Category: Hardware

Managed to find a replacement Yamaha belly pan for my Fazer. As you may recall, my current one got bust in a recent prang. However I have the the original Yamaha belly pan, which is nigh on impossible to find these days. Plenty of after market ones, but few look anywhere near as good and all would need declaring as a mod on insurance, cue premium increase. Recently this one turned up on ebay, listing is a bit vague, but it does appear to be the one I need. Obviously, it’ll need a good sand and respray, but still, it should be a good match.

Regarding the prang, insurance claim is still under way. My insurance underwriters and accident claim firm both agree the other party is 100% to blame. The other parties insurance are however fighting this. 🙁 Now my insurance are taking the matter to court… Can’t see myself getting a result for quite sometime.

So a fellow biker pulls up at work with these spankingly shiny red wheels on his bike. Seriously funky and big improvement to his bike, much better than the old grey wheels. However the wheels are not new, he’s just had the bike professionally cleaned!

The top chaps who cleaned this were Over The Rainbow, next door to Ace Cafe, who also do bikes. Done a very good job, cleaned all the grime, chain lube and other detritus and got whole bike sparkly clean. All for a tenner and in 1.5 hrs. After spending ages the other weekend trying to remove the chain lube off my bike, it’s a tempting offer.

I recently taxed my bike and through the post came a quaint little circle of paper to affix to the bike. A bureaucratic vestige of a bygone time. Now almost every road in the country is under the watchful eye of ANPR cameras, do coppers still look at these little discs? Regardless, it is still an offence to not display one.

Problem #1: My tax disc holder would not open, not even budge. Tried WD40, tried thread free spray, tried everything, stuck fast. 🙁 In the end, seemed easier to just get another tax disc holder. Picked up a basic Oxford one (pictured below) off eBay for a couple of quid.

Problem #2: The hole in the new holder is too small for the existing bolt on the bike and my toolbox lacked appropriate drill bits. So I bolted it to a random fairing bracket which had a convenient hole already there.

Problem #3: Tax disc holder is crap. Just a flimsy rubber band around the edge to hold the disc in place. Kept coming open every time I took the cover off the bike and brushed past it. A couple of times (by luck) I found the disc on the floor outside, long after I put the bike away. The seal is crap too, the holder is full of damp.

So at last, I purchased another tax disc holder (off eBay), one with the correct size hole, is solid and has bolts holding it together. It is also of the Oxford brand (pictured top), but a much better one. The little alan bolts are a bit fiddly, but then you don’t want it too easy to get into, lest a tea leaf takes a fancy. It’s also anodised in a fetching blue, which almost matches the bike.

A little parcel arrived today, my replacement Gerbings heated glove controller. Top stuff, much quicker turn around than I was expecting. Their return form said 4-6 weeks on it, so I had purchased another controller to tie me over. But I had only posted the old one off on Wednesday, so big thumbs up to Gerbings!

This evening I picked up a second hand lowed seat for my Fazer (from a chap on the Fazer’s Owner Club). My wife used to be a keen biker and wanted to take my Fazer out from time to time, however she is only 5’1″ tall and found the Fazer too high to manage. This replacement seat is essentially a standard seat that has had the leather cover peeled back and much of the foam padding cut away, then restitched up again. It brings the seat height down an inch or so and is very quick to swap on and off.

My wife is still struggling a bit with the Fazer, but can at least get her toes on the ground now. Hopefully with a bit of practice, she’ll get the confidence and balance to manage it.