Hywel

I know I posted about this before, but it's now more specific than "durrrr, my wiring is broke"... I'd acquired a short in my wiring system after some heavy rain so I figured it was the dodgy front end wiring job done to accommodate the twin headlights fitted by a previous owner. I'd been meaning to put a standard lamp back on anyway so I tidied up the wiring a bit, fitted the lamp only to discover the fuses were blowing because of something happening in the back. When I disconnect the rear right indicator, the front right ticks double quick as expected, but the tail light also flashes with it (the left indicators flash completely as they should). If I reconnect the right indicator it shorts out and another fuse is toast. I'm guessing the tail light is somehow picking up the indicator circuit but all my connections seem to be right. Anyone?

Don't worry, it isn't really a test where you have to answer questions to pass, the instructor just wants to see that you have half decent control over the bike and a basic understanding of junctions / roundabouts / key road signs etc so you're not putting yourself in harms way. Relax and enjoy it!!

I've heard big capacity singles with straight through pipes sounding amazing, modern 125s though? Not so sure, I'd probably roll my eyes if I saw a little commuter 125 with some kind of race slip on fitted. Get medium sized parallel twin and fit a nice pipe, I've heard ER-5s / CB500s making a proper thumpy racket. They're cheap to run and work well as commuters too.

Yeah I thought as much, on my next day off I'll give it all a good going over and waterproof it properly. Thanks

I got caught in a massive downpour day before yesterday and arrived home with all of my electrical stuff working fine. Took the bike home from my girlfriends house yesterday and noticed that my tacho was dead, along with my indicators, tail lights and neutral light. The headlight was working so naturally I suspected a blown fuse which seemed to be the case. When I replaced the broken one everything worked for about 10 seconds before the same fuse blew again. Looking at the relay and electrical stuff under the seat it looks like they got caught up in the rain and road grime a few days before because they're all dusty and dirty (been meaning so seal up a couple of gaps at the back of the undertray) so I'm thinking something might be shorting? What's the best thing to do?

Does the battery have a history of being a bit temperamental?

I always always under the impression that the leg out was to stop close overtakes. Although i suppose it may help "pull" the bike in to the corner or something? Considering they do anything and everything possible to reduce drag normally, it may have more of an effect than you think..... ever taken your hand off the handle bars at 100mph? Really does drag a bit! I suppose so yeah, if I ever bump into Rossi I'll ask him

The back end wriggles about like that because they're breaking so hard approaching a bend and so much weight is transferred to the front that the back tyre barely has any traction, as soon as they ease off the breaks and get back on the power in the bend though the back sticks again... at least that's how I've made sense of the wiggly back wheels, maybe some of the track vets on here could shed more light. The leg-out thing? I think it's just Rossis habit, and people assume there's some hi-tech reason for it so they're all trying it too, I can't imagine a scrawny little leg is going act as an "air brake".

Yey!!! Plopped a new battery in just before leaving for work and the bike burst into life on the first dab on the starter button, light intesity is solid and the indicators all flash at a consistent rate, whatever the revs. Thanks for your help everyone! Now I just want to source a standard Hornet headlamp plus wiring and mounting brackets, these twin lamps aren't the best and have been wired up with household wiring which is all a bit dangly between the forks.

Dim problem! Just did a 45 minute journey in the baking sun, mostly quite fast roads and the latter part town speeds so I could've cooked an egg on any part of the bike. Left it running and took the side panel off with voltmeter in-hand. Similar results really, except when I really give it the beans on the throttle it goes up a little higher than it does when cold, but still doesn't go past 13.9v at 8 - 10krpm. Does that mean I'm fairly safe to rule out the reg/rect as a fault?

Well, It's the one that was in the bike when I bought it in December, and it had been sat in the dealer without anyone touching it for months... when the bloke tried to start it for me it took some doing, and when the bike is cold the turnover starts slowing down after the the 3rd or 4th try if it doesn't spark before then and generally it feels pretty weak unless it's warm and I've just been riding hard for a while, in which case it starts fine. What about the madness with my lights though? Would a weak / old battery do that? I'm guessing it's worth buying one to try it at least.

Just gave this a go. My Voltmeter read 12.4v across the battery when the bike was off, switched the bike on and at tickover it was reading between 12.3v and 12.5v, so around the same. I picked up the revs to about 3000rpm and saw an increase in voltage to around 13.2 - 13.4v, when I pushed the revs higher; up to around 7 - 8krpm it dropped back down a little to 12.8 - 13v but saw no major fluctuations, so revving the bike hard didn't push the voltage up much. Does this mean the reg/rec should be ok? Can the erratic indicators at higher revs, and inconsistent head/tail-light intensity be caused by an old battery due for replacement? I flipping hope so

This story is very familiar to me. After a repeating fork seal problem every 50 - 100 miles I took my bike to a different garage and it turned out that the guy I took it to previously had been taking shortcuts with bits of rag found floating in filthy grainy oil etc and there was a little sctratch in the stantion where he'd been playing rough whilst splitting the fork (evidence was a mashed up leg under the dust seal... hammer abuse). My new garage just rubbed the scratch down with some emery cloth, cleaned everything properly and replaceD all the bits and pieces with new oil for £45. I've done about 2000 miles since and there hasn't been a problem. Pee Gee motorcycles is the place that sorted out the awful bodged job incase you're anywhere near South Wales.

