On the Road Again!

Been a bit quiet and so I made my own cap. A little understated for those times that you aren't with loads of bikers! A Sainsbury's £5 cap and a badge from the Kettle Club.  Seems okay at the moment. I'll have to see how comfortable it remains.

A bit premature. But I need to look the part on the day I take the GT out for the first time! Available from eBay whilst stocks last.  When the link packs up that's when they are sold out. It has the red Suzuki stylised "S" on one of the sleeves. Can't say I like that bit but it's what it is. Looks nice and the material seems decent quality.

I had to stretch my lunch break to er, breaking point to get the Post office part of things done so I have a taxed but unusable bike. It wasn't as straightforward as the DVLA website would have you believe though. As I don't have a V11 (the tax reminder they send out) and as the bike was SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification) there was no record of it being taxed for a few years. On visit one the guy at the PO took the V5C (log book as we call it) and the V112 (MoT exemption declaration) and the printout of the web page,. He couldn't get past the first hurdle, telling me to call the DVLA. I walked briskly back to work and called. Amazingly it took around a half dozen "press 1 for blah-blah, 2 for blah-blah" before I got a human person to speak to.  She listed to my problem.  "On page 2 of the V5C, section 7, write HISTORIC in the box and sign and date it, then go to the PO". I did. Visit 2.  In and five minutes a different bloke had give...

In happier days It seems like I have been here before.    It's all come about after a comment from my old buddy John Storrie once he entered the 21st century and got email and even the dreaded social media.... I have toyed with this before, and as Claire wants rid of it from the garage, I guess the first step is to get it running and in a position to possibly sell it. Possibly. As it is 42 years since it was first registered it can be classed under tax and MoT standards as a historic vehicle.  That designation applies to all vehicles registered on UK roads before 1st January 1979. It is a 40 year rolling date. I thought it would be automatic, but reading up is less straightforward. The bike has to have tax, even though it is free for historic vehicles.  It no longer needs to have the annual MoT. Instead of applying for the tax online and the DVLA have all the details I have to go to a post office that can handle vehicle tax and take the log b...

Project Kettle was endangered again!   Having a heart attack does tend to change things about a bit.  I was planning to ride up on Dora to have a chat about the job with Chris, but being off the bike for a while might put paid to that. Maybe I can persuade Claire to drive up there in a dew weekends? Exhaust gaskets The collection of bits that will see her (like ships they are always female!) back on the road has continued.  A quick look around the garage revealed that the engine gasket set I had bought, a while back as a standby, had disappeared or at least been put away somewhere.  Where? I have no idea. So, I bought another set off eBay and it came from Poland;  a Vesrah set, so not too unheard of. Despite owning her since 1984 she has never had name. But with help from fellow Meldrew MCC mate, Norman, plans are being made to pack her up in his van, and get her up to Saffron Walden. It Is about 90 miles to the restoration g...

Today was the first day of the resurrection of the GT. I tugged her out the garage and she was a little heavy, the tyres being a little deflated.   I gave her a wash and brush up, tidied up a few problem areas.   The new Motobatt went in and the electrics fire up okay. She won't start yet as there's no petrol and the carbs need cleaning and the floats adjusted.   I removed the damaged grips and prepared the surfaces for the new ones. The problem on the throttle side is that the end of the throttle slide is cracked but I couldn't get the switchgear retaining screws undone to access the throttle cables.   So nice and clean she is back in the newly tidied garage.   Until the fourth day....      

I guess I am not alone in having a huge collection of photographs taken before the digital age?  Thought not. So I thought I'd look out a few and scan them in.  I have a collection of pics taken of the Kettle (Water Buffalo or Wasserbuffel) on a few runs out and a couple of trips in Austria for the Wasserbuffel Club's rally at Schloss Moosham. 1993 - Garage in Zastavka on the trickle charger 1993 - Hundertwasser Autobahn Services 1993 - On the alpine road 1999 - Maltatal waterfall The next little batch are all from the 1993 Wasserbuffel Treffen.  The treffen is hosted in the Schloss at Moosham, and a lot of the hardier types camp, others stay in the apartments across the road, and some in the nearest town of Mauterndorf. Twenty years ago (nearly!) I was booked in the youth hostel a few miles away but one of the German guys said to share their room as they had a big room in the gasthof and a spare bed.  They took pity on me as I was from the Czech Republic, s...

Had an invitiation to go on the Suzuki Triples Club de France Treffen next year. Sadly, I have let my old girl get in such a terrible state that it will need to some long days working to get her ready.

Every time I see the posts on the FB group for the GT750 owners I feel guilty that my old girl is lying at the back of the garage in need of some TLC. I guess I lost enthusiasm once I moved house and there was no light and no power available.  Until then, in the winter months I would sit with a polishing cloth and some metal polish and keep the bike pretty clean. Okay, not as clean as those that are trailered to shows and that have mirrors under them so you can see the original grey of the ally under belly, but clean enough.  Now she languishes, forgotten, well almost forgotten, not exactly unloved, but not really appreciated.  The older lover, replaced by a younger, better built and more modern model. Slowly losing her looks, shut away from the world. What to do?  As a below average mechanic with tools more suited to trucks rather than delicate Japanese bikes, I have been guilty of letting her fade away.  Now I need to do something.  I had ideas o...

