean's wiring and valve clearances. Oh and take the plastic off the dash :-)

Electrical Fault chasing

The new dash (for my Peg) and the shock (for Jean's) have arrived. I dealt with Jean's shock first, mainly because it is a simple job. The rear shock is held on by 1 bolt at the top and 3 bolts on the linkage plate. It is a simple matter of unbolting, dropping the shock out, pushing the new one in place and bolting it back in. All while sat on the main stand.

Just make sure you note which way round the plate goes (there is a useful arrow on it) or the bike will "bottom out" due to insufficient travel (this happened to us in Punta Arenas).

Jean was made up that she could once more get the side stand down and the angle of lean was the same as mine. The issue appears to have been the spring, and we would love to know exactly how far she rode with it in such a bad state. But it had served us well.

Then I set to on my bike. I plugged the new dash in, turned the keys and .... Insert the I Key (in Italian) was displayed.

I checked with the previous 2nd hand clock, and it still displayed the same. I managed to get hold of the garage that supplied it and they suggested I changed the key "very quickly". It was worth a try, and it worked. To make my life easier I set the display to English and miles.

I left it over the weekend, checking it occasionally and the ignition came on each time with out requesting the code.

Monday morning I set about putting the tank, nose fairing and dash back on. As soon as I switched the ignition on, it asked for the code. It had forgotten the key again. I went through the "learn the key" procedure, and it locked up with "Insert the I key" again.

I took the tank and nose fairing off again, and switched on.... it worked !
So, loose wire then. But which one.

After much jiggling I stripped the loom and started to trace wires.

Each time I thought I had solved it, I jiggled another wire and the code was asked for again.

Eventually I got my head around how the dash and ignition barrel communicated and managed to follow the wiring diagram. This finally lead to finding a corroded wire I had missed when checking the connections. I stripped it out and had new spade connectors put on by Pitstop. Plugged it all back in, and the keys were recognised.

Fixed ? Nope. Jiggled the wires, and the problem came back ......

I was on the case and had a feeling it was the key "antenna". Traced the wires and found *another* junction I had missed, this had a loose connection. More striping of connectors to clean them and a? bit of pliers tweaking to tighten up the female side.

Much wire jiggling later, the ignition still works correctly. As I then lost my pliers, it seemed like a good time to stop and leave things until tomorrow.

Things to do while waiting

While waiting for the new dash to arrive I thought it would be a good idea to check the valve clearances. It all looks so straight forward in the manual. But then they had the engine out of the bike when they did it !

Obviously the tank needs to be off to get at the valve covers.

The rear (Inlet) valves are fairly painless to get at.

But not the outlet (exhaust) valves.

They are under here..... somewhere

To get at it the bolts on the right hand side I had to remove the water reservoir and then unbolt the radiator so that it dropped down and forward slightly.

Then I was able to get to the bolts (hex) with a ratchet using a long extension, which just went over the top at the right angle

With the radiator out of the way, access to the bolts on the other side was available, tight but available.

And the result of all this work ? The valves were all within tolerances. So did not need adjusting.
At least I have practised it now, Jean will be happier when I attac^H^H^H^H service her Pegaso.

Article: Back on the road again, for a couple of days

I've finished the clean-up of the wiring, and had the "wing-lets" welded back on (both bikes).

With extra strengthening by Vern (the pannier maker)

Unfortunately the replacement dash has not been behaving. I had programmed it to accept my keys, but it kept losing them from its memory. When it does that I have to punch in a 5 digit code before she will start and the ride with the service warning light on and the words "SERVICE" on the display.
While trying to redo the key memory on Friday, the display locked with "Insert the I key", normally it would follow that with "memorised". But not this time. I've unhooked it from the battery, but it refuses to clear.

Bum.:-(

Anyone got a spare clock ?

On top of that, we have just had Jean's rear suspension bushes replaced (220GBP inc. labour !), and now see that her rear shock has lost damping again. I think it is time to give up and buy a new one for her.

Expensive days.

The bike that refuses to die

Despite all the names I call this bike, well OK, despite the ONE name I always call this bike, it would appear that it will live again.

I wasn't happy with paying over 400GBP for a replacement dash and clocks, and the cheapest I could find on Ebay was 250GBP. However, I was able to find a used one via the Aprilia forum for the bargain price of 100GBP.

When I plugged it in, the test cycle was performed and after keying in the temporary code of 0000 the bike started.

Magic.

She *will* go to Morocco.

I just need to get used to the clock saying it is now a Strada, and that the fuel gauge is always empty (no fuel gauge on my model).

I've now started to strip down the electrics and clean up any dirty/corroded contacts.

A very time consuming, and due to the bending over, back aching task. About half done, then I will replace the gaffa taped indicator with an old rear one and wheel her back out again....... then start on Jean's electrics....<sigh>

And then she died, is this the end ?

The bikes have had highs and lows this month, Jean's Peg is still fully functional, if you can discount the need for new rear suspension bushes (what is it about her bike and suspension ?), mine however has gone downhill.

The work for the horn and lights was good enough to get it through the MOT test, and I have done around another 900 miles since then. On one return journey from Birmingham I had to administer first aid to an indicator.

I'd not had to repair it since the roundabout in Argentina, you just can't get decent gaffa tape these days.

There, as good as new. I must stop being a cheap skate and buy a new one for her.
However at a Festival this weekend being left out in the rain for 4 days was probably the final nail in the coffin.

