FOR SALE:


My HN is now for sale, asking £500 with all extras talked about in this blog (including spotlights, crash bars, LED's, tyres... everything)

Leave a message if interested

So I wasn't finished

Not a full length update here, just saying that I've wheeled the bike back into the garage for fiddling.

The bobber style is fun but uncomfortable on anything other than around town.

So I'm changing the bike again! It's going in a completely new direction!

Not going to say much, except there will be a lot of fibreglass involved!

That's all folks!

And she's down!

So yesterday I went down to "LG welding" just outside of town where a great bloke made me some hardtail struts for the hn as I waited, I've just got back in from fitting them, whilst snowing!
I needed some more washers to space out the stud so they could be tightened but here's what she looks like now!

And I've just had my first ride on them with which I can confirm the ride has got very bloody hard! bones rattled out of me!

But I'm fairly happy with how she's changed!

So only changed a bit!

Going down

So some new bars arrived yesterday, just standard black 7/8ths low rise bars and this morning I went about fitting them, fairly simple affair just unbolt everything on the stock bars, slide off and replace, job done in just over 20 minutes:

Old bars:



New bars:



They are quite a bit more narrow than the stocks, but I really like the position.

One thing I am doing this week is lowering the bike, don't get me wrong I love the stock bikes, but I've fallen in love with the long and low bobber look, so I've got a local fab shop making me up some struts to replace the rear suspension, a poor mans hardtail if you like!

Overall the rear end will be dropping by 3-4 inches, I'm also making a new seat out of an old seat base and some foam and leather bought off eBay, should be interesting!

In the mean time here's an idea of what it should start looking like:



Hmm loooowww!

Black, Is the new black!

drool's...

It's a new year, Which can only mean one thing... more motorbike changes, poor thing she's getting changed more often than my single mates bedsheets...

But what's changed this year i hear you ask? Well last year I liked the "Dresser" look on my bike, I't made it look bigger and the chrome looked lovely in the sun, but winter was harsh on the chrome despite many layers of ACF50! 

I also realised that the added weight of crash bars and spotlights was putting a bit of a strain on the little engine, So one afternoon, spanner in hand I removed as much as I physically could, then passed the bits absolutely necessary for day to day running to a friend who works in powder coating, these parts were front and rear fenders, rear light bracket and chain guard. :

Then I got them all fitted:

hmm, looking sweet!

However on fitting the rear light back on, it seems I was a little over enthusiastic when pulling the cable back under the mudguard... I broke one of the connectors on the rear light, which despite my awesome  basic soldering skills I could not fix, The rear right indicator also gave up the ghost, no dodgy connection or bad bulb, just wouldn't work, so i've put that one down to poltergeist.

A new LED brake unit, mini indicators and flasher relay allr arrived in the post. I got the mini indicators fitted without fuss...

...but the tail-light wires were too short! Bugger!

A quick trip down to maplin got me 3m of 4 amp cable and a ten pack of bullet connectors, I made an extension cable by plugging the new light wires into a female bullet connector, then running the cable to a male bullet connector, plugging into the stock connectors under the seat, Job done and the new light looks sweet!

In addition to this I got a bit bored of my blue bulbs in the dash, So those got swapped to green...

It was kindly pointed out on the forum, that Ihave now changed the bulbs once every 1000km, and that they now look "Romulan" which I like, A lot!

The big news though is with the headlight:

(Taken from post on the forum, cos i'm too lazy to re-type)

As many of you will know our plucky little HN's headlight is only marginally better than sticking a tealight in the headlamp lens and eating lots of carrots, needless to say... not that bright.

I bought a second hand 7" headlamp with an h4 fitting bulb, this arrived and was sadly too wide to fit in the hn's mount, so I managed to "Retrofit" Bodge the new lens into the current hn headlamp and collar then set up the HID kit as detailed online.





Below is the bike with the front LED parking bulb on to give a comparison of brightness (sorry for poor quality photo's it's dark out!)

And then with the HID:

Bit of a difference to what I was riding on before!:

Amazing!

The kit came from ebay and cost £25, no instructions but I found this image, which made everything very easy to work out:

Although the wiring layout in the headlight left something to be desired!

That's all for this week...

Saddle Next I think, then maybe hard tailing, I like how low she looks in this photo:

We'll see shall we?

Yet more LED. when will it end?!

