Finally!

I finally got around to doing something I should have done months and months ago!   I decided this morning that when I got off work I was going to take my bike over for repairs!  As my last post proclaimed, “In with the new,” evidently meant, into my house, not onto my bike.   In addition to getting the new tires installed, I’m also having them look at my front wheel speed sensor, which I believe is the problem (my speedometer and odometer stopped working last summer).   This means that I have no idea how many miles have passed since the displayed 41991 miles.  My front brake lever is messing up too, not activating the brake light properly.  So hopefully all will go well, and the damage won’t be too significant to my wallet! 

One thing of note, when the mechanic during checkout got back from the bike to get the mileage, he said, “That’s the most miles I’ve seen on an SV!”  And I think I’ve got another 5-10k miles that haven’t been registered!  Take that you fair weather riders!:)

In with the new!

The new upgraded tires, Avon Storm ST. A dual compound sport-touring tire, that is supposed to change shape based on what area of the tire is making contact. Hopefully yielding better performance, and a longer wear.

Powered by Zoundry Raven

Out with the old!

The Shinkos will soon be on their way out! I’m not sure what kind of mileage these stupid Shinko Raven’s have, but lets say I’ve been less than pleased with their wear patterns, and performance, from day one. They were cheap, and that’s seriously about the only thing they have going for them.

The front tire has had irregular wear patterns, that I’m pretty sure were there from the manufacturer, and have actually got slightly better with mileage. When first installed, on deceleration if you realeased your hands from the bars, the whole front end of the bike would start to wobble badly. It was freaky the first time I noticed it coming down a hill at 60mph. The front has developed cracks in the rubber as well, they’ve been on the bike over since the summer of 2006, and have been quite weatherbeaten, through hot desert conditions, high humidity in the Midwest, tons of rain, and cold weather (parked outside).

The rear Shinko hasn’t done much better, showing center wear after only a couple thousand miles, now sporting a nice, wide, flat spot down the center of the tire. This isn’t a desired feature for instilling confidence in the rider on sweaping corners, where the tire can feel skiddish when the road surface hits that transition on the tire tread. As with the front, the rear shows signs of rubber deterioration, cracking, etc, and inconsistant tire wear.

Here are a few photos of the old tires:

Brake upgrades!

I finally got around to replacing my brake pads on the SV. I was over at Aurora Suzuki picking up some oil changing products, and just asked if they had the pads in stock. They did. I have to say up until the last month or so, the current pads were still doing a pretty good job, but seriously, how far can you push the bike’s original pads. That’s right, I was still riding on the originals, after aproximately 50k miles. I’m not sure how long they’re supposed to last, but I’m guess most people would have had them replaced a while back. Anyway, I had some trouble with the back caliper, the piston kept pushing out, it took a long time to get the timing right, to wedge a large flat bladed screw driver in there, push the piston in, then quickly wedge the pad assembly into the space. After doing some hard test stopping over the past 100 miles, the pads have seated nicely, and are providing some excellent stopping power.

*Notice* Re: Photos not displaying

This is just a notice to anyone looking at my blog…I’m sorry that the photos aren’t showing up.  I’ve been posting photos on here since I started this blog, by using a link to the actual photo on my Smugmug account.  Well, this has been been a problem lately.  Photos haven’t been showing up consistently, and right now, I’m noticing that the smugmug website is actually down.  I’ve been hesitant to upload photos to WordPress, not knowing what limitations they had, but found out that they allocate 3gb of space, so uploading photos shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve tried it tonight with several posts using different programs to upload the post and photo directly to the WordPress site.  It seems to be working, so I’m going to go with that.  In addition to simply finishing up my posts regarding our Utah trip, I’m going to have to go back and modify current posts, and upload the corresponding photos.  It may take a bit, but please keep checking back, and hopefully you’ll see some fun/cool photos you hadn’t seen before.  Thanks as always for looking at my blog, and if you enjoy a post, leave a comment, it at the very least lets me know if something is wrong, or something is right, either with content or performance of the blog.  Thanks!  Anders

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