Suspension Fettling Mission

[vifferman]

Preamble
Several years ago, I posted on KiwiBiker about getting a new rear shock for the VFR800 - an Elka from Canadia, which I bought as part of a group buy on a US VFR forum. At the time I thought I was pretty clever, as it was some $250 cheaper than an Ohlins from CKT at the time. I used some of the 'savings' to buy some Sonic Springs fork springs and new fork oil. The results were better than the OEM Showa suspension, but I was never really happy with them. A couple of years back, I bit the bullet and sent the forks off to Dr Bob at CKT for some fettling. Heaps better!, but it turned out the recommended (for my weight and riding style) springs were too stiff, so back they went to Dr Bob for new springs (Ohlins), new oil, and reworked damping. Now they were damned near perfect, but the two nationalities at the ends of the bike couldn't agree to get along, and the ride was often less than harmonious.

When the vifferbabe asked what I'd like to do over the Xmas/New Year break, I tentatively broached the possibility of having the rear shock serviced. Turned out I'd underestimated her, and she readily agreed to the prospect of trying out her new gear, provided we could make a Road Trip of it. So, she put her not inconsiderable organising skills to work, and organised us one, complete with Route, Accommodation, and Activities. My meagre organisational skills were put to meagre use organising an appointment time with Dr Bob at KSS. Which I eventually managed, seemingly mere nanaseconds before his appointment book was devoid of voidness. Or summat... (phew!)
So...

[vifferman]

Well... first we had to cram four days' worth of personal belongings, tools, and assorted crapola into one Ventura backpack and a tankbag.
Done.
Perfectly.

Wellll... it meant we had to leave behind GoingOutToDinnerClothes, and shoes, but we had room for swimming gear and a brand new book each to read. A fine compromise.

So, off we went (in accordance with this instalment's title). Down the droning Southern Motorway. At least the traffic was lightish on January 4th at 8am-ish.

At Ngaruawahia, we turned off SH1, consulted "The Motorcycling Atlas", removed the front of my jacket, and headed rightish towards my old stomping/working grounds at Whatawhata, and on, all via much more interesting SH39. Between Pirongia and Otorohanga, the sky started to leak slightly, so we adjourned to a cafe for an elevensies-ish refueling on dryish sossy rolls, sammies, and tea. Not the bestest morning tea, but we could park the bike and luggage immediately in view, there was a handy cupboard adjacent to the table for our helmets, and the cafe had a toilet. Win/win all round.

Although I'd ridden part of the earlier route (once), and the next part several times in the late '90s, on my VF500, I'd never ridden any of it before on the VFR, or two-up, so it was like a first ride all over again.

I wasn't damp enough, so the WeatherGodz sprinkled me a tad more liberally between Piopio and Paemako, before leaving me be, and sending some welcome sunshine to dry out my gloves and groinal region. (Great! Just great! The one place where moisture gets in, and it happens to be my crotch. Oooh! The lovely cold feeling of water seeping past the nads, to be soaked up and retained by my brnad new undies... TMI? - TFB!!)
The vifferbabe was devoid of even mildlymoistness, in her new Frank Thomas jacket and NoName pants. It seemed therefore a good idea to up the pace appropriately, and a mostly excellent ride was had reacquainting myself with the road through the Awakino Gorge and southwestwards: not illegally so, but such that I had to stop at Mokau for a break for my aching situpon region and knees. Shame I didn't have the commonsense to stop for petroleum distillates as as well, as we nearly didn't make the gas station at Uruti. Oops...

The rest of the trip (apart from nearly being assaulted when I confessed to the vifferbabe about the last gasp averting of the fuelling crisis...) was uneventful, and we rolled up to the Plymouth in New Plymouth at a most convenient time of 3pm. The receptioning person seemed well trained in motorcyle diplomacy, and offered me the foyer to use as a park for the bike! I reasoned no-one would steal such a grubby and un-Harleyish machine, and left it outside under the canopy.
We repaired inside to find our room, get changed, and have a welcome dip in the spa and swimming pool.