Yes, more LED's, but first Tyres!

Yesterday was my first wet ride on my new "Sava" "MC7" tyres (above), and the verdict? Simply brilliant. No hint of any slipping and no change in grip from dry conditions, they have totally transformed the bike and for £100 it's money well spent. 

If you ride in wet weather regularly the stock tyres are fine, but an upgrade will transform wet weather handling, so it was a must for me.

But anyway...

As mentioned in a previous post, I like LED's a lot, I like that there is no filament to vibrate loose and break, I also like how they last longer than standard bulbs and that they draw less power per bulb in comparison to traditional bulbs.


I ordered a "T25 BAY15D 1157 White 60 SMD LED Tail Stop Light Bulb" from Hong Kong and just over three weeks later... It arrived, It's important to note that the tail bulb also illuminates the Reg plate via a small clear plastic window at the base of the lens, so It's very important to ensure the bulb has 360 degree diodes to ensure light is thrown down towards the base of the lens. 

It's also very important that the bulb has a two pin connector rather than single pin:

double pin RIGHT

single pin WRONG

SMD (surface mounted diodes) do not look like traditional LED's but they offer a brighter light than "Capped" bulbs, so they're better...

So onto the fitting, It's fairly simple, but then again it wouldn't be a very helpful blog without photo's.

The lens is held on with just two long screws that take a philips head screwdriver:

Once they are removed the interior is a curved reflective plastic with the bulb socket in the middle:

Then it's just a standard bayonet fit for the bulb, so just push the bulb in slightly, turn anticlockwise and it should just pop out. 

Then pop the new bulb into the bulb holder, push in and turn until secure.

At this point I thought it was a good idea to pop the lights on to check that the bulb works as it should.

Also worth checking that the bulb does illuminate further when the brake lever is applied, or the cars wont see you slowing down!

Then screw it all back together and voila!

Wrapping thing's up a bit.

I'm in no way attempting to make this a daily blog. It just so happened that things seem to be happening all at once, and not necessarily in a good way either...

So yesterday i was riding home from Redditch, a bit of dual carriageway followed by a single lane A-road, not normally an issue. there is a large hill on this A-road so the traffic usually slows down to 30-40mph to allow for this. I'd just started to reach the back end of the queue and as traffic was starting to slow I felt the bike shudder when attempting to turn the throttle passed 1/4 open. Very odd,

I managed to nurse the bike into a layby, where I got it restarted but with a horribly loud and hollow exhaust note.

 A big detour at a maximum 30mph speed later, the bike was back home.

So I had 40mins before i left for work so i went for a carb strip, I'd had throttle problems before when the main jet wasn't secured but everything was fine.

So after work I popped the spark plug out and this is what I was met with...

Red is not a normal colour of spark plug!

So I popped a different one in, then went to check my valve clearances, here's where it gets weird...

once i'd set the timing the problem was immediately obvious... the exhaust valve had centimetre's of clearance! It had vibrated all the way loose!

Thankfully I adjusted the valves back to the right setting and the bike is fine.

The odd thing is I haven't touched the valve clearances for a month or so, so it's odd for it to just open like that, isn't it?

Anyway back to today, As i discovered today I enjoying spending my vibrant Saturday nights Drinking, Partying, Picking up women, Fighting crime as a masked vigilante, Wrapping a fibreglass ribbon around a set of greasy motorcycle exhausts, I know, thrilling! 

So I picked up 10m of exhaust wrap off ebay, It sounds like a lot, but I only had a few cm's left.

I left the wrap soaking for an hour or so, which i found helped it stick and tighten as I wrapped. One thing to note WEAR GLOVES! I cannot stress that enough, the wrap is mostly fibreglass and is itchy as hell!

I followed a youtube video and got the exhaust's wrapped and tied with the supplied stainless steel cable ties, although these are going to be removed and replaced with jubilee clips as soon as I can.

They are a little tricky at first but once you have a few goes it's fine, although after being soaked in water they drip a dark black stain on anything near, so do it outside or in the garage on a mat, I also wore an apron, just to be safe. It wrapped nice and tightly and I got them mounted back on the bike in just a few minutes.

And voila:

All wrapped up, I think it makes the exhausts look a bit fatter, which is "cool"

EDIT: Got some jubilee clips today and took some photo's of the exhausts on the bike: