Today is the bike doctor day 🙂 I have been waiting 3 weeks for this and I am looking forward to any result, good or bad, just to set my mind at rest.
OK, woke up a tad cool but packed at a reasonable hour and said goodbye to Johnny, he helps out at the caravan park. This is a great park, but as I told him, they need to put up a no smoking sign at the camp kitchen, nothing worse than trying to eat and some ignorant wanker lights up and blows smoke over everyone while dropping ash on the hot plate.
Anyway, on the road around 8am and got to the Suzuki shop just after 9 I only travelled about 25km, but all peak hour traffic, stop start with red lights all over the joint 😦
They took it in but would not let me help, work place health and safety rules etc. Anyway, I chuffed off down the road in a tram to a cafe and had a late breakfast and read a book and got paged around an hour and a half later to say the bike was done.
The end result is nothing wrong with it, so that is good 🙂 Mick Stone the owner talked to me about it and we came to a number of conclusions, which go like this:
1- I used to do the service while at home every 6-8,000km, I am now doing them every 10,000km and he told me to go back to 6,000km
2- The beginning of my trip which covered around 15,000km was exclusively in the top end of the country, which is the hot part. Running long distances at high speeds will evaporate the oil, so by extending the service interval I was noticing it more up that way.
3- The oil I was used to using at home is not always available on the road, so I had used a variety of 4 stroke motor cycle oils, the current one on the last service was a Shell brand and according to Mick, V Twins have an issue with the Shell brand of oil, so I will pay the same money and go back to Motul if I can get it, I may have to consider carrying a 4lt container! Also I should be using a 10W50, so that will be done.
4- The compression tests (rear 155psi, front 163psi)were done and they were well within spec, and there was no smoke being exhausted out the back, therefore, no oil was being burnt due to broken, cracked oil rings etc
It did not cost much to have this test done and my mind is now at rest, it just means I will have to organise shorter periods between oil changes. It also means that the motor is in good condition.
So, I packed the bike again and headed off from the back of the shop this time 😉
Then it was just fight the traffic and get the hell out of the city, but at the same time do some sightseeing. So, I went down the south coast towards Phillip Island and then went east. I only took a few shots as I wanted to just get some quality riding in. The weather was good, a bit cool but fine and the roads were mostly OK, a few rough patches.
It was different seeing straight roads, with nothing much around but dry burnt country, sort of reminded me of home in a way 🙂
I even got to see a familiar sign, long time no see for me 🙂
I made pretty good time over all and after a few stops for tucker etc I got into lakes Entrance around 5.30. Then I had the battle of finding a reasonably priced caravan park. I tried about 5 of them with prices for a bit of dirt ranging from $39 – $20. In the end the last one was OK, but the kitchen had no microwave, but for $20 who cares? It gave me an excuse to put the tent up and go have a few beers and come back with fish and chips 🙂
A couple more beers after dinner made it a long day in time but short in distance, well I thought it was until I did the numbers, but now I am out of th ecity, I can start doing some proper stuff 🙂
Day – 439km
Trip – 25,885km
TravellingStrom 