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: