Well that was annoying.
This evening, I drilled four big holes in the garage wall and screwed on the Abus WBA 100 Granit Wall Anchor
Still, it’s sturdy and will be excellent to chain Wilf to when the trailer and ZRX are back in Norfolk or elsewhere.
Oh dear!
The Meta M357T-V2 alarm that had once been fitted to Wilf was removed by Roger when he got the bike. He had tried to refit it before selling Wilf to me but failed. And apparently if the wire telltales that identify the leads when the alarm is new are missing now – as they are – then it’s pure guesswork as to which of the black wires is which.
So I’ve now had to order a new one from elsewhere and I will have to arrange for the alarm to be fitted when it arrives.
So after a bit of a nightmare journey to get to Birmingham, I did the deal and Wilf was wheeled out of Roger’s workshop. At which point it began raining…
We’d fixed the TomTom Rider’s RAM mount to the clutch lever bolt and I plugged in the address in Grimsby and off I went. A couple of coffees later and I set the TomTom to my home address. One annoying thing was that when riding, I was not allowed to change my destination to a previously stored one, no doubt due to some idiotic ’safety’ feature. No doubt they’d want me to pull onto the hard shoulder to do this … where a number of accidents happen!
Anyway, on arrival home, I checked the trip statistics and discovered that my moving average speed for the 380 mile journey had been xxmph. Oops! Best not put the number.
OK, my back ached a little but having spent five hours in the saddle, it had turned out to be a remarkably good high speed tourer. Maybe I need to rethink my choice of bike for the RBLR1000, a 1,000 mile ride in 24 hours I’m doing for charity.
One little side-effect that was a tad unpalatable was the effect buying Wilf has had on my insurance premium. I renewed by insurance for the Kawasaki ZRX1200R fully comprehensive for £133.32 – I’m 47 and have been riding for 30 years with no accidents and just three points on my licence at the moment. That was with eBike Insurance, who I’ve found to be cheapest for the last couple of years and who aren’t overly concerned about modifications, providing you list them.
So adding Wilf to the policy and making sure that I was showing that both bikes will be staying down here in London from time to time over the summer, the additional premium was a whopping £474.12! Eek!
I’ve also spent another hundred quid or more on another Abus chain and a ground anchor in addition to the Meta alarm on Wilf who is also marked with SmartWater. Click that link for more details of what that is. Surprisingly, adding the chain and anchor would have done nothing to decrease the premium but had a theft occurred whilst they were not in use, the excess would have increased, so I have not added them to the policy on the basis that the insurers don’t want me to use them and it’s my choice if I do or don’t.
We’re all safe and legal now and ready to pick Wilf up later this morning…
Welcome to my shiny new blog set up especially for my fun and games with a 2004 Suzuki GSX-R750 K4.
I’ve bought it mainly for trackdays, both in the UK and abroad, but also for the occasional hoon.
The deal has been done and I am collecting it on Bank Holiday Monday, May 4th from the Midlands and then riding it the long way home to London via Grimsby and Lincolnshire Wolds for a quick hoon with my mate Wazza and his Rizla Replica GSX-R750 K2.
The bike’s present owner is an Instructor for the Motorcycle Folly and I made the mistake of saying that I really liked the 750 Gixxers as an all round package, especially for the track. Roger said it was for sale and suggested I take it out for a session on the recent Folly trackday at Castle Combe. It was sooooooo easy to ride fast and was so controllable, that it practically sold itself to me.
I’m intending to use my new TomTom Rider v2 satnav to guide me home, so that should be fun setting it to work. If not, I’ll have to rely on a small map book, Google Maps on my Nokia and signposts!
I had a journey to go on recently: Google Maps reckoned the outward leg should have taken 3 hours. The Garmin i3 (aka Psycho SatNav Bitch as ‘she’ tends to taunt me with unrealistic targets, even the way I drive) reckoned around 2¼ hours. My Nokia N95-8GB with Nokia Maps, on the other hand, reckoned 4 hours. Something of a disagreement.
In the end, the combination of the time of day, the occasional spray and muck left over from gritting (even though it hadn’t been icy) and the way I drive meant it took 2½ hours.
The routes themselves were almost identical, the only difference being the route in or around Grantham.
And the other differences were:
Looks like there’s still no ideal solution for me, but the Saga-driver Nokia is closest as it’s so nicely contained within the phone.
I picked this unit up today. Halfords and Woolworths had the unit priced cheapest on their web sites, but neither would actually allow an order. When I rang Halfords, I was told the i3 was being discontinued, which would explain the price discounting I’d seen.
Lawks! It’s tiny: see the photo of it next to my Nokia 6230i for comparison.
It comes with the UK maps preloaded onto a teeny 128MB Transflash data card, a cigarette lighter 24V/12V power lead (it runs on 2x AA batteries otherwise), a USB cable and drivers CD, suction mount, dashboard mount (for the suction mount to fix to) and instruction booklet.
I had it working in under five minutes in my Ford Mondeo ST200 despite the heated windscreen elements (which can make things more difficult for the GPS, making it want an external antenna in some cases).
It took just a few seconds to set my home address and calculate a route home which it then reclaculated every time I deviated from it. The unit gives quite loud instructions and turn information and the volume can be altered or turned off. I used the “3D” view but there are two top-down views of the routing too and brightness, etc. can also be altered.
When I got home, I updated it for speed cameras, etc. The USB cable is used for modifying the maps and adding points of interest, such as speed camera locations which I downloaded from PocketGPSWorld and added to the unit in a few seconds using the downloadable Garmin POI Loader software.
As for on-bike use, the i3 is not marketed as a bike unit – it’s not rugged or waterproof but is claimed to be sunlight-readable which is handy. It fits in neatly-ish between and in front of the clocks using the sucker mount, but I’ll have to see if I can get a sturdier bar mount or something similar.
For an on-bike test, I wired up an accessory socket to the Kawasaki ZRX1200R and used the supplied cigarette lighter adaptor, running the cable from the accessory socket under the seat, under the tank and behind the clocks to the i3.
I then went for a ‘spirited’ ride to test it properly. In Map View mode, the i3 displayed the location map (with different levels of detail dependent apparently upon speed), the next junction at the top of the unit, the direction in the small box to the bottom right and – usefully – the current speed in the bottom left hand box. Even in direct sunlight, the screen was readable: I have a black visor too. I didn’t try it with the voice prompts (although there are two web sites with instructions on how to wire up a headphone socket and headphone) but found it easy enough to see the screen and the speed camera warnings.
The unit can show the planned route on a turn-by-turn basis, but on the downside, you can’t program any stops into your route or make it route via a certain road or town.
So, would I recommend it? Yes. Where can you buy one? That depends: there are a lot on eBay although prices of new ones remain high. Comet sell them too – I got mine there thanks to a discount I get – or you can buy one through my Amazon shop.
Just added is a new online store to promote this site, operated by us using amazon.co.uk. There’s a link over there in the sidebar or you can access it directly using this URL:
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