Like me, I am sure that you are heartily fed up with hearing about my suspension woes. Despite trying all the tricks and wheezes suggested by the “experts” I still seem to be stuck with a bike that rides like a buckboard. Even the smallest of bumps result in the harshest of rides, the bike crashing into the bump then bouncing out of them again. It really has been most unpleasant.
Add to this the fact that I have two rides coming up shortly, a three day Oxley ride this weekend and my club’s annual 4-day ride through the Snowy Mountains at the end of the month, the pressure to get the thing fixed has been growing. Yes, I could send it to a suspension specialist, buy a $1000 rear shock absorber, buy progressive front springs, etc, but I can’t. Family finances just do not allow nor are they likely to any time soon.
Last Friday I spoke to my local mechanic, Gary Rooke, from Oak Flats Motorcycles and asked him if he’d look at the bike and give me some idea of where I was going wrong and how much it would cost to fix it. I figured that I’d at least be closer to a solution than I was at that stage. He was happy to look and so I took the bike in. On Saturday night at the speedway he said that they’d already torn it down and fixed it, which was a bit of a shock. I asked him what he’d done and he said that Jason had removed the rear unit, cleaned it up, greased all the linkages and reassembled it. He’d also put the bike back to stock settings according to the manual and, on riding it late on Friday, had found it to be greatly improved. Now Jason is only a little bloke compared to me but even so, he was happy that the improvement would be noticeable.
Best of all, Gary said that it would only cost me $100!! I was stunned; I am sure that they did more work than that. Nevertheless, I was very grateful and picked the bike up on Monday. It was noticeable straight away that the bike was softer and more compliant over the bumps. Last night I rode into town for coffee and, over the transverse ripples on the Old Princes Highway, a notoriously rough section, the bike was HUGELY better. Success at last.
Now I need to pack for the weekend as we hit out early on Friday morning. Had the bike not been fixed I would most certainly not have been going as Thunderbolt’s Way is very rough at the moment, and Buckett’s isn’t much better. The top box is already fitted and tomorrow I do tyres, chain and pack a few necessities. I am now eagerly looking forward to the ride there and most especially to playing on the Oxley on Saturday.
Of course, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t stuff something up. This ride has been planned for a couple of months and it only occurred to me the other day that I committed to go away on the same weekend that the Australian Historics are on at Wakefield Park, just up the road…just shoot me.
It’s also the final round of the MotoGp World Championship, guess I’ll be watching that on the small screen….go, Marquez.