THE X(j) FILES: EPISODE V
by Al
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Jack Schaffer: I'm just the pilot. You ever flown a
flying saucer? Afterwards, sex seems trite.
THE X-FILES |
For those who came in late: Episode I, Episode II, Episode III, Episode IV.
The rain finally stopped.
It was time for the XJ to leave suburbia on what the nautical types call the shakedown cruise. So, I took it out on one of Sydney's premier motorcycle roads, the Bells Line of Road over the Blue Mountains from Richmond to Lithgow.
The winter solstice has the least sunshine of any day of the year. The day I chose was the day after the winter solstice.
I left home at 6:20 am. It was dark. And cold.
The XJ starts well at all temperatures and runs without choke inside a minute. It's a bit snatchy at just-off-idle speeds due to the CV carbies, but you get used to that. Once out of the car park it isn't a problem, and five minutes after leaving my place I was in the Lane Cove Tunnel. By which time I was bloody cold.
But I was enjoying the ride, and I figured the sun would be up soon. There was some sort of weird whistle from the front end at times. It only came in above 40km/h, so it was kind of hard to duplicate when I wasn't on the bike. As near as I could figure, it was the rubber mudflap which the previous owner had glued to the front guard catching the wind. The engine was torquey and reasonably smooth most of the time. It had a bit of vibration at around 100km/h in top, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It just made the right mirror go a bit blurry.
Forty minutes out, the sun had risen, and I was off the M7 expressway and on the Richmond road.
An hour out, things were looking up. I was on the Bells Line of Road accelerating up the twisty climb that is Bellbird Hill and feeling the occasional bit of sun on my jacket.
The standard 5 weight fork oil seemed well matched to the new Progressive Suspension springs. The Koni 7610 shocks were on middle preload and stiffest rebound damping, and seemed pretty well right for the bike. The shaft drive was unobtrusive in straight-line work. I expected the rear to kick up a bit when upshifting under hard acceleration, but I can't say I noticed it. Mainly because most of me was numb with cold by now. And I find it difficult to do that man and machine as one bonding thing when I'm numb.
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Ten kilometres on, it was frosty |
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| ...and from then on, traction got scarcer |
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97 horsepower, and no-where to use it |
An hour and a quarter out, I was sweeping up Mount Tomah. There was a road sign which said "SLIPPERY WHEN FROSTY" and a graphic of a motorcycle crossed up. Lucky it isn't frosty, I thought.
Ten kilometres on, it was. And colder. I stopped to take a photo of the frost. It took ten minutes for my frozen hands to undo my helmet.
I warmed my gloved hands on the engine for a while and continued on. The bike felt twitchy. The road looked slippery.
I stopped at the side of the road, and rubbed my boot on a slippery-looking bit. It didn't feel THAT slippery.
I took off again. As I hit the tar the bike started to wheelspin, and the rear stepped out half a metre or so. I started riding very slowly.
Just past Bell, there was a sign: "ICE ON ROAD".
I started letting cars pass me. Oh, the ignonimy... A little further was another sign: "SNOW AND ICE ON ROAD". I kept riding very slowly.
That was about 17km out of Lithgow. It took a long time to get in to Lithgow. Many cars passed me. I got crossed up a couple more times.
The people I visited in Lithgow said it was minus 4.5 degrees Centigrade that morning. Their pipes were frozen, but they had filled the kettle the previous evening. I drank much hot coffee. I did not venture far from the fireplace except to get rid of coffee. And the toilet wouldn't flush, because the pipes were frozen. Two of my fingers had burn blisters on them from putting my gloved hand on the motor. I hadn't felt it at the time. It had taken two hours to go 140km, a third of which was on expressways.
By 11:00, I was thawed. The outside temperature had reached 10 degrees. So I decided to ride home.
I filled up at Lithgow. Around town the XJ had been getting about 15 km/l. This latest tankful came in at 18.5 km/l. Not bad considering only fifteen percent of the trip was spent trickling along at 2,000rpm in third gear on an icy road.
Things had improved on the way back. It was cold, but not bloody cold. The slipperiness of the road seemed related to the amount of frost on the grass and rocks beside the road, and most of that had gone. I lost traction a couple of times on patches in the shade of trees which overhung the road, but none of these were real heart-in-mouth moments.
Comfort was OK. The riding position was pretty well perfect: slight forward lean, footpegs placed exactly right. The handlebars are adjustable in two planes, and I had already rotated them forward one notch and down one notch. The seat was biting me a bit as I neared home, but it would probably be tolerable on a warm day when I wasn't shivering and I had feeling in my arms and legs. The fairing deflects a bit of wind blast, but you still feel plenty.
The rear brake was too high: I had to lift my foot off the peg to use it. With a numb foot and heavy boots on it was a safety issue as well as an ergonomics issue, and I made a note to move it down a spline as soon as I got back.
Brakes seemed to be improving as the new pads bedded in, but they're still not as good as I want. Hopefully the steel lines I've ordered fix much of this.
| TO DO LIST |
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The fuel gauge shows "F" when the tank is filled, drops to a bit over a third full at 120km, then shows "E" at 140km with over 12 litres left in the tank. I guess the sender is stuffed. I don't care, I've got an odometer.
I've never owned a motorcycle with a clock in the instruments before, and it's handy. The self-cancelling turn indicators work really well: ignore them and they cancel after fifty or so metres, or push the button in and they cancel directly. And you can turn the headlight off...
The tank holds 22 litres, 5 of which are in reserve. Around the suburbs it gets about 15 km/l: 250km out of the main tank, maybe there's an extra 75km in reserve. Memo to self: fill up soon after it hits reserve. As noted before, the bottom of the tank is below the fuel tap, and pushing 240 kilo motorcycles to the nearest service station is guaranteed to ruin your day.
My summary? Overall, not a bad shakedown cruise. 280km, tough conditions (for the rider, anyway). Nothing fell off or broke. I got a bit of a feel for the machine.
So, I've spent on average about a thousand bucks a month for six months. I've got a little bit of history, a 97 horsepower toy that's a half decent all-rounder, and a bike mechanic who says "They're a great bike" a lot. Which is not what he says about, for example, Ducatis; and this gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Could I have done better? I probably could have got a later model bike for the price.
Would it have been a better bike? I neither know, nor care.
Did I have fun? Of course, there is no other valid reason to own a motorcycle.
Was it worth it? Oh yeah.
