Giday to all. Some photos of Steve working on the bike in Werners Dads garage.

Sorting out Scottoiler plumbing

Fitting fuel hoses

Centre Stand mounted, fuel hose and fittings.

RHS pannier on, Sorting out Power to pannier for charging.

Parked out side garage, test ride ready.

43L fuel tank

Werners House, and bike outside garage

beside Claudia's Yamaha xt600

Well today Deb and I, with the help of Claudia and Werner played tourist in the ‘town’ (was a city to me) of Wuppertal which is about 20kms North of where we are staying in the town of Remscheid. We had a few tasks to get done. Deb needed to get a set of gortex lined riding boots. I needed to get a Fuel safe ‘T’ connector for the AT (Africa Twin) as the new 43L tanks has two normal (manual operated) fuel taps for each fuel lobe.  I have been running the bike on only one side of the tank up until late this arvo.

So Werner took us to a Hein Gericke bike shop which was like a ‘real’ bike shop that has stuff for sale, unlike ANY bike shop in Alice Springs. Deb was actually able to try on several DIFFERENT sets of boots and they were all in her size!! So no shopping for boots via the Internet today!! She also got a set of glove liners (water proof) which we reckon will come in handy later on…

After some shopping we got into the Tourist thing, and went for a ride on the Wuppertal “Sky Bus” which is an overhead mono rail system that traverses the main centre of Wuppertal for about 13.2Kms in length. Construction commenced on 31 Dec 1894 with various stages being added over the last 100 years or so. One interesting thing we found out was that when a circus came to town in 1950, a baby elephant was taken for a ride in the rail car as a promotion. The elephant got agitated and managed to back into the door, pushing it open and luckily falling the 8m into the river below. The elephant was not ‘damaged’ too much, after that the council decided that the rail  car was for human transport only!! Only one major accident that we have been told about happened about 10 years ago, when some workmen were undertaking repairs to the rail.  Unfortunately, they didn't bolt the rail pieces together properly at a join & once the bus came to that track it fell off the rail plunging into the river below.  A few people died from their injuries.

We had heard a few thunder claps while on our way to Wuppertal and there was real rain about heading back to ‘homebase’. But luckily we managed to miss most of the rain (this time), once home Stephen had a few ‘bike’ tasks to continue with.  There was still too much fork oil in after installing the new fork springs (for the big tank) which causes the front of the bike to be too stiff, and feeling of not well connected to the road (which are bumpy/lumpy and in spots rough.

So with the Grey and black sky’s about Stephen removed  fork oil from each fork, which we hope will give a nice supple feel to the front end. Also the fuel ‘T’ connector needed to get fitted so that was done too. While doing this a new (slight) problem was found with one of the springs for the bikes new centre stand. It was rubbing on the lower suspension links, this is bad as it (some way done the track) would break meaning that the centre stand could drop down. Bad news in a corner (crashing) so this will get fixed in the morning (Saturday 27^th).

Stephen also had grumbled about the thickness of the new headed grips. When he bought them (via the Internet) they looked ‘ok’ in the photo. But, once  installed it seems they would be better suited to a ‘Chopper’ style road bike. As the diameter of the grips is uncomfortable and Stephen is having problems when wearing gloves in reaching the clutch and brake levers.

So he got his pocket knife out for a bit of ‘trimming’ down of the grips…

Anyhow it's late and time for bed.

Cheers,

Debbie and Stephen.

Waiting for the 'Sky Bus'

Sky bus arriving

Sky Bus departing

Deb and Claudia enjoying the scenery

The End of the line.