Ingah

One 2nd thoughts, if you mean drive chain, then DID are good and produce many of the OEM chains in the 1st place.

Almax Series 3 OR Pragmasis Protector 3. Anything else is much inferior.

TBH, i find much bike gear is like this (it doesn't last a reasonable length of time). You have to check out lots of reviews to buy something worth the money i find. £70, whilst quite low end, isn't exactly cheap imo. Glad you took it back and got it swopped, the more people that do this, the more the manufacturers will make efforts to make their gear last! Think it must be down to all these "leisure riders", who only wear the gear a handful of times...

Could be reg/rect failure, making the battery pop, which made the 'water' due to leakage as the battery boiled itself. Worth consideration as reg/rect's are easy to check with a multimeter and haynes manual.

I have my tent now

Grease your swingarm bearings, renew your fuel and coolant hoses, change the spark plug(s), adjust the carburettor syncronisation, bleed the brakes, renew brake master cylinder and caliper seals, change the front fork oil, and don't forget the ridiculously long list of things you should be checking too. Now get back to work!

Reg/rect? (easily checked with a multimeter)

Is it BS approved for accuracy though? Hate the fiddlyness of switching between separate pump and gauge (but most pumps built-in gauges aren't very accurate!) Garage forecourt pumps are (apparently) very unreliable. And they get abused regularly and badly, even if they were once accurate when brand new! Besides which, by riding to the garage, you've heated up the air in your tyres thus the pressure reading will be higher, so your measurements are less accurate because of this too, as pressure readings are for stone cold tyres.

Bit too expensive for me, but thanks very much for bringing to my attention that fact that there is such a device suitable for blowing up my tyres without peeing me right off every time!

Be warned, if you're seriously unlucky ( ) you could find that changing the pads results in the caliper seizing (despite cleaning it best i could first) and then you need to strip the lot and rebuild the caliper, have a nightmare getting each piston pushed back, eventually bleed the brakes, etc etc, and everything will take ages, eBay sellers will mess you about over the christmas period and then the bleed nipple will snap off... Have fun laughing at my expense viewtopic.php?f=5&t=35233

The mod self insure. Wonder what total worth you need to get out of paying insurance. I've heard two figures, not sure which is correct: £15K and £150K. Amount in full held by a government body or something. And this makes you personally liable for claims.

EFA

Hinges can fail, causing front to flip up when you smack your face into road, instantly turning the helmet into an open face... Hearsay suggests metal hinges are better than plastic hinges, but the only objective measure i'm aware of is the government SHARP testing http://sharp.direct.gov.uk/ , in which i believe they do 5 different "tests" with frontal impacts on flip fronts, and record the number of times which the helmet stayed closed (and present the results on that website). Personally, i'd feel a little dubious about buying any flip front that didn't stay closed all 5 times...

Personally i'd view a pair of Hood jeans (Hood being the brand) to be at least the equal of textiles, due to the coverage of para-aramid being nearly complete. A pair of Draggin's though, i do agree with the idea of them being inferior to textiles, simply on the basis of them having "patches" of kevlar coverage. I wouldn't have kevlar jeans over textiles though, because they're not waterproof! (Please note, i own kevlar, leathers, and textiles). With regards to those prices, you can get new gear much cheaper if you shop around. But at rock bottom prices, i would buy textiles, as there's many more places they can easily cut costs with leathers to make the cheap cheap stuff... by making them weaker and less protective.

If you're not a pleasure rider, i'd strongly recommend textiles over leathers. And further training whenever you can - as 'the gear' doesn't keep you alive nearly so well as good defensive riding techniques do!

Alpine Motosafe. Semi-permanent (reusable but i have been through a couple of pairs over a few years under heavy usage and poor care). Much cheaper than custom-fit, but one day i know i'm going to get one pair of custom-fit for £££ and just be done with re-buying every so often.

Renthal also do bar ends suitable for their handlebars. Sit down before looking at the price though, they're about £13/£15!

Carling. Vodka. Relentless/red bull. Whisky. Coke.

I take it they're not as well made as computer fans then? (Why can i feel a "large computer fan" bodge job for my radiator fan coming on at some point in the future? ) Edit: Or better yet, perhaps i can affix a large computer case fan on top of the current intermittently-working fan and just leave it how it is otherwise

I've heard about this before. As i have ordered an "ordinary" reg/rect (could not be bothered with modifying something to suit), with fins in the hope that this will improve cooling, i'm seriously considering this computer fan idea, which i've heard before. It would prevent me having to move the reg/rect, and i have old unused computer fans i could use. It'll be the route of least resistance, i suspect. Have you got anything to guide me in the wiring of the fan, keeping the voltage etc down to what the fan expects so that the fan doesn't blow up on first use, or spin at some kind of crazy loud speed due to the sheer oversupply of electricity to it? While i'm messing with fans, i'll probably wire my radiator fan at the front of the bike to be "ON" constantly too (the switch is unreliable and relatively expensive to replace), so my bike may end up sounding like a desktop computer!

Yes i have, hindsight being a wonderful thing and all because i've already spent the small fortune! With regards to your bike, as i've warned you, get out whilst you still can! And good call colin, will check out those forums tonight. Doing some overtime at work right now (the best kind right now, waiting for instructions ), and then tomorrow looks like it's "fix the CG and CB" day! Wish me luck, else there be much smashing going on when i lose my temper with the CB

Cheers eab - looks like i'm going home recovery truck style tonight On the upside new shocks / fork oil / pads / etc have all arrived, so i can give the bike lots of much needed TLC.

The inevitable has finally happened - the CB500 has another issue! Got to work (~10 miles), headlamps on bright. Lights dim (especially dashboard lights), starter motor turning over sounded unhealthy/slow. Textbook reg/rect fault. I've heard you can get ahold of / use a better / more reliable type of reg/rect as Hondas have always had poor ones, so i was wondering if anyone knows anything about them? (happy to spend money on this bike's reliability as it's clearly not had enough TLC to make up for the years of abuse yet!)

Yep. When i took the CBT, about 4 years ago, i think you generally were looking at £60 or £70 for using your own bike etc. Or £100 for hire bike and kit and everything you need (i.e. extra £30 or £40). My session cost me an extra £20 though, for an extra 2 hours, as my CBT instructor wasn't happy with my poor standard of riding at the end of the first day, so i had to come back for another road ride. Just to warn you some schools take the pee by trying to charge as much as £50 for this. And some do it free. Worth bearing in mind if it's your first time on a motor vehicle.

Do the CBT on their bike. Get your own afterwards. Trying to use your own on the CBT adds too many complications and won't be worth the extra hassle and risk.