But when someone come off a bike they get hurt and are very unlikely to hurt others. The opposite is true for cars. Would you rather a nutter on a bike goes wide on a corner and plows into you or a nutter in a car? For the biker to get hurt is his choice and personal risk. For the car driver he is choosing to risk other people a lot more than him self. Not sure I agree there, a 200 - 300kg bike going at 80 - 90 mph will go through a car door/window like butter... would make an awful mess of a pedestrian too.

Also... ding-ding-ding-ding!!!! Spot on.

I'm in the 'what's all this fuss about?' camp I'm affraid. I have nothing against the 'swerve and stop' or 'avoidance maneuver' as the examiners are now calling it. I had to do it and thought it was by far the easiest part of mod1. I think the distance / availability of testing centres is a problem but I get the feeling people just got caught up in all the media scare stuff *waggles fist at MCN*, and so did I until I had to do it... it is honestly a gentle sway back and forth. You'd have to do something severe like grab the front brake hard during the turn to come a cropper. A sensible alteration would be to extend the stopping distance by 2m in the wet but as has already been said; if you can't pull this off without panicking and throwing on the anchors while the bike is leant over then you're a long way off being under reasonable control of your machine. Also, it's not as if they've replaced observation / planning / road sense with coarse avoidance drills... the module 1 stuff is about machine control while the previously mentioned road based training carries on as far as I could tell. If 'motorcycling' as an industry is being affected negatively, blame the media, not the test.

Yeah I'd like a link to a .gov site or a credible statistics page when someone says something like "oh actually a new law is coming...." I think cars are very different to bikes... quick cars are easy for a novice to drive compared to powerful sportsbikes for example, and if an average 17 year old car driver felt inclined to break the law, he could do some very serious speeds through a town centre and being in a 1.1 corsa instead of a scooby isn't going to stop him. Insurance companies make it pretty much impossible for a young guy to drive anything over a 1.6 petrol car anyway unless he has some proper cashflow knocking about, which isn't too likely. The fact is, riding a bike is on another level of risk, and although I don't disagree with the DVLA easing people into bigger bikes more gradually, I quite like the fact that if I had the money I could start riding a turbo Hayabusa streetfighter to and from work tomorrow having ridden for only 5 or 6 months .

Hmm... is there a way I can reliably check that this is the problem?

I'm no mechanic but suddenly / briefly loosing power to the back wheel under hard acceleration sounds like a clutch slip for sure. Either that or it's dropping out of gear... any 'clunking' noises when the power is lost?

At tickover all my lights (clocks, neutral light, head/tail lights and indicators) pulse... getting brighter and dimmer. The indicator has a habit of flashing quite incosistently / too quickly when the revs are low too and it evens out when I up the revs a bit but even at high speed I notice the headlamps all of a sudden getting brighter then darker and I sometimes notice the indicators going a bit mad. I know it doesn't sound like much but it's quite distracting and takes my attention off the road a little. Anyone else experienced this? Reckon a new battery is the answer? It doesn't sound very strong when I push the starter and it usually takes a while to fire up the bike. It's a '98 Honda CB600F by the way.

Yeah something I can use when it's back in one piece would be good and I bet those CBR250s are a laugh in the corners although something tells me I should start smaller. Like a little 50cc single or something, dunno. I'll start with the top end but eventually wanna get through the whole thing, just to see how it all works and goes together more than anything else.

Hi!! I finish uni in a few weeks and want to learn more about bike mechanics over the summer. I'm a complete new jack to this therefore I would like something simple, so I could get my head around stripping and re-building the motor, possibly with improvements made in the process. My only criteria is that I'd like it to be vaguely relevant to the types of bikes I will be mostly riding for the foreseeable future... pretty much 4 stroke inline 4 sports bikes. So, gimme some ideas for a very cheap bike that would be a good starting point for learning this stuff. Also, how epic a tool-arsenal would I need to strip and re-build a small / small-ish four stroke engine?

A week of all-nighters doing coursework ahead of me because I've been such a LAZY F***ING TW*T! F**K IT!!!!!!!

Yeh well I figured I'm embarking on a long journey of discovery in finding out what tyres / tyre combos I like so I'm keeping it simple for my first purchase and getting an exact match. They're probably a bit sporty for a new rider like me to get the best out of them and they're not the longest lasting shoes around but I am looking forward to trying out some decent rubber! Any do's or dont's for scrubbing in brand new tyres?

Ohhhh kay. I just had a little delve and it turns out Bridgestone actually do the 021 set in my size, there's so much contradictory info online... they're on order, bargain. EDIT: Doh, the dealer rang me back and said he'd made a mistake. Was tempted to go for the 016 front / 021 rear combo but I quite fancy seeing what a perfect tyre match does to the handling so despite some reservations about tread wear I've gone for a set of the triple compound BT-016s.