Getting a grip

I have a long journey over the weekend, picking up daughters 1 and 2 and D1's partner, and then taking them to the other side of the country for D1's graduation. And then back. Earlier this week I gave the car a good clean, as it had been used in true estate car mode for ferrying kitchen units to the house and piles of unwanted junk to the tip, and it was filthy. And as the car would be transporting a new Doctor Nowhere and her entourage back to her modest garret afterwards, I felt it incumbent upon me to make the best of what I had.

Part of the process was a quick check of all the usual, and I picked up that my rear tyres were on the legal limit. So today I rose early from my slumbers and visited ATS. £160 later, the Mundaneo had two new boots.

I had been considering winter tyres for the car after last winter's performance of Salchows and triple toe-loops every time it froze (a phenomenon I initially ascribed to the Ford's lousy grip and over-intrusive ABS, but which I later discovered may have conceivably been caused by virtually-bald front hoops), but for some reason winter tyres are all at a premium this year and not covered by any special offers, and were prohibitively expensive. Rosie has fitted a set, however, and I await her comments with interest.

ATS did the business, and I now have new Pirelli P7s on the front, looking very meaty, and the half-worn Michelins on the back. Plus a big hole in my bank account.

If they had been bike tyres, I would have paid the money willingly and been looking forward to scrubbing them in, and then reporting back on speed of tip-in, front end feedback, wet surface grip, squaring-off and all sorts. As it is, they are just car tyres, are phenomenally boring, and I resent every single penny.

Bikes are great, but cars are practical. When you have to get four adults 350 miles away and back in a weekend, nothing else will do. Any bike in the world, or train, or plane, or bus would not have the convenience and modest cost of a bread-and-butter Ford Mundaneo: you and your luggage, door-to-door, and 50 mpg full-loaded at the legal speed limit. The car has now achieved the status of appliance, much the same as my dishwasher. I keep it maintained, and as long as it keeps working I never think of it. I will keep it until it dies, and then I will get another. I like it, inasmuch as I like any machine that does the job it was designed to do, and does it well, but I don't love it, and if it was stolen tomorrow my only regret would be that I lost a few CDs in the process. And those tyres.

My journey to work tonight will be on a ratty old trailbike worth a few hundred quid at most, but I am looking forward to it already. If anyone stole that, I would be doing life for murder.

Last pleasure ride?

I fitted the new front tyre to the Bonnie, balanced the wheel, gave the brake caliper a clean and put it all back together. The tyre still has its whiskers on after about 50 miles, but the wobble on deceleration has gone. On my 'test run' I was able to coast the bike from 50 down to walking pace with my hands off the bars (indeed, folded across my chest) and there was just the faintest tremor at the sharp end, which didn't develop into anything at all. So that's another little issue out of the way.

I was writing about this on a forum I visit, and someone far wiser than me said that it was probably more to do with the fact that I had balanced the wheel properly. Wheels do indeed go out of balance as the tyre wears, so that may well be part of it. Or all of it. who knows? At any rate, I now have two good tyres to deal with the winter roads.

We had a TOMCC meet in a pub for Sunday lunch today (The Sloop, Porthgain: excellent beer-battered cod) and this time I went in the car and took Anna along to meet the gang. We had a great time, but it was a little sad when they were all talking about going on to other places and I had to drive home in a Ford. Still, Anna bought me an ice-cream, so the day wasn't wasted.

After I had fed the dog and cat, the sun was still shining, so I fired up the Trumpet and had a quick blast, up the coast to St Davids and back. It has been a glorious day, perfect biking weather, and I was mindful of the fact that it may well have been the last good Sunday of the year. At least I got a ride in. From here on, it's probably going to be waterproofs and steady riding for a few months. Still, there is the Vintage MCC Machine Display and Social Run next Sunday at Saundersfoot, so that's another thing to look forward to. We meet for breakfast, which is always a sentence I am pleased to hear.

Nother New Tyre

Last month, I replaced the rear tyre of the Bonneville. My usual habit is to try to replace my tyres in a 2:1 ratio, that is one new front tyre for every two rears. I prefer to keep the tyres matched as to manufacturer and type, so if I want to try out a different make of tyre I generally wait until I have to replace both. It's not a perfect system, and I sometimes end up binning a tyre with a bit of wear left, but that's no bad thing. Tyres (along with brakes) are something I never compromise on.

When I ordered the new rear tyre, the front one seemed OK, but silly boy here didn't measure it properly, and it was anything but. Although the tread looked clean and crisp, in fact it was down to 2mm. The handling had also deteriorated, with an interesting wobble setting in while slowing down at about 45 mph. I decided to replace the front as well. Best price was again pneus-online, so they got the business. It was delivered while I was in Ireland (left in the greenhouse as per my note on the front door, which was a pleasant surprise), but I've been too busy to fit it until now.