Originally posted on the first ever Suzuki Owners Club website hosted by Yahoo! Geocities. First posted in 1998. When Geocities announced they were closing I saved the source. Running with the Kettles - August 1998 On the face of it, a group of over fifty GT750's, drawn from all the different models from the entire six year reign, might seem a particularly insignificant and sobering thought to the non-believer. But. I BELIEVE! Thanks to some jiggery-pokery by Dave Pitcher, Chairman of the Kettle Club UK and Suzuki Owners Club member, we had a half hour. No. A wonderful half hour of track time to ourselves at the VMCC's "Festival of a 1000 Bikes" on the Sunday of the weekend event. Having a special Kettle-only session meant that we didn't have to put up with the myriad of slow blokes on Z900's and old British rubbish as we had done in Sunday's first session, the 1972-77 Over-500cc 'parade'. Waiting in pit lane I listened into a couple of ot...

img002 , originally uploaded by stevehh@yahoo.com . In the Alps. The trip was in 1999.  On the way to the Wasserbuffel Treffen at Schloss Moosham in Austria. We met in Salzburg after Steve had been to the Czech Invader Rally in Brno. For this part of the trip we headed down over the Grossglockner and stayed in Heiligenblut.  The idea was that we were going to stay in the Youth Hostel but we couldn 't find it.  So we stayed at a hotel. The following day we headed out over the Alps to the Dolomites for a circuit around the Pordoi area then back to an overnight stay. The next day we road all the way to Venice for a few hours before heading north to Austria via a few miles of Slovenia.

Handsome bloke and two Suzuki Motorcycles , originally uploaded by stevehh@yahoo.com . Not my title but Steve's!! In the mountains before the Moosham Rally. Me with my GT750 and Steve's Bandit 1200 on the left.

img080 , originally uploaded by stevehh@yahoo.com . Steve took a couple of pics on our day trip! It was so hot I had to undo the steel toe capped boots to let a bit of air in. img081 , originally uploaded by stevehh@yahoo.com .

The last day. , originally uploaded by pauldevall . It doesn't seem that long ago when I packed as much of my stuff as I could in the trailer. Then fitted the Swagmans over the rear seat, fixed the two retaining bungies round the footpegs and grab rail. Got my bike gear on and then locked up for the last time. Then slowly set off down Sportovní in Zastávka for the last time. Not too long? July 1993! Christ, it doesn't seem like that long!

Out as soon as possible to lay the 30m cable across the drives to the garage and get the battery on charge. Checked the levels and all stacks are above the line. may need to top up with distilled water later to get them back to the top level. With power on the charger hums and the battery can now heard to be active, lifting it a bit in the holder (strap pinged off on its own but still whole!) and there are bubbles. Hopefully, the charger can recover enough power to get it to start later in the day. I'll try to drop in to Alford Brothers and pick up some new plugs whilst I am there. They are sure to still have B8ES aren't they! In the meantime, clean the ones already in the engine, gapped okay. Bike out in the open, the tyres a bit flat, pumped up so it moves better pushing it about. Optimism high, why aren't I pessimist! Dribble a couple of litres of unleaded into the tank, turn to PRI, petrol pissing out of the drain. Switch to ON. Ignition off. Kick over a few times them ...

Now that there's the will back again, I have to measure how much! After the years of being condemned to the back of the garage there may be a lot to do to get it running. The problem I've already mentioned on the Blog, the throttle body being broken (and dangerous!) can be fixed as. I have a spare set of grips, NOS (I think) in my collection of parts. The main work to get throiugh the MoT looks as though it will revolve around the brakes. The front brakes have been a constant battle and I spent ages before to clean the calipers and fit new gaiters and 'O' rings. One of the mods that was done to my old GT550A was to fit early GS model brakes. The calipers fit straight on as the models shared the same fork legs. It had to be done to the 550 as it originally came with only a single brake up front and the mounts on the other leg. Changing for a pair of GS brakes improved overall performance by a greater factor than simply adding another GT style caliper. Oh yeah. Almost for...

As the week off work draws to a close I decided to get the garage a bit tidied up so I could access the Kettle at the back of the space. Two trips of crap to the tip later and I have a bit of access space. A plan to move stuff to the back along the walls wouldn't work as we have hooks with tools and stuff hanging, but it would have been nice to have both bikes at the front where I can see to work on them. My garage is in a block and has no power, so I have to run a lead across from the house. Luckily a 30m length does it and goes in a square to stay off the neighbours drives. I'm sure they wouldn't mind it going across but this way they get to park and not trip over! I've had the battery on charge most of the afternoon so far but it was completely dead. I'm hoping that it will hold a charge after all this time. Yes, time. It seems to have flown very quickly. The tax disc on the Kettle shows it expiring at the end of July 2002! Yep. Five whole years. As you can imagi...