eventful journey home today - long.

It was a nice day, so I took the TL to work today. Come the evening, I
kit up and stroll out to the gleaming yellow missile. As I get to the
bike, I press the key fob and... nothing.

Oh well, can't have pressed it hard enough. Try again. and again.
Surely the little battery would give some sort of output?

Then the awful truth: I'd clicked the key round one too many clicks
and left the sodding parking lights on. Great.

So I cadge the second jump start in a fortnight (last time was the
Guzzi) and I'm off.

It's sunny and I can't face the A14 straight away, so I opt for a
short back road extension. This route has a fine few twists at the
start followed by some curvy but incredibly bumpy lanes that join the
A428, which, heading eastbound, becomes the A14.

Now, last weekend I lowered the front end another 2mm on the pre-load.
This has finally had a really noticeable effect: the steering feels
much lighter, though not entirely neutral, and on the outward journey
the bike rolled in unexpectedly part-way round a roundabout.

Mindful of this, I pause to raise the steering damper a couple of
clicks.

Along the bumpier part of this route, as I'm giving it reasonable
beans but not absolutely nailed, the bars give a sharp left-right
slap. Ooh err. Back off a bit. maybe it was a couple of mm too far
after all. Or maybe I need more damper - I want to avoid that if
possible. For now I ease off. Oddly, though, if I deliberately upset
the bars, the head rocks once and instantly settles. Hmm.

So, onto the A428 with no further dramas until a naked bike hoves into
view astern. He dispatches a couple of cars with ease and then follows
closely, slightly uncomfortably closely, really. His headlight looks
odd, somehow.

Eventually we hit dual carriageway and we both give it beans, me in
lane 1 and him overtaking in lane 2. As he passes I realise that it's
one of those new naked BMWs - impressive acceleration. The silly
bugger then cuts close across my nose to take a slip road having made
his point.

I need cash, so I stop off at the local Tesco store. And the ruddy
bike won't start. Bugger. You'd have thought that nearly forty minutes
of running would've given the battery enough charge.

So I walk the three-quarters of a mile home to collect the old
battery. Kath gets home and gives me a lift back to Tesco.

As I'm fitting the spare battery, a bloke who's parked his K-series
Beemer next to me tells me that he's just helped bump start another
bike. "Is your spare battery charged?" he asks.

"Oh, yes. I always keep it topped up" I replied confidently. He
trundles off and I start the TL. Or, being totally honest here, fail
to start the TL. The fucking battery is utterly flat - worse than the
one off the bike.

Sod it. It'll only take twenty minutes to push the fucker home...

In the light of recent events, an air cooled bike with kick start and
carbs *really* appeals.

 

Forgive me for being dense - but why can't you bump start it?

 

Kevin Stone says...

Have you ever tried to bump start a big V-Twin alone?

 

I bump started a Guzzi 750, my fuckwit of a dad lent me the bike for a
day, and the bloody thing didn't want to start in the morning.

 

Pip wrote

You could invest in a set of jump leads! And besides, I used to jump
start my old CBR1000F on me own, as well as my knackered old mini 1000.
Now that was a site to see, me running alongside the car, door open,
jumping in, 2nd gear, off we go. Of course, after work I'd get a few of
the school kids (I'm a teacher) to push it out of the school yard and
up the street to get it going! He he.

 

The Quota will bump start when it's hot. I've never managed to bump
start the TL. It does have an auto-decompressor but even so, as Lozzo
says, they're a big gigh-compression V-twin.

Don't forget too that if the battery's really fucked then the fuel
injection won't work - the pump and injectors require quite a lot of
current.

 

I have never managed to bump start my 850 without the aid of fucking
steep hill or lots of people.

 

I'd be entertained watching you do it to a big Guzzi...

 

bad form an' all, that's *high*-compression.

 

I have two sets. But getting home, picking up the leads, going back to
the bike... quicker just to push it.

Jump or bump?

So children *do* have uses.

 

Agreed. In spades. On the flat you *really* need two people. The drag of the
heavy bevel drive oil is enough to raise a sweat on your own and still you
can't get it up to a decent speed.. Find a hill. Everytime.
JB

 

The battery couldn't turn the engine over, but it did help spin it at
just the right time in a bump start.

 

Exactly.. starting a 1000cc four, is rather like starting a 250
single... but slightly easier.

Starting a 1000cc twin, is like trying to bump start a 500cc single...
good luck.

 

This is why, in the bad old days when I rode *really* shit bikes, if I
had a niggling problem I'd always aim to stop at the top of a hill.

 

Jump or bump?

Bump

Limited, but yes.

 

Heh. It was like that with my Z400J. Fucker would never start in the
morning - but I lived at the top of a hill at the time.

 

SteveH fumbled, fiddled and fingered:

They had a fault with the choke flaps if I recall correctly. They had
little sprung steel "windows" that would snap leaving the choke flaps
partially open. I seem to recall there was a factory recall for it at
the time.

--
Steve Parry
K100RS SE & F650
and a 520i SE Touring for comfort

(not forgetting the SK90PY)

http://www.gwynfryn.co.uk

 

This was *way* past any time you could get a recall done.

(Manufactured in 1983, this was 1995....)

 

Dodger bumped the Wing singlehanded, outside the house, the other week.

 

I tried to bump start the Tig yesterday with the aid of a
not-very-steep-at-all hill & a small female person. I failed. So my
planned day out chasing Verdigris across the cotswolds turned into a
day out at Gloucester historic docks - which were pretty shit[1] it has
to be said.

[1]Although the boat that was mostly underwater was rather funny.