Nigel and Motorbikes
This old and rather forgotten web page suddenly needs an unexpected update.
(NB: Rather than litter the page with the detail explanatory pictures I have
put them on popupsThe first
production motorcycle was produced in Germany by Hildebrand & Wolfmuller in
1894.
. Look for the little dotted underlines.)
It was a late start to the track racing season but the BMRC
Lydden round on the 17th April 1999 finally arrived.
Race one and two were deliberately low key affairs with getting the feel of the
new bike in a new (cheaper) class being the key issue. The plan for the
Saturday was drop back from the main pack and then race the stop-watch in my
son's hand and wind down towards a more competitive lap time without the angst
of full race traffic. Also the fact that that I was relatively new to Lydden
needed to be taken into account.
Race three. Well I remember getting ready, I remember being in the race paddock
waiting to be called but then it all goes a bit hazy. My next clear memory is
of a nurse saying "Don't worry" but that was about 24 hours later.
The story I was told is that while lapping me a bike in the leading group
pulled across my front on the exit to Chesson's Drift, the long right hander
that brings you back towards the paddock, and that he hit my front wheel with
his rear and I went down. The bike following me managed to avoid me but blocked
the view of the guy following him who missed my bike but went over my chest and
it all ended in a red flag. The injuries cost me a heart attack, that cost me
my race medical and that cost me .
Well that was the end of my not . It
had been an expensive hobby but boy it had been fun. So
gave up his post as chief pit crew and I sadly admitted that I was
getting older and it was realistically time to move on.
So what had happened before that and what happened next?
A little biography...
I grew up on the flatlands of Oxford and everybody there seemed to have a
push-bike. I rode on a little seat on my father's bike when I was tiny and I
was already pedalling myself around when I was seven or maybe younger. I was
definitely taking myself over a mile to primary school at ten, cycling out to
see my friends and taking myself three miles across town to secondary school at
eleven. Like a lot of my friends I just naturally upgraded to a moped
(), then to a Scooter
() and then to a proper motorbike
(). Sadly I don't have
any pictures of my own bikes as this was back when photography was all chemical
and you only got twelve to the reel so you didn't photograph 'ordinary' things.
All my pop-ups are just looted from the web.
Also in those days you just went to the Council offices, paid your money and
got a Provisional Licence, jumped on your moped and rode it away and worked up
to doing your test on your own. I took the Norton to University with me and we
parted company there.
I'm not going to write up my inglorious motorcycle racing history here, it
would take too long and it's not be very relevant now, so let's jump forward to
1993, after my employer went bust and left me to do what contract work I could
find to pay the bills. I had no transport so I dug about in the spares box,
fitted some lights, a horn and the legal stuff onto the race Yamaha and put it
in for an MOT. It passed.
Then, after about a year of that, I got a job. In fact I got two as one of my
better contract clients offered me full time and my brother and I had started a
company, Combro, to make custom instrumentation and stuff. I thought a couple
of years of full time work while really being the designer/programmer for
Combro would help us get the company started and I'd move over when things were
going well and the money was rolling in. Somehow that never quite happened and
the two jobs arrangement lasted for nearly twenty years until I
retired.
However this meant I was working close to home and we had income again so the
question of transport came up. My wife wanted a full bus-pass and I wanted a
motorbike as doing endless miles in company cars as Engineering manager had
rather soured me on driving on four wheels and, anyway, I could park a bike in
central Brighton where I now worked. I pulled in some money from Combro and
bought a Honda CBR900RR Fireblade (aka the Black One). This time I do at least
have one picture.
Well this lasted me for several years but, sadly, on my way out to do some
shopping for a tool to help assemble a kit green-house some kind soul turned
hard right in front of me just outside the hospital and I went flying.
Fortunately we had the police on the scene very quickly and with a proper
hospital doctor in his scrubs and with a stethoscope telling him how that car
could have killed me by being so stupid it resolved into him being charged with
'Due Care and Attention' and his insurance paid out for my bike.
