Some prep...

With the Connie recently celebrating her twelfth birthday and the distance riding season about to kick off with a vengeance, it was time for a little maintenance.

With a mere 156,000km on the clock, I decided to first spoil her with some suspension maintenance.  So, one weekend, Dad and I removed the forks and shock and posted them off to Taupo for a service.

I actually cleaned them up before putting them in the envelope...

The PR4's were stuffed to, so off they came and an order placed...Cycletreads to the rescue...

One of the other little jobs we had to do while the rubber was off, was to see if we could get the TPMS sensors working again.  On early Connies like mine, you can relatively easily (some soldering required) replace the batteries whereas in later bikes it's not so easy.

Last time we did this, we got both going but unfortunately water got into the front one (from a tyre change) and then it had been sitting like that corroding away ever since.  Dad managed to clean it up and then soldered some new batteries in (more than once).

Delicate surgery

But, it's probably a good idea to check them before fitting the tyres eh?

Nothing happening...

So, this is how you do it:

As I said, it took a few goes to get them going but before the tyres went on, we were pretty sure that both of them were working.  Unfortunately the front one quit sometime after we tested it and before I test rode the bike.  We'll have another go in 9-10,000km.

Another unfortunate issue was that the rear shock turned out to not be serviceable - the suspension man didn't touch it as he had no way to re-gas it (could not even fit a valve).  So it came back the way it came out of the bike.

At least it was pretty easy to refit both the shock and forks.

Once the suspension was back in Dad left me to put the bikes clothes back on and fit the new rubber.

Trying a 55 profile on for size - yep, it fits under the hugger...

With all that done it was time for a test ride.  But, when I hit the starter I just got a brief whir and then click, click, click...damn!  A month of sitting around and a bit of mucking around with the ignition on (testing the TPMS etc) had flattened the battery.

I hooked up my battery charger and left it for a few hours only to find that my charger was kaput - double damn!  In the end I used a certain 250cc generator to pump in some ergs to get me going - I should really have got a picture or video of that...

Bike running, I discovered that it was low on fuel, so I decided to go and see if there was any available in Woodville.  It'd give me a good chance to charge the battery a bit, scrub in the tyres and get a feel for the fresh rubber and serviced front end.

So how'd it all go?  Well, it was that damn windy that I was blown silly and never really got the chance to "try things out" properly.  It was so windy that I didn't stop at the top of the track for a planned photo - I probably would have been blown over turning in the gravel parking area...

I ended up settling for some pics in the Esplanade.

Pretty girl, with flowers...

Now, it's time for a decent ride...

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