[vifferman]

After sufficient relaxation, we explored the more immediate (and slightly less immediate) parts of New Plymouth on foot, partly out of nosiness and touristiness, and partly because we needed to see if Dick could Smith the vifferbabe a pair of replacement earbuds for the walkman. Which he indeed did. Or did indeed. At a reasonable price. We also ingested some gelati, and explored Pukekura Park, which was being subjected to The Festival of Lights, and the tramp of wanderers other than the viffers. It was most unimpressive when lit only by the sun, but we thought we might possibly return some other time to see if darkness and electricity improved things somewhat. In the MeanTime, we found ourselves a most agreeable eatery, and sated our appetites and slaked our thirsts with some EyeTallian victuals and liquids.
A fews hours laters, we returned to Pukekura Park, and were very pleasantly surprised at how much more festivally and lighty the Festival of Lights was. There were coloured lights illuminating the vegetation, LED-festooned rowboats on the lakes, laser light displays, a blacklight-lit fernery, glow-worm grotto, and all manner of kewl stuff. Very smile-making and festive it was indeed, so much so that we were surprised when grabbing some breakfast doings at the supermarket on the way 'home' that it was nearly midnight. Oops... so much for a god night's sleep before an early start...

[vifferman]

Despite the late-ish evening, and a really crap night's sleep (how hard is it for a hostelry to supply a variety of pillows, rather than just multiples of the same uncomfy ones?), I managed to awake at my usual 6 am (damn that internal clock, even on vacation!). Slurped down some hotel room tea and victuals from the supermarket, girded my loins, chucked my tools in the tank bag, and went downstairs to the Vifferbeast. Two left turns, riding riding riding, a right turn, another left, and there I was outside The Business Formerly Known As CKT But Now Called KSS But Still Signposted as CKT. Not quite as early as intended, but it didn't matter, as I was still early and there was no-one around for a couple of minutes. Then Dr Bob or his doppelganger arrived, introduced himself, and opened the doors to his surgery. Shortly thereafter, he introduced me to the World Famous In Noo Zilund And Elsewhere Shane King.
After querying me about the Vifferbeast's suspension and the ride south, Dr Bob bounced the beast up'n'down, and took a ride around the compound's yard, encountering as many curbs, holes, bumps'n'lumps and surface irregularities as he could. We then placed the bike on a bench (Ah! The LUXURY of an elevated bike to not have to bend down to! ), I unwrapped my meagre collection of tools, and set to extricating the Elka from the very tight confines behind the rear headers, between the rear frame rails, and above/in the swingarm and catcon. I was SO glad I'd had a practice run at home, as I'd worked out all the foibles, gotchas and shortcuts, and it took only about 20 minutes. Not having to find the appropriate tool, or loosen gummed-up nuts helped too.

To be continued when I get back from the dentist ...

[Gremlin]

hehe, enjoying the read and descriptions

[SPman]

Hurry up, dammee sir! Teeth can wait!

Aaaaah the festival of lights - almost got thrown out once when older son picked up a piece of wood and tried to remove the brains of a large possum he saw, lounging around a tree base - much to the horror of various "mothers of five", "concerned resident of Okato..", "concerned environmentalist wanker of....", etc........

now, back to the saga.......

[James Deuce]

Is he back yet?

[theseekerfinds]

c'mon.. you can't get us all enthralled and then take the story away

you get to the good stuff and now we're all waiting with bated breath..

[vifferman]

(Got bored, and also my current boss asked me to print out the story of "Everything What I Do In My Job" for bedtime reading or what the hey... Woulda been easier if he just approved a $15k pay rise for me, then I wouldn't have had to change jobs...)
Anyway... where was I...?
Oh yeah - deconstructing the myth bike. (This is actually the second time I've written this, but the first one was waaaayyy better, before the computer ate it).
Having extracted Elka from the prison the Evil Vifferman installed her into, I handed her lithe body over to the Evil Henchman, Dr Bob The Evil Henchman The Suspension Guru. He proceded [or is it "proceeded"? You'd think a Technical Writer would know this stuff, huh?] to disassemble it using a chainsaw, pickaxe, gas axe, and throwing axe, before throwing the dismembered carcase in the bin. Then reality kicked in, and he actually carefully measured and noted things like the number of turns of preload, the compression and rebound settings, and started to take it apart, lining the shims etc. along the workbench. As you do (but not me - I'd just lose them in the assorted crap on the gargre floor... )
All the while, he kept up a running commentary of sorts ("Dunno what they're trying to do here... Hmmmm.... hmmmmm... this is different to an Ohlins.... What's this? Tastes like raspberry cordial, but could be redline, or ATF, or summat..."). Turned out the body was of identical dimensions to at least one model of Ohlins, so he decided that rather than try and decipher what Elka had done, he could just rebuild it to match the spec sheet for the VFR800 Ohlins. However, the piston was "rather expensive". "Uh... how much?" "Nearly $100 - I can get the exact price for you". "Pffft - just do it!"
The pistons were (of course) the same diameter, but the Ohlins was noticeably more swiss cheese-like, strange, given that it wasn't made in Switzerland. The other noticeable difference was that although the Elka shim stack had more shims (10, to the Ohlins 8), they were (probably/possibly) different. (I didn't compare them, and neither did Dr Bob).
Spring? No, Summer (allegedly, although some would disagree). Apparently (and surprisingly), the Smurf-like blue coil was measured and found to be not massively overly stiff, but in fact just right for my 83kg (nude) body. (I put my clothes on again, because Dr Bob refused to continue unless I did).

