And so it starts....

As we prepare to set off on a new trip (to Mongolia) with the "Bastard" left behind as I take Jean's old Peg and she her new one, bits are starting to be stripped off.

No sooner had I SORN'd her then our spare foot rest was required on a mates Peg (Strada). So off came the left hand one.

Then I remembered that Jean's old Peg has always been a PITA with the gear change coming lose, so after tweaking it with an extra bolt I decided to snaffle the one off the Bastard as an extra extra spare.

The Peg is pegless !

She has also morphed in to a workbench and storage rack.

All being well, come next year I will have her back on the road. Unless "Dobbie" comes stealing spares while we are away ....

(Semi) Retired

The bike, not me.

 

It is time to go easy on the old bike, following our earlier soaking during 3 weeks in Scotland this year, which she managed without mishap, she has since played up again.

Despite the electrical fire before the our recent Pegaso meet, once it was all fixed by Tony at Pitstop (I can't do Electrics to save my life), we headed off to Scotland again over the late August bank holiday weekend. I know what everyone is thinking, gluttons for punishment.

This time, however, we had excellent weather, all the way to Orkney and back. Five days of sun, and empty roads.

But that wasn't enough for the bike. Oh no, she decided it would be a good idea to have the ignition jam. Key in, not turning.

Personally I think she was missing Mike's caring touch. Mike was the guy I went round the world with back in 2013, and he seemed to take over all the fixing. So, once again and front end strip. Drop the base of the ignition barrel. Put the key in the ignition (to deactivate the Immobiliser) and twist a screwdriver in the base.

Tie the bits on with tie clips and Bob's (or should that be Mike ?) your uncle. 

The engine, as always, continues to run flawlessly. But decision made, no more big trips for her. 

Commuting duty only it is now. Winter into Manchester. Fun. Not.

Oh, look, it is a Pegaso with an electrical failure

Spoke too soon, didn't I ?

That fuse blowing incident earlier this year, the one I forgot to get to the bottom of. Just bit me.

I had just packed the bike to head of for a weekend of camping, drinking and talking bollocks with other Peg owners. I climbed on, turned the key .... nothing.

Seat off, checked the main fuse, yep blown. Put in new fuse, switch on and the system asked for the magic code (the one that says it does not recognise the key). Not good. Especially when smoke rises from under the tank.

Switch off, ignition stayed on and smoke continued.

Rip fuse out. Breath a sigh of relief.

Unpacked, threw all the gear on the XJR and headed off (with Jean on her Peg).

I got home today and stripped the bike, under the tank was a nice mess with some melted wires and the key antenna ones had also come away (probably heat induced).

Wiring is not one of my skills, so I have bodged it together so that  I can run it up to a man that does have the skills. Another tank off job event in the coming weeks (man  that can is on holiday).

Of course it will make it to Orkney at the end of August !

Time flies

It has been nearly a year since my last post, some people may think that means the bike is dead.

Fear not, she is still running and managed the Morocco trip.

That was blogged here, http://2pegs2peacock.blogspot.co.uk/
(First post here)
http://2pegs2peacock.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-earth-is-peacock-and-its-glorious.html

Since then she has only broken down once (so far), blowing a fuse in February where we collected Jean's new (2009 reg) Peg which she will ride to Mongolia. The plan being that I retire the "Bastard" and use Jean's other Peg.

In the mean time just so that my bike did not feel left out we took a three week trip to the Outer Hebrides.  We may have been sidetracked occasionally.

And despite rain everyday, sometimes all day, she behaved flawlessly. So the only donkey on this trip was in the one in the stable next to us.

Provided she gets through another MOT she will be off to Orkney in August, I'll have to do the maths between the three dashboards I have used, but if the 80,000 miles have not been passed yet. They soon will be.

Sod it, every one else is going

It seems every man and his dog is going to Morocco, so it is about time the Pegs went. They bikes are serviced. A ferry ticket has been bought for the return, we just need to decide which channel crossing to take on they way out. As we head off on the 31St August as have not got long to make up our minds.

My Peg is now on 72000 miles, so it could be the last hurrah for it.

This is a common pose to find my bike in (this was back in May when my coil packed in ). I hope over the 6 weeks we will be away she behaves her self.

A short break and she is back on the road again

Repairs to the ignition were completed with the aid of Pitstop (as usual). I sourced an ignition barrel from a smaller Aprilia, only the lower portion concerned me, for £5.

Tony was able to wire the ignition back an, with extra solder and the jobs was done just in time for me to fly out of the country and ride a rental bike over the new year in Chile :-).

Back home and the Peg is in use again. Braving the Scottish pre-Spring weather.

She is playing up again

I decided it was time to get my left hand pannier fixed the other day, some daylight had started showing between the welds and around one of the mounting points. This is the pannier that I have repeatedly punished ;- hitting a BMW GS1200 (twice in one day), sliding down a road in Argentina, sliding down a road in France, sliding down the side of a caravan on the M6 .... and many more minor slow speed drops.

I popped down to Vern's (http://www.projectvnd.com) near Chester, Vern had made the panniers for me back in 2010, and had the repairs done. Once I had bolted everything back onto the bike again and accepted the compliments from Vern about the fact the Italian bike was still going, it did what it always does, refused to start.

It was the classic dead ignition. Nada. Change the fuse, nothing.
Jiggle the wires at the ignition, life.... dead.

Suspecting the previous soldering repair back in Kazakhstan had failed I stripped off the front end, and split the ignition barrel only to see that the solder was still intact. This meant my Dutch motorway repair of sliding a piece of plastic into the barrel to put pressure on the connectors had failed. It was time for a new solution.

Carefully find a position at that the lower half of the barrel would enable the ignition to function when the key was turned in the upper half (allowing the key->dash->ECU security to engage) I got it running. Then strapped the lower half of the ignition barrel to the throttle cable and hit the road.

Arriving home, chuffed with my latest bodge job I switched the ignition off. Well I tried to, the key would not turn.Only one thing for it, get a screwdriver, push it into the lower barrel and twist.

So, the bike is back in the garage with the keys in the ignition, until I find time to work on her.

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.