Post Winter Update

Well I thought I’d better put an update on the blog just so it doesn’t look like we have dropped off the face of the earth.

Well not surprisingly given the excellent weather of late, we have not been out on our bikes at all this year so far. There have been a few days were we could have gotten out but on those occasions we were busy doing something else that needed good weather to do. Also because of the bad weather I have not had a look at the K1300s and its slight sticking throttle issue. This fault has also meant that I haven’t had it MOT’d so as the tax was running out I have had to declare it SORN at the moment. I think next time I tax it I will only get six months to avoid having to SORN it again.

I also haven’t done the valve check on the ZX-9R yet either but that isn’t mega urgent and so can wait till later on in the year. Another job I also have to do is install the old Autocom unit onto Helen’s new Z1000SX, I have looked at the installation though and know exactly where and how I’m going to do it. The radio thankfully just fits under the seat and I have already installed its cable when I had the seat unit apart to install the new luggage racks.

For Christmas we decided to buy ourselves a new SatNav for the bikes. The car one that we have used previously did the job but has started having issues recently. The two main issues are that the internal battery is completely shot. This means that if the power connection to it comes loose for even a second it switched off and took a good 30 seconds to come boot back up. This caused us massive issues when we where away in the Vosges last year. The other issue is that for some reason when using the Bluetooth option to link the sound up with the Autocom the SatNav kept crashing, it never did this on the VFR so I don’t know whether the SatNav is at fault or it is a strange issue with the BMW. Anyway we decided to get a bike specific SatNav this time and so opted for the Garmin 350LM. It isn’t as feature rich as my car SatNav but is obviously waterproof and the screen is friendlier for gloved hands. Initial thoughts are that the mounting system is excellent (well they are RAM mounts) and the Garmin will suit are needs perfectly. The other added bonus is the Basecamp software, which will be good for planning the routes on. It looks like what route you plan on Basecamp the SatNav will follow to the letter. This didn’t always happen with the car SatNav as it would sometimes change the route between waypoints on the fly. Once we have tested the Garmin on the bikes I will be able to give a better more rounded review in the future.