S-Westerly

It's above freezing right enough but the roads hereabouts are covered in salt - some bits are like a salt flat! My bike will be staying off the road until we have someheavy rain due on Sunday to hopefully wash a lot of it away.

I think the fact that none of us have some billy whizz gadget that brilliantly solves the problem of a dirty visor is because there is no such thing. It may be ancient tech but basically a damp cloth / sponge is what you are stuck with. If anyone does have aforementioned gadget please let me know!

That's a very nice looking bike.

All joking aside my return home from Northumberland was an absolute nightmare for the first 70 miles or so. Low sun in my eyes combined with utterly filthy roads. Twice I had to pull on to the hardshoulder as I literally couldn't see FA. Once I got as far south as Bedale things improved as the road was at least try. Sun was still bad though. Stopped 4 times in services to wash visor. Poor bike is filthy now too and will be getting a detailed and thorough clean tomorrow.

According to the latest update from.my American source it is now in Coventry so I am expecting it in the next couple of days.

I'm honestly not sure what the point is as I always work on the basis of going as fast as you can see to stop in - vanishing point etc. I think it's one of these things bike manufacturers do because they can. On my last bike which didn't have it the only time I could have used it was on a large roundabout where some loon jumped in from the left and cut across in front of me causing me to brake hard. So far I've never needed to use it in anger. I've played with it and it seems to work well enough but.......

Just a bit. Can't see how it's better than a bit of sponge. Like to know if anyone has used one at 75 quid a go.

Ultimate Addons sell a pack of 100 wipes for visors for £16.00 which imo is pretty pricy and they are no good to use on the go. I haven't bought any but got a couple of free samples when I bought something else. Won't be buying any either.

Could have been worse, they could have been using Horizon.

I had the same issue coming north. Just grime hitting my visor (and probably not doing my breathable waterproof kit any good either) but not wet enough to be able to clean it with my clove on the go. I carry a water bottle and microfiber cloth which works well enough but I have to be stopped which into services etc and delays my journey. Mind you going south tomorrow I'll be into services every hour just to defrost.

The one I like is the common in Northumberland- Shitlington, pronounced Shillington - really?

The Multistrada had such an awkwardly located rear brake pedal I barely used it so got used to almost doing all my braking with the front brake. It didn't have cornering ABS but did have straight line ABS. A cornering / Braking training session at Mallory Park gave me confidence in braking in bends if necessary so getting a bike with cornering ABS meant it was quite easy to give it a test. Of course if it hadn't worked as advertised I may have been a bit less smug!

Not exactly the best birthday you could have. Hope your mother gets to be as well as she can and that your grandchild wasn't hurt (daughter too for that matter).

My thoughts entirely and in fact that's what I've been doing for years. Purely due to the new toy having the TPMS I can see what's happening in the tyre and made me wonder if there is any affect.

So the bike has just had its first service and all's well there. Had a bit of fuss with the tyre pressures but not the bikes fault and all sorted for now. Today I rode the 297 miles from.my home in Gloucestershire to my dad's in Northumberland. This is its first long slog up the motorway but at this time of year I wasn't going to be dilly dallying along the way. The bike performed effortlessly. Compared to the Multistrada the biggest gain was the comfort of the seat. On the Mutley after 200 miles it wasn't so much a numb bum as a holy hand grenade of pain. On the V100 not even a hint of numb after the entire journey. A negative note was the fuel consumption- at legal speeds it is reasonable at about 45 mpg. At (ahem) somewhat faster speeds the petrol seemed to evaporate. Not that I persisted in this naughtiness. All in all the bike continues to please even if I do only have one pannier at the moment. Replacement one is crossing the Atlantic hopefully.

Obviously I have strayed in to some alternative universe where the language spoken is "English but not as we know it Jim".

Looks really smart too.

I paid full price for my motorbike specific Tomtom. Its now about 5 years old, updates regularly and is still 100 % reliable. It's fully waterproof, dust proof etc. Have just transferred it on to my new bike. Still working.

Jesus. I'm not putting nitrogen in my tyres. My bike doesn't have a nice warm garage to live in so the air it gets is put in at ambient plus the slight rise in temperature due to compression. I checked tyres yesterday and they were quite low so pumped them up to recommended pressure. Turns out gauge on pump is reading high as when I started up this morning the TPMS had a hissy fit as the pressures were way too high and I had just backed out. Got a separate gauge and both tyres were about 20% over recommended cold pressures. Adjusted them accordingly and rode 297 miles to Northumberland without any further issues. Once they warmed up they were consistent and recorded as 39 psi front (36 psi cold) and 46 psi rear (41 psi cold).

I think with all bikes the amount of buffeting experienced depends on the interaction between the rider and the screen. Some riders swear by a taller screen, others by a lower one. There's a reason there's so many after market screens and deflectors on the market.

The courtesy bike I had yesterday was a V Strom 650 and had significant buffeting at motorway speeds. Otherwise it was quite a sweet bike.

When I didn't have TPMS once I checked it before riding I was happy. Now I have I can forsee myself getting unnecessarily fraught.

Here's a question for the forum:- Yesterday after picked up the bike and within a mile of the dealers my tyre monitoring system went into alarm because both my tyres were over pressure. I pulled into a layby let some air out and rode home without further problems. This morning with ambient temperature of 2 C, I checked my tyres again and both were quite low - 25 psi vs 36 psi for the front and 30 psi vs 41 psi for the rear. I put in air to the recommended pressures but I'll be interested to see what happens when I head north tomorrow. Without the TPMS I'd have had no idea of what was going on. Question is what pressures should we inflate to when the ambient is low vs when it's high? All opinions will be listened to and probably ignored!

In which case it quite possibly is a decent bike but one that's been bought by someone as a summer ride or because its on their bucket list. There's a few HD aficionados on here - ask them for an opinion.

I can honestly say I haven't a clue what you are talking about. I'm obviously not an audiophile!