The shiny bike
The Firestorm odometer hit 30K. So far it has been book serviced. I have obtained the Honda maintenance manual, which details the maintenance schedule and the work that must be done. Every 6K, it says. The 30K service is very simple – an oil change and a lot of inspections. Most of the inspections are undemanding. I don’t even need to look to tell you the choke and throttle cables both have a smooth action because I use them every day.
The spark plugs looked serviceable, but on a hunch I replaced them anyway, and the difference was amazing. Which is just as well, since the Firestorm uses iridium plugs that cost $25 each. The first time I heard the price, it was for plugs with the Honda wing on them, at $65 each. Made specially for Honda by NGK, the box said. So I asked whether there was an NGK equivalent, and Lo! the price fell to $25. Which is not entirely ridiculous, since iridium actually is rarer than gold. I looked it up, and apart from being extremely rare it’s the perfect material for spark plug electrodes: even less reactive than gold, with excellent electrical behaviours and a very high melting point, the downside of which is that not only is it incredibly rare, it’s also ridiculously hard to work.
At any rate, the new plugs made it feel like a new bike, and that new-bike feeling for $25 is, I suppose, a bargain.
The back tyre was baldy on the right hand side. I would have ignored it a bit longer, but the other afternoon I was having a gasbag with a friendly motorcycle cop, and I saw him looking at my back tyre. He didn’t say anything, so I figured I’d better respond with the same courtesy and respect.
Why baldy just on the right hand side, though? I am actually more at ease with left-hand curves, on account of being right-handed. I can only surmise that this is due to roundabouts.
So off I went on Saturday morning. A Michelin Pilot Road set me back $270, from Two Wheel Tyres.
TWT is far and away the closest bike shop. They’re at Blacksoil, which is not far from here. Well, it’s 18km away, but it’s 10km just to get onto the Warrego highway, and 8km on the bike does not take long, especially when you’re travelling away from high traffic and know exactly where the fixed speed camera is.
Don’t look at me like that, I was very law-abiding on the way home. New tyres are slippery.
Since TWT was also the cheapest, I expect I shall be buying all my tyres there.
I also did a double change of oil and filter. After only 1500km the oil was looking a bit turbid so I put in a cheap filter and some cheap oil and ran it for 100km, then put in a good filter and the Honda specified oil (same viscosity but better heat and pressure stabilisation).
I’m getting better at this. I’ve discovered that when the bike’s on the kickstand, if you fill the oil till you can just barely see it in the sump window, then when the bike is upright the oil level is exactly on the upper acceptable-level oil marker. When you start the motor, the filter takes up some oil and the level drops to about 2/3 of the way up from the lower acceptable-level marker. So now I don’t need to put the bike on the race stand to check the oil level.
And the oil in the engine looks like honey. I wonder what to do with a huge drum of waste motor oil.