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sirch345 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 10, 2025 10:21 pm

AMCQ46 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 09, 2025 9:40 pm

These 2 lads are my god children.

Great fun being on track with them, even if the eldest one ( guy Martin helmet) is already as fast as me and he is only 12!!


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It sounds like you had some fun Al

A bit of a shock when that happens from a 12 year old when you’re not expecting it

Chris,

AMCQ46 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 5:45 pm

sirch345 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 10, 2025 10:21 pm

AMCQ46 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 09, 2025 9:40 pm

These 2 lads are my god children.

Great fun being on track with them, even if the eldest one ( guy Martin helmet) is already as fast as me and he is only 12!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It sounds like you had some fun Al

A bit of a shock when that happens from a 12 year old when you’re not expecting it

Chris,

he is only 50 yrs younger than me, imagine how much faster he is going to get!

Duffy1964 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 13, 2025 4:01 pm Well I feel Tony’s pain owning an Aprillia Brought a new battery, drained old fuel and put in new fuel. Turns it over and it gradually started.
Then every time I opened the throttle it cuts out
I think it’s a vacuum issue or a split diaphragm, but will investigate another day.


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freeridenick wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 8:32 pm I was out last night seeing Red Snapper with a mate. The weather has been great so I decided to take the bike for its first proper spin. I loved it. Amazing amounts of torque and more comfortable than I thought. Roll on more warm dry weather.

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Pete.L wrote: ↑Wed Mar 26, 2025 12:21 pm Good on Ya Mac

I knew it wasn't true what the other's were saying about you

Pete.l

tony.mon wrote: ↑Wed Oct 30, 2024 10:32 am I went out yesterday to meet an old friend. I've known him since I was in my late teens, but since he split acrimoniously with his wife ten year ago, we've been out of touch.

He contacted me a few days ago and asked me to help him learn to ride his new bike. He's never ridden before, and is now in his sixties. He passed his part one in April, but then only bought a Mutt 125 adventure bike, with three sandwich boxes, a couple of weeks ago, so he's forgotten some of his training since then and has no confidence. He's wobbled round a local trading estate car park a few times, but has ridden less than 20 miles total since buying his bike.

So I went over to meet him, and we rode to the trading estate he's familiar with. He nearly dropped it at a standstill pulling off his drive, which slopes fairly steeply down to the road.

But he can pull away without stalling (although he forgot to put it into neutral a few times when stopping during the afternoon, so will have to work on that aspect). He follows the advice he was given in training, which was to dial in 3k revs and let the clutch out slowly. That works, of course, but what we all do instinctively, but he hasn't learnt yet, is that it's better to add throttle as you let the clutch out. That'll come in time, so we started on some basics, which I knew he would have done in training- figure of eights, nice wide turns, steady speed; building up his confidence and re-establishing his muscle memory.

Then a bit of slow speed riding, which caused kangarooing.
So I had a look at the bike. There was lots of throttle slack, which I adjusted out. The clutch lever had almost no slack but he has medium sized hands, so I adjusted that so that the bite point was nearer the bar.

Lastly I checked the chain, which was too slack. One of the adjuster sides was also finger tight, so the dealer's PDI wasn't too good. The onboard toolkit didn't have rear wheel spindle sized spanners, so back to his place to adjust it. Knowing that the new chain will stretch in the first fifty miles I left it just on the tight side of ideal, and showed him how to do it. He's not mechanical (an electrician) so has no intention of doing his own maintenance.
But he will manage the basics.

Then back out to see whether it was now easier to ride, which it was, but it now feels different, so there's a bit of re-learning to do.

Back to figure of eights, and this time I introduced using the throttle to pick the bike up as it drops into the turn, which he got right a few times, and understood it, so that'll come in time.

Next, how-slow-can-you-go exercises, using the back brake to keep speed down, while holding the clutch in a bit.
No more kangarooing, so that's another bit of learning locked in.

By then he'd had enough for the day, and we'd had a handful of rain drops, so we called it quits. Slalom turns can wait until next time.

I checked up on him later on, he was pleased with his progress; the adjustments on the bike made it much easier to ride and he's looking forward to another session in a week or so. To be fair, I don't think he'll ever trouble the "progressive" group on our rideouts, but it's good to see another rider out and about.

Oh, one other thing happened which probably didn't do his concentration and focus much good: while we were back at his house adjusting the chain, we heard a crash from his front room. His Alsatian had managed to pull over a tall glass fronted display cabinet, which had fallen face-first onto the carpet. They're doing up the house atm.
When we tried to lift it back up, apart from the broken glass, they'd put a tin of paint inside; the lid had come off, and the broken glass was mixing with green paint on their pink carpet.

To his credit, he just said "I'll sort that out later; with a bit of luck my other half will deal with it before we come back from riding".
So at least he's got his priorities right!