Garage time!

As it’s Easter, I get Friday and Monday as a holiday so I’ve been using my time to get some more work done on the bikes.

The silver Traveller was due its MOT (annual safety check here in the UK), so yesterday I gave it a really good clean, lubricated all the moving bits and gave everything that’s checked a test to see that it’s OK. After that I did some work on the white Traveller (more about that later).

I went to see a friend and when I got back, just before teatime, I gave the bike another check over and found that the rear brake didn’t operate the brake light! It had worked a couple of hours earlier. I tested it and it was the switch that had failed. The switch is one of the pressure type that is operated by the hydraulic pressure and is a sealed unit. I went up into my loft to rummage through my spares and found a complete rear master cylinder. I removed the switch from it and swapped it with the one on the bike – or rather I would have if it had fitted! The Skorpion comes with Grimeca brakes, but I had upgraded them to Brembos a few years ago, and despite the Grimeca and Brembo master cylinders appearing identical, they used different threads for the switch!

So it off with the Brembo master cylinder and on with the Grimeca, brake bled (removing the hose and switch allows air into the system), and tested - it didn’t work! The Grimeca switch was faulty as well!!!

Off with the Grimeca and back on with the Brembo, this time fitted with the switch from my Yamaha SZR 660, which has the same thread, but different connectors, which in turn meant I had to extend the wires by soldering and crimp new terminals on. Tested it, and this time it worked!

However, changing the master cylinders and bleeding the brake meant that I managed to spill brake fluid over the bike, so I had to clean it again!

Today I got up and it was windy and pouring with rain, so I went to the test centre by the ‘main road’ route, and thankfully the bike passed. The weather had improved by the time the test was over, so I decided to ride back by the shorter ‘country route’. Five minutes later the rain and wind started again and there was a lot of flooding on the road so it was an ‘interesting’ ride back!

The now tested silver bike

Back home it was on with more work on the white Traveller. Had a very productive day tidying up some of the mods I’ve done to the wiring, refitting the fairing which required cutting to length of various screws, refitting throttle cables, and lots of those fiddly jobs that you leave to the end of projects.

Looking a bit more complete!

Hopefully I should get the bike finished this weekend, then I’ll have to arrange for it to be tested, and it’ll be back on the road for the first time in 7 or 8 years. I’m going to use this Traveller as my ‘commuting bike’, keeping the silver one as my ‘holiday and runs bike.' More later.....