After very carefully cleaning, assembly, and gently de-bubbling the $50/litre Baby Lesbian Afghani Furseal Penguin Whale oil (Ohlins, natch) by whcking the shock with a BigArseMallet (TM), Dr B (Dr Bob's doppelganger) put the lid back on, adjusted the doofers (technical term), and handed Elkin (or is it Ohlka?) back to me for reinstallation. Casually announcing, "Well, this will either work, or I'll have to take it all out, and start again..."








Eventually (after losing the top nut again, and struggling to get all the mounting bolts lined up), I was done, so both Dr B and Dr Bob had me sit (still clothed) on the bike while some sag was sagged and tweaked.

And off into the sunset late morning overcastness rode Dr Bob, and that was the last I ever saw of him....








....until some time laters, when he returned (love that V4 music!) and pronounced "Actually, it feels damned good to me!"

Then it was my turn, and after getting lost, I found the way back, and decided it (the shock) would do. (Disaster averted: no re-rebuild required.)

[vifferman]

So, after wishing each other a fond farewell, and promising to write every day, we parted company. (And I parted company with my credit card momentarily. The bill was most agreeable to me, and I was pleasantly pleased (?) when the vifferbabe later said, "Oh - that's not too bad at all!")

The rest of the day was kinda mundo-mundane , except for the saucy bits that I'm not going to bore you with, so that was more or less that for New Plymouth.

However (but!) the next day, some interesting things happened. Firstly, I wound on very little (bugger all, in fact) preload to account for the extra 90-100kg of vifferbabe+ luggage (12kg for the little lady, and the rest for the luggage, becoz I luffs her, and she might read this one time...) This was interesting because for the first time in living memory the rear end of the Vifferbeast (bike, not the wife) felt plush and was subject to LOTS of travel. Before the Elkins/Ohlka, there was very little extra preload, and yet the rear shock felt stiff. Because the Vifferbeast is a v-four (for those of you not paying attention), it has two header pipes in close nearness to the shock, so it gets a bit warm. No problem for the MotoGP-spec Ohlins fluid, but it meant that I had to adjust the preload when the bike had been sitting and cooling down for a goodly while, so I had few opportunities to do this: only when we stopped for food'n'drink'n'rest. This meant riding with pogoing, stopping, dialling in more guesstimated preload, riding/pogoing a bit less, rinse, repeat.
[Excuse me - had to go and fetch me dinner, and find summat to wash it down with. Had to settle for some crusty old 2007 Peanut Nwar or somesuch...]

Now where was I? Ah yeyuss... we wuz evicted from our lodgings, and had to get the hell outta Dodge. Unfortunately, we musta been lost, because even though home was in a northerly direction, we headed off to the south, around Mt Taranaki, then over some not-at-all-straight backcountry tracks towards Stratford, and eventually gettng stuck on some horribly quaint road called "The Forgotten World Highway", with a very lowly roading number like 43.

OMG (Omigawd) - the roading engineers must've been stoned or summat, because instead of making a nice straight highway, this thing was long (158km), very wiggly, with very many tight corners - some doubling back on themselves and marked as slow as 15km/h - and it went up and down and up and down over four mountain range tops!!
And being the middle of the week, it was rather lonely - hardly any other road users to wave at or tootle melodiously. (There were a few wayward sheeps, and a herd of cattle, but they were not problematic).