Actually I was quite surprised that the insurance company was so quick to write
the bike off as I felt that some new plastic would have fixed most things up as
it was a slow collision, we were in town after all, but the frame was marked
and that, in insurance company thinking, was apparently fatal.
I ordered another bike. This time in brighter colours so nobody was going miss
it (aka the Red One). Here is a shot of it doing the Nürburgring training
weekend.
This one again lasted a few years more and I added joining the IAM to try and
raise my survivability. I enjoyed my time with my chapter (East Sussex Advanced
Motorcyclists) and riding with them was both instructive and fun. I passed
their 'Advance' test and learnt a lot of good stuff. Then I qualified as a
'Local observer' and actually coached one guy for his advanced test, which he
passed, but then, in 2003, another right turning vehicle wiped me out again.
This time it was 'Drunk in-charge' so another easy insurance claim but my wife
was now terminally ill so I just dumped the insurance pay out in the bank to
deal with later when I could get back to it. My brother gave me an elderly
Volkswagen Passat estate to run about in.
Once life had settling down again I didn't think much about another bike. As I
was now heavily into scuba diving I went out and bought a four year old Range
Rover and 'gave up bikes forever'. The next person that turned right in front
of me was going to have to face two tons of truck with an iron V8 at the front
end. I rather thought that the part of my life with bikes in it was over
forever.
So what changed?
Well to start with I retired and, with growing older, I was finding the labour
involved in my technical scuba diving was began to outweigh the pleasure I got
from another dive. I was driving a nice Mercedes E300 Hybrid,
and getting into
but bikes were bugging me again. I had admitted to my friends and family over
the couple of years since I had finished work that I really wanted another bike
and, finally, I cracked and started pricing up things like insurance which, for
a 68 year old with a superbike in mind but no bike NCB for the last fifteen
years, was bound to be tiresome...
Well the insurance was high but only comparable with the car (OK that was an
AMG Mercedes out there). So I idly looked at Fireblades, now called CBR1000RRs
because they have grown another 100cc, not new ones naturally as this was only
ever going to be a hobby bike not day-to-day transport. I found that three year
old bikes were quite affordable, I picked one, contacted the dealer, got
details and... and... and paid the deposit and went off to find insurance now I
had an exact spec and a registration number.
This is the point that I started to look at 'all that kit' that I thought I
still had. I didn't want to discover that, in a few days, I would have a bike
sitting on my patio that I couldn't ride. There was less than I expected. Well
yes, the leather suit was OK but the helmet's lining was looking a bit worse
for wear, I think I threw the boots out years ago as they were growing fuzzy
bits and probably the gloves too because I never did find them.
It was obviously shopping time and the list was rather long. I wanted a serious
disk lock for traveling out and a big butch, no messing about, chain lock for
overnighting. I wanted a new helmet that had to be every bit as nice as the old
one used to be in high vis white, some gloves, boots, and an effective wet
weather over-suit.
I went down to late and lamented Bikes of Brighton, my favourite old shop that
has served me well since the 1980s, and bought the locks, a bike cover and then
went upstairs and tried on some helmets. I am apparently a Large and they had
two flip-tops with added toys and I bought the more expensive of the two, a
Nolan, as it just seemed more finished. It is definitely better than the old
one for features. I also bought some gloves as they are something that needs to
be tried on as the sizing is just the usual wild guess S/M/L/XL etc. codes. I
am an M.
Back at home I web-shopped for an over-suit to keep the rain off, a pair of
boots and, while I was at it, things like a for
soft parking places and other odds and ends.
Then I realised that I 'needed' a bike type as
I have rather come to rely on them these days so I read up on the range. I
discovered that if I bought the car mount as well then the new 'maps for life'
deal would save me my map renewal bills on the old one and I could just use
one, hence carrying my favourite locations between car and bike. However a GPS
'needed' Bluetooth coms gear in the helmet so I could actually hear the
directions but Nolan do a kit with extras so now, in theory at least, I could
even answer the phone on the move.
