Ride with Kent TRF

I went out for my first ride with the Kent TRF guys today. I took the TTR250 and had a great ride that covered 140 miles. The work that Perry Leask did on the bike proved its worth. The front end handled very well and the bike felt much more controllable.

Green Lane recce

I went out to do a bit of exploration of local lanes marked on the OS map as Byways. I didn't have a guide to what might have Traffic Restriction Orders (TROs) applied to them, so it was a case of going to look for myself.

First signs weren't good! Not only was this lane not a Byway at all but even as a footpath, it looked rather less than inviting. Subsequent meanderings showed that I had misread the map and indeed it was meant to be a footpath rather than a Byway  - still..



I did find some lanes later - this one a bit too nice!



This one, very open.

Suspension work

The TTR has been with Perry Leask at HM Racing for the last couple of days. Earlier rides had shown the front end to be a nightmare - bouncing all over the place so much so that I wondered if the forks were completely buggered. Well, Perry sorted it out perfectly. The work involved new seals, oil and adujsutments plus a lot of measurements but no great drama with new parts etc. Perry's workshop reminds me of the suspension shop at Lotus - it has the necessary pressure vessel for nitrogen charging etc. and is very clean. I have aprintout of the various settings before and after and to my untutored eye, it doesn't say a great deal apart from the fact that I could have messed around my self or ever without getting it right.

The service wasn't especially cheap but it has turned the bike into a usable machine which it wasn't really before and in my view it wasn't just money well spent, it was vital.