The Longest Day Teapot

While it would've been truly wonderful to have spent time preparing myself and the bike for that one long day of riding in June, there's rather more preliminary work than hoped...

- Dave Manning

I'd gone into this project with my eyes wide open, knowing that there would be a fair amount of spanner-twirling to get the bike up and running - it is, after all, a bike that I bought for 400 quid... but, ever the optimist, I had rather fooled myself into thinking that it'd be little more than a service and some new tyres. I'm probably the only person on the planet who was surprised that there were a few more issues lurking beneath the Suzuki's fairings than I'd hoped for.

Last month, I'd got as far as making a list of things that needed to be fixed, and then got distracted by deadline pressures and new bike launch commitments, only managing to get the new chain and sprockets fitted. And, as lovely as flying to sunny climes to ride someone else's bike may sound, it does mean that there is some time to be spent catching up on work on one's return and, so far, I've yet to find a way to be rebuilding brake calipers when on a Ryanair flight to/from the Canary Islands...