I spent quite a bit of time researching GPS mounts because the CBR doesn't
actually have enough exposed handlebar to clamp much onto without it getting in
front of other important things you want to see. I found
device
to insert into the fork tube and when it came I was quite impressed. It is all
made with high friction materials and looks quite good. With that I breathed a
sigh of relief. Obviously I now had everything and I just needed to wait for my
new toy to be delivered.
I was never good at waiting for things so I started to dig around in my
archives and I found my old Institute of Advanced Motorists stuff. There
was an IAM card and an ESAM card both dated 2003. I phoned the IAM membership
number, hopefully quoted the number on my card to them and they just read my
address back to me off the screen so they hadn't forgotten me. I gave them a
Debit card number and I was renewed. ESAM had a web site and they still did the
Sunday meetups every month and even suggested that prospective 'new' members
show up there to join.
Other electronics? Well I had a mask mounted scuba diving camera that was quite
new and it is a much nicer shape than a GoPro (of which I also have several) so
I spent some time .
Actually it was a bit of a disappointment at first as it didn't seem to handle
direct sunlight very well. I guessed it was optimised for the deep and the dark
but I questioned their support website and in the next firmware release fixed
it.
The bike arrived by van so I checked it, signed for it and ran it round the
back. I did the tax at once so the documentation switched to me and, although
it needed some changes, I was really pleased with it. I guess this one will go
down as 'the White One'. Interestingly it isn't actually a CBR1000RR as
advertised but an RA, the version with the ABS option.
Sadly there was one thing on the bike I definitely didn't like and that was the
after-market . I
didn't buy a litre superbike to have it sound like an elderly 350 with a hole
in the can so, sexy titanium or not, it was going to have to go. It took a bit
of research and one false start to get the right part number and to obtain the
correct on
Ebay. OK removing it was a bit of a struggle, it needed the Dremel cutting disk
on a locked solid bolt but that's exhausts for you, and fitting the new one
took time but the end result is excellent.
Annoyingly the Engine Management system took umbrage at my fiddling with its
exhaust servo and set . That
took me on an educational trip into the magic world of DTCs but it all cleared
up reasonably simply once I understood things and obtained the right
on Ebay to which I added a NC push button to make doing the remove and replace
in a set time frame easy . Yes, I do own ,
it wasn't easy to find but I'm a coward and I didn't feel the PDF copy I got on
the web was enough to do detailed work as it went fuzzy at important points,
like the circuit diagrams. That helped me to wire the GPS into switched power
with big fat crimps and an inline fuse-holder.
The other significant item I bought was . As
centre stands no longer seem to be de rigueur on bikes setting things up
to do any work on it needs an external tool. I bought a rather nice one in red
with CBR1000 adapters from Germany and after a couple of goes I could assemble
it and have the bike sitting on it in half a minute or less and by the time I
had finished doing the exhaust swap I think I had already had my money's worth
out of it. I notice the bike also came with rear-wheel 'cotton reels' to use a
rear swingarm stand on if I ever decide to get one.
Other accessories?
I wired a battery port under the seat hump to connect an Oxford 900 charger so
I could charge/top up the battery if required as I can see it sitting idle for
weeks on end if there is any snow this winter. In the process I removed a
Datatool thing. I had originally assumed it was some sort of alarm but it had a
GPS aerial stuck to the fairing inside and a SIM card within its case so I
assume it was a tracker too. It was wired to permanent power and had its own
Lithium cell with an orange wire that was connected somewhere into the bike
wiring but I didn't bother track it out to find out what it did. I looked at
Datatool's website and it looked like it was a subscription service.
I found the long clutch lever, and to a lesser extent the front brake, didn't
quite work with my riding style where I wanted to work the lever with my two
'big strong' fingers and keep the others to just provide a positive location on
the bar. This rather failed as the lever came right back and trapped the
smaller fingers. You certainly don't need the leverage as the clutch is nice
and light with good 'feel' and I'm happy that I could have a nasty
loop-the-loop accident on the front brake with just two fingers.
