After a while spent on the phone with Graham where no excuse would actually let me off the invitation to ride out with him and Pete again on a Thursday night I found myself back on the bike headed to Newport Pagnall.

After a short wait I heard the unmistakeable sound of a 2 stroke engine, which as it came into view I recognised as Graham on his RD400. A great looking bike with the Yamaha Yellow and black racing block designs. He was followed by Pete on his bike. A ride around the back roads leading to Stoke Bruerne showed that the RD could still cut the mustard on the corners and the 2 stroke could still pull away pretty rapidly. And a great sound issued from the twin expansion chambers attached to the exhaust ports.

At the pub it was pub quiz time and we entered as team DOH! Although we (or at least I) struggled with the outlines of the countries picture part of the quiz, somehow it was left to me the teetotaller to unscramble the spirits names in the anagrams. The quiz questions were very tough too. The final scores left us trailing into a joint second place but we were happy with the result anyway.

The ride home was interesting as now 2 of us had 70’s Japanese lighting leaving only Pete with slightly more modern lights. No matter, Graham pushed ahead and went for broke on the RD, as I followed on behind relying on my glow-worms and exceptional night vision coupled with cat-like reflexes to avoid objects which appeared suddenly in the faint glow on the road 6 feet ahead. We still managed a good speed homewards sitting at 60 ish all the way.

At home my long suffering wife made the coffes for Pete and Graham and passed out the biccies. After a little chat, Graham did his best to awaken the street with his RD as they left in a blue haze. Then I realised I hadn’t got a picture of the bikes to put up here. DOH!

All in all, apart from a little trouble starting the Z750 Twin at each end of the ride (possibly due to the petrol getting old and stale) it ran rather well. The only other niggle was that when the fuel tap is switched to the ON position it starves the fuel, but reserve position is fine if leaving it somewhat liable to running completely out of petrol at some point. Well you can’t have everything can you?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 2nd, 2011 at 9:02 am and is filed under Repairing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.