In for surgery

No great activity over the past couple of weeks. I've been trying to muster the courage / enthusiasm to look at this oil leak, but keep putting it off... I concluded this week that the reason I'm doing that is because I'm not confident that I'll succeed, so I decided that meant I should call on the experts again.
So Doris has gone to see kind Doctor John again today. He's going to sort it out for me next week. On the way down there, the front brake was binding on again, so I've also asked him to look at the master cylinder for me. May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb!

I had to laugh the other day. Here is me worrying about spending a couple of hundred quid at the garage - my mate at work was telling me he's taking delivery of a new Ducati next week and hasn't told his wife yet !!

I'm really looking forward to being able to ride Doris again. I won an EBay auction a week or two back for a pair of new, unused Oxford panniers that fit her perfectly and match my tank bag - £15 - what a bargain :) They will be great for the Manx in August.

Further update once she's back from hospital.

Poor Incontinent Doris

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. Once we hit the deadline and made it to the Thundersprint, I've had to catch up on all those other things that had been sacrificed to finish her. It's also been a busy time of year for "adventures" - with weekends away cycling and then a day away to the TT.

I finally found some time to investigate the oil leak from the base gasket today, having done the sensible thing and bought myself another torque wrench with a lower range. What did I find? Well, I had over-torqued, not under-torqued the bolts for starters. More seriously, there is also a residual issue from the previous owner. One of the long bolts holding down the head/barrel must have previously stripped a thread and had been replaced by a stud and nut, which had similarly stripped the thread and was doing next to bugger all :(.

Hmm this is turning into a big job now. I'll get proper Honda base and head gaskets if I can now and a replacement head bolt, but I'm going to have to strip all the top end down again and heli-coil the stripped thread, which I've never done before. The "how to" articles I've read about it look fairly straight forward though.

It's likely to be a few weeks before Doris is back on the road, so the VFR has been pressed back into service. Hey ho - no one said this would be straight forward......

I've booked a ferry ticket for passenger and bike for a few days at the Manx GP in the Isle of Man at the end of August. It would be nice if Doris could use the ticket :)