I found some fancy CNC machined levers that had
as an option and bought them from China on Ebay as they were cheaper that way
and I wasn't sure if they would end up in the bin. However they came quickly
and were rather good quality. I debated only upgrading
but put on one
as well.
Being a coward I added a pair of
aka
.
They were an awkward job to fit but they might allow me to recover some low-speed
fumbles without damaging my lovely white plastic. I looked at them rather
suspiciously when they arrived but if you look at
of the bike head on and draw lines from the edges of the wheel touching the
bungs you can see they offer at least a measure of protection from a low speed
topple. There is also now, a year later, a set of protectors on the front
forks. I just got bored doing lockdown and added them.
And then (I'm an inveterate tinkerer and can't stop) I put on the e-version of
the Scottoiler to make up for my poor attitude to chain maintenance (I do it
but I don't like it). I bought the
option so it does both sides, although I never remembered them failing to
spread the oil evenly before, and fitted the
into the nose by basically hanging it off the mirror bolts.
Bike-Cam
Well my first attempt at an on-bike video rather than on-helmet camera was a
cheap thing from Ebay. It was a bit sad as the resolution was poor and at speed
it just smudged out. Also the rear view camera was just monochrome.
The second one was a "Blueskysea" device that promised full colour 1080 both
ends and it certainly was a lot better value for more money. I mounted the
cameras
and and put the
on the yoke although it is like a dash cam in that it turns on with the power
and just overwrites on the SD card so I don't normally need the buttons.
Example rear-view frame grab.
Problems?
Well my low speed handling skills seem to have evaporated over the intervening
years so I needed to do some car-park work on that, however on the open road I
reverted to the Roadcraft plan pretty quickly where your speed and position on
the road are dictated by your seeing requirements. The first time out doing a
reasonable distance I was reminded by the numbness of my fingers that you do
not ride a sports bike with your arms straight, never lean on the bars or you
will pay for it. The other thing I seem to have forgotten is the habit of
cancelling the indicators. I shall just have to go out and ride it lots and get
used to things again..
Aside from that the only real problem seems to be that the cockpit is getting a
bit cluttered. I recently wanted to add a power take off but although I sourced
a rather nice one I just can't come up with a place to put it so it's still in
its box. It may look a bit of a mess but everything sits nicely on the sight
line when you're in the usual sports bike slump. The important thing was to
make sure that everything had a nice glove friendly amount space around the
buttons so you can easily tune things on the move. I'm not to happy with the
rather long video cables but they are weather-proof so I can't shorten them and
all I can do is wind them up and zip tie them in place.
A year or two down the road...
This is a very happy relationship. I will confess that I don't do a great many
miles and that I'm definitely a fair weather biker but I'm a very happy fair
weather biker. The most noticeable recent change is the addition of the
quick-shifter.
Now I will be the first to admit that neither my riding requirements nor my
riding style really call for a quick-shifter. It is a toy. However I only buy
the best toys so I did my research and settled on the
TransLogic
Intellishift iS4 unit.
OK a quick run down on Quick-shifters for the uninitiated: You accelerate away
from rest with attitude, as you do, and you are limited only by the laws of
physics as a litre bike has way too much power anyway. However there comes a
point where first gear just won't cut it any more so the usual drill is to
close the throttle pulling in the clutch, nudge the gear lever up with your toe
letting all that nice synchromesh
stuff do its job and then release the clutch while rolling back on the power.
You can learn to be pretty snappy with this but it's that 'closing the
throttle' thing, it just goes against the grain for a motorcyclist. However the
box won't come out of gear when the torque is holding the dogs tight and even
if it did the synchromesh will try desperately to stop you crunching it into
the next gear lest you leave a trail of gear teeth down the road behind
you.