Despite some residual pogoing, the Vifferbeast tracked beautifully, even on the nice gravelly bit in the middle. Much of this was the revitalised suspenders, but the Michelin PP (front) and PR2 (rear) also played a big part. The only problem was the darkness of the Moki tunnel, even with the headlights on high; I'm so used to the dark visor I'd forgotten about it.
D'oh!

The vifferbabe is such a great pillion too - she generally just sits there like a pudding when we're cruising, but in the twisties she scoots up close behind me to centralise the mass, and adds a wee bit of lean if need be in the tighter stuff. Brilliant!

On to Taumarunui, and a welcome break for hot food, good coffee, and some odd-tasting cold water.

[vifferman]

But in the meantime, we had to traverse the horribly non-straight roading between Taumarunui and Turangi, via le Parc National (sorry - there's some froggy thing on the gogglingbox, which I'm watching whilst typing). On the way, we investigated the remarkable yet strangely uncelebrated Raurimu Spiral, a feat of wonderful and creative engineering. The lookout was rather disappointingly mediocre, made somewhat more interesting by being lazy and riding up the access path. (We were obviously not the first, as evidenced by donut tracks at the end of the path...)

The aforementioned motel (of the title) was somewhat disappointing too, but the spa and pool were very welcome to wearyish bodies, and once we'd despatched the tiny squeaky-voiced occupants of Unit 5, we enjoyed a satisfying repast of tasty commestibles from the local super of market, washed down by a nice rose (that's pinky wine, not a flower, but I cannae find the character map...)
A very strange coincidence was rounding a corner of Turangi's shopping centre, only to run into the vifferbabe's aunts and uncles, briefly sojourning before continuing south in their campervans.

Nothing else to report here; we didn't bring our fishing rods...

[James Deuce]

Bravo, young man!

[Madness]

Despite the late-ish evening, and a really crap night's sleep (how hard is it for a hostelry to supply a variety of pillows, rather than just multiples of the same uncomfy ones?)

Checked in to the Plymouth tonight for the first time and your post prompted me to just now check the pillows. I'll be sleeping on Melatonin(tm) tonight for sure.

[vifferman]

Bravo, young man!

Ta! But wait....








.... there's more.

We're not home yet.

[vifferman]

Soap, we'd done all we'd planned to do, now we just had to plot the homeward route. Sew, I carefully studied The Motorcycling Atlas of OuterRower, carefully considered all the possible routes northish, and with my usual decisiveness, decided I couldn't decide. Sow, I consulted The Arbitrator, who for once was no help at all ("You decide..."), carefully left The Motorcycling Atlas of Te Ika a Maui (wasn't using the other half) and its other half (because they were actually just one book) on the table (so that I'd spend many fruitless minutes at home looking for it), loaded up the bike in the dribbling drizzle, and off we set. Yay! Random planning lack of planning is the best!

The Ride coulda/shoulda been OK, but we musta left at The WorngA time, as we ended up stuck behind a long line of cars for The Interesting Bits up the eastern side of Taupomoana, forcing me to perform CrazyArseOvertakingManoeuvres so I could get to the front of the queue in time for The More Boring Bits. D'Oh!! All that risk-taking and illegal passing for nowt.

The viffervixen had captivated me with tales of lounging around in ToePaw drinking caffeinated beverages, so we eschewed the town bypass in favour of dawdling along the lakefront (very chewy it was too), only to NOT stop. As you do, Or rather - don't do.

Man, there are some dorks on the road (apart from moi)! Can't say I particularly enjoyed much of the Taupo-Tokoroa-Putaruru-Tirau ride, because despite the road being relatively lightly trafficked, most of the other traffic seemed to be piloted by retards. Like the guy who pulled out in front of me north of Putaruru, towing a trailer with many remnants of last year's autumn foliage and assorted shit (I'm just guessing here), which blew out the back at us. (I still had one leaf wedged in the side of the coverthingie when I got home). He could've just moved left to let me past before the "No Passing!!" lines started, as there was plenty of room to the left, but no (NO!!), he moved right. He musta thort my pretty blue bike meant I was pretty and smurfy too, and not a BadAssBikerDudeWithSomewhatArbitraryRegardForTheLa w^TM, but I just passed him anyway. Knobbly Yelloow Line? Pfft!

