Winter is icumen in ...

Lhude sing o-fukkit!

I've been commuting on the XT recently, and the Sprint has been waiting patiently behind the house. In fact, it hadn't moved a wheel for about three weeks until last night, when I wanted to take it to the Triumph Owners' club meet. The brakes were sticky and the head races had gone rather stiff. The first was easily solved with a few hard stops, but the head races kept me threepenny-bitting the roundabouts until it eased itself. That's an item on the 12k service which will be due soon, so perhaps I will see to that properly when I tackle the big 'un.

The run out and back was in the dark and, bloody hell, but the Sprint headlights are dreadful! Dipped beam isn't too bad, with a decent spread, although there is a gap in the straight-ahead position, like a missing tooth in a smile, so you are constantly riding into a black hole. The main beam, however, is strong straight ahead but has nothing to the sides, so if the road bends or you lean the bike (neither being infrequent occurrences), you lose everything. I have adjusted the lights patiently (you need to take the effing bodywork off to do this, grrr), but they are still poor. How poor? Well, the XT is a trailbike with a small headlight, more for legality than actual night riding, and the XT's lights are actually better then the Sprint's. That's how poor.

My run to the pub takes me through a small village and I noticed a tractor with some kind of brushing attachment behind it coming the other way when I was going to the pub. On my way home, I realised what it was: for the space of about a mile, the road was covered from edge to edge in a thin layer of field mud, damp and very slippery. I dread to think what it was like before the clean-up. I kept the speed right down and made it without incident, but it made me think that in a situation like that the XT is much the better mount. As this is Wales, and a rural area, and with more of the same rapidly approaching, I think it's time to give the Sprint a good clean and polish, and put it away for a while. It's a main roads bike, happiest on a charge and with a long journey in prospect. The XT is happiest on back roads, at lower speeds, and on a bad surface gives a lot more confidence. Sliding it around is fun; sliding the Sprint is an underwear-changing experience.

And if I drop it, it will suffer less damage and be fixed cheaper. Not that I plan to.



Go to bed, one of you.

Another Season, Another IAM Poll

This time, it's winter driving. Got your shovel? Got your Thermos of tea? Got your woolly blanket? Then go for it ...

Here.

Shame there's no motorbike version. I could tell 'em a thing or two.

ABS - not all that great

I went out for some essential supplies today - just the few miles into town to stock up on spuds and salad. The journey was a nightmare. The road from my hamlet into the main town was as treacherous as any road I have ever driven on. The wet slush had frozen into solid ice, and then a fresh snowfall over the top had partially melted, leaving a smooth and almost friction-free surface.

As I have said before, I am used to winter driving, so I set off with a degree of calm (and, to be honest, a degree of anticipation of sly handbrake turns and power slides). Big mistake. The road was lethally slippery and I saw one car that had slid off the road and into a wall within a mile. When I got to town, I could see that the entire network was gridlocked, so I turned round and headed home. There are a number of moderately steep hills between my house and town, and on one of these I completely lost control. I was in first gear, with the engine at idle speed, so I can't have been doing more that 2-3 mph, but as soon as I reached the top of the hill the car started to accelerate and slide down. At this point I noticed a car coming up the hill towards me, and I realised that the adventure would probably not end well. In the end, by bouncing off the bank beside the road and digging my front wheels into the ditch, fortunately with no damage, I managed to stop and then make slightly more deliberate progress to the bottom of the hill.

The point about all this is that the ABS on my car was completely useless. In fact, worse than useless. A small amount of braking was possible, but then as soon as the ABS came in the car stopped braking altogether and slid forward as if it were a ship at sea. I managed to stop the car by defeating the ABS using the old 'cadence braking' method - brake until the wheels start to lock, release, and repeat. Normally I am a big fan of ABS, as it makes braking on a wet road very safe and idiot-proof. But today I just longed for a switch to turn the damn thing off. The way it took over and then left me with no braking at all was pretty frightening.

Are there any cars made these days without ABS? Or with ABS you can turn off, like the passenger airbags that turned out to kill babies? I'd love to know, before I purchase my next winter car.

(This is an attempt at humour. I only took the car because I hate ice when I'm on a bike. In fact, I probably would have been safer, if less comfortable, on the trailbike, riding slowly and steadily. So my next winter car will probably be a set of knobblies for the XT.)