Now there once was a trick used by racers to just pull up on the gear lever and
when the bike hit the rev limiter the simple electronics of an early limiters
would cut the ignition for a short period to stop the engine from self
destructing, the bike would stutter and the gear shift just happened. Some
people even fine tuned their rev-limiters to do just this. It worked although
the guy doing gearbox maintenance probably gritted his teeth a bit. "I want it
and I want it now" is the plan so the Quick shifter is that idea formalised and
a computer put in control.
In this version you start by putting a strain gauge in the gear pedal linkage
so the box knows what you want. At what you judge to be the optimum moment for
the next gear you pull up with your toe and everything moves into action. The
box has control of the ignition system and it cuts the power so the tension
goes from the gearbox and the gear lever moves into that space between gears
that isn't officially neutral but just works that way. The engine, all super
light and responsive but now with no spark and the throttle wide open is just a
big pump so it starts slowing instantly and when the synchromesh sees the shaft
speeds match it lets the gear in and the box turns the ignition back on. The
net result is that in tens of milli-seconds you have snapped from one gear to
the next.
So what's it like in practice? It is just quite unreal. You are accelerating
hard, you decide it's gear change time and flick up with your toe and you are
in the next gear with the throttle still wide open. Repeat for the next gear
change, and the next. The operation time is virtually imperceptible. It's like
a badly edited video recording where the actual gear change bit was snipped out
and ended up on the cutting room floor and that's from the guy sitting on the
bike.
Oh my. Yes, it's totally unnecessary for old men like me, and yes, it was a
heck of a lot of work to strip things down far enough to get at everything that
needed doing but it's such a delight to ride with.
OK. So what else?
Not much really. Honda didn't really leave much you could improve on. Well
there was the battery. are
supposed to be the bee's knees in bike battery technology because they are
vanishingly light but for me the magic was that they are smaller. I've kept
banging in more and more electrically powered goodies and the room under the
seat, where all the wiring comes together but has to share with the ABS, had
run out and I was having to come up with more and more inventive ways to ensure
stuff wasn't getting crushed. I didn't just buy the drop-in replacement size
but the one that was even smaller all round but still the right capacity.
Suddenly all my under-seat wiring is not only protected but almost even
tidy.
More tools? I went mad and bought a power lift.
It gets it's own page.
The last thing I ordered under the 2020 lockdown no drive hiatus were some new
chain tension adjusters. Now I confess I hate chain work but I do my duty and
clean it and adjust it regularly. However I am always on the lookout for
helpful devices and, although the standard Honda parts definitely aren't bad to
work on compared with some bikes I've adjusted, the Lightech parts are not only
but
too. They also make it very easy to do the
and hence an annoying and rather messy routine job becomes almost fun.
Or then it might just be I wanted some Bling as I was feeling all shut in...
And then...
The dreaded Honda C-ABS fault struck in 2022. The main agent apologetically
admitted that the book procedure is to change stuff that costs more than the
bike is worth. Yes I'd heard that. I had also heard that the kits to swop it
out are readily available so I bought a nice one with yellow hoses (did I tell
you how much I hate black black on black?) and after a long delay for a little
surgery taking me off line I fitted it all.
Yes, there were some complications, for example once you remove those nice
electrically conductive brake lines the big bolt on top of the ABS valve under
the seat isn't grounded any more and the things I had wired to it as a very
convenient earthing point all failed (ie the GPS, the Quick Shifter and
others). However it's all rewired now and I even grounded the logic line that
signals the instrument cluster that the all is well with the ABS so it can put
out the light so everything looks OK.
It is a pity as I like ABS as a concept but Honda's first system had failed on
people I know, that is lever comes right back to the bar failed - really bad
news. Honda never admitted it was a systemic fault nor recalled anything
although we notice they totally scrapped that version and the current system is
nothing like it and reputedly works just fine. Hence as soon as it started
showing the symptoms it just had to go.
By Nigel Hewitt