I'd intended to plug in the TomTom-a-Tom before we left Mosquitoville [isn't there some crappy thrid-rate song about that, summat about "Wasting away again in moskeeterville; searching for my lost shaker of salt..." ??], but it was quietly sleeping in the pocket of the tank bag. Besides - all this area, and that between here and D'Auckland was SOOOooooooo familiar to me, right? No sweat, laddie!

So that's why, the carefully conceived RouteInMyHead turned into "AlmostRightButNoCigar: The Story Of Wandering Around The Bleak Grey Countryside In The Rain, Missing Turns And Taking Bogus Routes". So we spent an extra hour or so getting home, while the water seeped through the front of my jacket where I usually had a carefully-placed rubbish sack 'borrowed' from work, and the sleeves of my expensive Macna jacket I'd forgotten to move from inside waterproof glove cuffs (light rain) to outside glove cuffs (this typical subtropical Waikato wateriness), so that the mostly-waterproof liner could drain itself into my gloves....

Aside
While I was tossing off tossing'n'turning last night, my CrazyAssMind was thinking of stuff that I could write, It was Crazy Ass, Man! And it woulda/coulda been really funny, iffen I could remember it.
Last year, we went to Yurp, and I took the liner of the aforementioned Expensive Macna Jacket with me, all the way there and back! "Wow!", I hear you say; "That's super fascinating, Vifferdork!" See, the thing was, over many moons, and via many emails, I'd been trying to negotiate a replacement zip-in liner because there was some slight tearing in a couple of places where the seams were sealed. In the end, the manufacturers in the Netherregions Netherlands said they couldn't replace it, but I could get it repaired at their repairers:

Dam Motorkleding reparaties, Molenstraat 39 5688 AC, Oirschot, The Netherlands

It turned out this was exactly where we weren't going! But it was also not too far from where we were going.
Or at least, it wouldn't have been, if the CrazyAss GPS in our rental Peugeot with the CrazyAss controls on the left side (WTF is up with that?!?) coupled with my CrazyAss navigation, hadn't caused us to miss the turnoff on the autoweg and do a CrazyAss massive extra loop. Eventually, we found Oirschot, and found Molenstraat and number 39. Tucked away behind a typical brick'n'tile Dutch house was a workshop, where two cute old Dutch elves were beavering .... er... elve-ing away, fixing garments for motobicyclists. The really kewl thing (well... to me, at least, but the vifferbeaver wasn't impressed) was the immaculate silver Ducati 750SS, late '70s vintage, which was the machine I always lusted over, like, forever. Well... at least, since I first saw one. It was loitering nonchalantly in the doorway of the elves' workshop, as if this was an everyday sort of thing to do.

We conversed in PigeonDutchElvish with the FixItElves, and soonly one of the elves ran it through his magical seam-sealing machine, and it was more betterer'n'new! And it cost me a whole €5!

/Aside
I sincerely hope you enjoyed that rambling and irrelevant aside. You see how it neatly allowed me to tie in being rained on, with my long-held lust for Ducatis? No?!?
Fuck you then.
I have actually had a Ducati keyring since 1994. But I recentlyish decided I'm never likely to own an actual machine. Unless it was a 'spare' bike, just for drooling over. And Especially after Dr Bob told me how good Ducati are at putting very expensive Öhlins shocks on their bikes (like the 1098) then fucking up the linkage so when used on bumpy roads (rather than the smooth-surfaced Ducati test track), the shock virutally locks up when challenged with a real-world sized bump.

Where was I?
Oh yeah - taking unnecessary routes. So, instead of taking the road that runs sorta parallel with SH1 (SH1B), but which is more lightly travelled/policed and picturesque, and only 93.5km, I had a brain fart, and took 1B, then 26 through Morrinsville and Tahuna, then back to SH1.
A mere 144km...
In the pouring rain...
With my sleeves tucked into my gloves, and an unidentified leak in my jacket near my belly button, and another in my pants near my nads...
With a now grumpy viffergrump on the back...


Oh dear.
But at least we got home,eventually, after a brief sojourn at my sister's house in Ararimu (adding another 20km or so). And after that it had stoped raining at least, so we could enjoy the drone down the Southern Motodrone...

And that's that.

FIN