FROM THE FRONT

I suffer from a few blind spots when it comes to maintaining my motorcycles. I’m decently good at changing the oil and cleaning or replacing any filtration devices that the manufacturers kindly fitted. I’m OK when it comes to adjusting and lubing the chains, too, and continue a mostly cheerful campaign to maintain lube levels in primary chaincases, even those which vent to atmosphere and so … ah … breathe a little energetically should a chap open the throttle for a prolonged time. Ten minutes counts as a prolonged time with the Matchless CSR twin, but the muchmaligned G5 lightweight 350 from the same factory appears to lose no lube at all. Hateful. It will never catch on.

Cables are another source of the gentle satisfaction which comes with setting a simple task and succeeding at it. It may alarm you to learn that I am on my third ‘hydraulic’ cable lubricator. This is not because I am some strange type of oily cable fetishist but because no one appears to stock the little sliced circles of alleged rubber which fit inside the lubething and provide the seal necessary to raise sufficient pressure to force the oil down the cable. And they fray and wear out. But let us not stress about such trivia. By the time you read this I may well have visited the mighty Stafford Show and bought yet another complete device. Some of them are very pretty, finished in nice metallic anodising. Yum. Or something.

One maintenance job I consistently fail to maintain is apparently completely simple: I have a blind spot when it comes to keeping my tyres at their correct pressures. And of course I have no idea why. Back when the great Dave Minton and I worked together on a modern motorcycle magazine, he became so completely frustrated with my returning test machines to him with sadly soggy tyres that he presented me with a new and indeed accurate pressure gauge. He also fixed me with a stern gaze and instructed me on the delights of riding with the pressures that the manufacturers spent years of research providing for their riders. We had quite a lively debate, if memory serves.

But I did then religiously check the pressures of test machines before DLM arrived to take them away. He later suggested that telling him that the tyres were flat was all well and good. Did I need him to supply a pump as well?

Modern tubeless tyres have plainly improved, to the point that after endlessly checking their pressures, discovering that they were as they should be, I sort-of forgot to check. Often. My modern (in the sense that it is not very old) American touring machine carries rubber which appears to be entirely air-tight. This should be no surprise on a machine with tubeless tyres gripping cast rims without dozens of spokes.

Which is how I found myself explaining to Rowena, after returning from a 500-mile trip on the Triumph Street Scrambler, that it was badly affected by high winds and maybe the load of luggage I habitually cart about with me. Had I, she wondered, sneakily, checked the tyre pressures before setting out?

I pumped 18psi into the front and 10psi into the rear. It steers better now, load or no load, wind or no wind. Little things make a big difference.

Ride safely,