Tyre fitting gets easier with practice. This time it took me an hour to take off the wheel, remove the old tyre and mount the new one. Two things made the process a lot easier:

Talc: dusted liberally on the inner tube before slipping it back inside the tyre ready to mount. This makes the inner tube slippery and lets it shrug itself into a comfortable position inside the tyre, preventing twists and creases, and reducing the risk of pinching as you lever the cover back into place.

Window Cleaner: I used Mr Muscle Window Cleaner, but any spray cleaner will do. It has the benefit of being incredibly slippery when it is sprayed on something, but evaporates to nothing within seconds. Spray round the edge of the tyre and on the metal rim, and the tyre slips over it easily. Keep re-applying, as it is volatile.

Bad light stopped play at this point, so left it at that. Today I balanced the wheel, and then removed the front mudguard and cleaned it up, and painted a liberal coat of Waxoyl onto the underside. The paint underneath had already started to bubble, so I hope I have arrested its decline for a while. The visible surface of the paint still looks like new. I also gave the brake caliper a good clean with brake cleaner and a toothbrush. Although I didn't set out consciously to do this, I find I am winterising the bike. Everything I do to it, I am thinking about cold and wet and road salt and harsh conditions. Funny how only a few weeks ago we were crowing about two dry weekends in a row!

It's been pouring down all afternoon, so I will probably finish this off tomorrow. All I have to do is remount the wheel and the brake. Shouldn't take long.

New tyre

I have just replaced the rear tyre of the Bonnie. The last run around South Wales killed off the old one - tread in the centre was non-existent.

I ordered a new one from Pneus-Online, a firm I haven't used before. The tyre arrived yesterday and it went on today, no problems. Most web suppliers were asking £100 to £120 for a Metzeler Lasertec 130/80/17, but these people were doing it for £72 with free delivery. At that price, it would be rude not to.

I took the opportunity to do a bit of housekeeping at the same time. I took the rear shocks off the bike, to allow the swingarm to drop fully and make it easier to get the wheel out. While it was out, I did a surgical clean of the swingarm area, which is usually hard to get to, and gets caked up with black chain grease and general road crud. Once it was clean, I brushed on some Waxoyl to the bits I know I can never get to during an ordinary cleaning session. The swingarm is only painted, and it's in the way of a lot of spray and grit from the rear wheel, so a bit of heavy-duty protection isn't a bad idea. The Waxoyl is matt-black anyway, so it doesn't look out of place.

I also cleaned up the wheel while the tyre was off. The Bonnie wheels are really nice, with chrome rims, stainless spokes and very shapely cast hubs. A bit of time with Gunk and a paintbrush, then a hosedown, made the wheel look great. In fact, Anna had a look out of the window and asked if I had been buying new wheels. It all went together again with a dab of grease here and there, Loctite on all the essential bolts, and a tour with the torque wrench to finish off. It looks fabulous.



I had a bit of a challenge with balancing the wheel. I had bought a pack of wheel weights and used the jig that I had made when I rebuilt the XT rear wheel last year. The weights came in 5g and 10g varieties, but I found that the 10g were too wide to fit on the flat area of the rims. I ended up using all the 5g weights, and even had to stick a couple of 10g ones on the flat between the spokes to get the balance perfect. When I get some double-sided tape I will rescue the old 5g weights and stick them on in the correct place, and take off the 10g ones, as they look distinctly odd. The theory is that you mount the tyre with the red spot adjacent to the valve, where a slightly lighter part of the tyre will counter the extra weight of the valve. Then weights will need to be added either next to the valve or directly opposite. In my case, the weights had to go at 3 o'clock to the valve position, which is a bit strange. No worries - the wheel now has perfect static balance.



I went out for a few miles to start scrubbing in the tyre and the bike felt much better. The handling had started to get a bit wayward as the rear tyre flattened off, but it is back to the usual precision now. And the gearchange is much better now that I have adjusted the chain properly - it was getting a bit slack, but I didn't bother doing anything about it as I knew it was all coming apart soon anyway.

It is recommended that new tyres are scrubbed in by taking things gently for about 100 miles, and gradually increasing the lean angle until the whole tyre surface has been roughened up by the road and all the release compounds scrubbed away. I think I got about half-way to this in 15 miles. I now have inch-wide chicken strips, which are due to be slimmed down over the next few days. Should be fun.

The rear tyre went from 3.5mm tread in the centre to zero in 2000 miles. The tread on the new one is 7mm, which implies a tyre life of 4000 miles. But I have always found that tyres wear far more quickly towards the end of their life, so I hope it will be a bit more than that. The front has gone from 3mm to 2mm in the same period, so it won't be long before that will need changing too. The tread looks very clear and defined, but when you get close there isn't too much on there. That will definitely be replaced before winter.