The Pegasos do have a known issue with moisture getting into the dashboard, and mainly causing it to mist up. Mine has suffered this the whole time and I must admit to getting a overly relaxed about it as there had been no issues in the last 30,000 miles.

On the way home on Monday, just after Melton Mowbray (where it seems impossible to get Melton Mowbray pies) I noticed that the digital speedo was not working. And then that the rev counter was also lifeless. As the bike was still running and I had a nearly full tank I took the sensible option of not stopping and switching off the ignition in case it failed the system pre-start checks.

Getting back home judging my speed by the sound of the engine was interesting, and having to use arm signals as the indicator circuit goes through the dash. I switched off when safely home the ignition and restarted it, it was ok so put the bike in the garage and left it overnight.


The next morning I when I took a look it was obvious it had got worse because with no ignition the rev counter was "jumping" to 7000 and the system test would start and fail.

I tried starting the engine, which worked, but then would die immediately.
The "bastard" had finally keeled over. Two weeks short of 12 months of solid use. 29770 miles/47632 kilometres. 30,000 would have been a much nicer number.

So, a few weeks earlier than planed for a winter lay off and electrical check over she has been pushed to the back of the garage while the situation is reviewed, with a new dash being in excess of £450 the search is on for a usable replacement.

I must admit to a few moment of sadness as I removed the panniers, although I had done that twice in the trip for repairs this time seemed so final. I've been using the Peg for my main transport and commute to work. It has taken me to London, Middlesbrough, Bridgend, Newport and Birmingham. Then to rallies and events at weekends. I've lived out of her for 12 months and I feel like a part of me has been surgically removed.


I've put my XJ900F (100,070 miles) back on the road, but a 4 cylinder bike just does not feel right anymore.

Fingers crossed, I want to get more miles from the "bastard" yet.

Parp! Parp!

That's a sound not heard from my Peg since somewhere in the USA. With the imminent and fast approaching annual MOT test I finally got the the bottom of the problem, or should I say Tony from Pitstop did.

After diagnosing as far as I could, I had to give in and take it down to him for the day on Friday, I did all the body work stuff and he did all the electrical stuff. Pretty quickly he found a snipped wire, that must have been done accidentally in Baton Rouge while the fuse blowing issue was bi-passed in Louisiana. That was a quick fix.

Tony then decided he could do something to get my "high" beam working. But without the piece of paper that explained what the electrician in the USA had done to bypass it made the extra work pretty hard. But by 19:00 I had a working dip. side light and high beam set up. I had been amused when at one point Tony walked back into the work area and shouted "Right! You little bastard!" in frustration.

I think it was at the bike, and not me. I did learn something important from all this, and that is I still don't understand wiring looms, especially when relays are involved. Happy days, now all I need to do is book the MOT test.

The bastard bites back

My bike had been a late purchase before the trip and was expected to be the one donating parts to get Jean's to the end of the road, it was referred to many times by me as "bastard" as I was plagued with electric problems. It did of course get further than Jean's.

But it was bound to happen, I had only been telling my neighbour how reliable the bike was and that I wanted to take it across Russia in 2 years.

We were heading to a "Pannier Party"(Courtsey of Vern the pannier maker) near Chester, bimblimg along the Runcorn Express-way when I felt the power drop. The red warning triangle came on and the "Service" message flashed. I pulled off down a slip road and started to diagnose. No spark, checked the wiring and found a loose connector to the coil. Easy fix ! Not :-(

The spade connector had corroded and snapped off.
I sent Jean ahead with the tent, and waited for the recovery truck. Then had the piss take out of me all weekend by BMW owners.
When we got home on Sunday, Jean donated her coil to get me on the road as I am working away all week. So, roles reversed as her bike became the donor.

Oops

Before leaving we had new chains and sprockets fitted, the chains managed over 21000 miles and were replaced in Spain, but not the sprockets. Pitstop had saved my old set so I had them refitted, and discovered why my chain was stretching so much, the link rivet was not riveted !

The old chain was still in decent condition so that was refitted as well. I then took Jean's bike to have the front sprocket changed, I rode up to Pitstop, parked and walked in. Then I heard an ominous crash and guessed the strong winds had blown it over (the bike sits *very* upright on the side stand). I wandered out with Tony to pick it up, and saw a large pool of oil, the brake lever had gone through the engine casing.

After 25000 miles in 8 months I manage to seriously damage Jean's bike. Fortunately Tony can do a top job of alloy welding. Jean, needless to say, was not happy with me

What Happened next

After the trip (Two pegs to Patagonia) had ended, the bikes came home (with us).
Seeing as how they (especially mine) had surpassed all expectations I thought I'd track how the Pegs get on back in the damp, cold Northern Hemisphere. The obvious thing to do would be to give them a full strip down and a service, but they have had to do with oil and filter and a jet wash.

My battle scared bike was roped in as my major transport so Jean could use the car for work. This meant my XJR1300 and XJ900F have stayed in the back of the garage, unused and unloved. I'm beginning to wonder if something is wrong with me as I have had no urge to get them on the road and ride them....... yet.

I noticed the small "wing-lets" on Jean's Peg that hold the plastics on and had been used a stabilising point for the panniers had broken off, so the panniers were taken off for a re-weld.
Not that I have got around to having the welds done yet.