Cylindric

Nice one Time for some nice long rides in our glorious summers. But get some waterproofs just in case...

Who doesn't?

Ah, it's nothing - just once you're used to one platform a new one looks wonky, then when you get into that it's the next one that does :-) it's the community that matters* (* and clearly an XJ6 community beats any other)

That "proboards" one? I'll go have a look. Not a big fan of the proboards layout, it must be said... Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

I think I'll also have to look into some sort of luggage options, because I don't really fancy spending 2x9 hours or more on the bike riding with a big heavy rucksack on my back. From what I've seen, hard luggage isn't an option as it looks too expensive, but perhaps some sort of throw-over saddle-bags or even just a bigger tank-bag. Even a top-box requires a mounting plate as the XJ6 doesn't have a rack on the back already. Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Heh, cheers, that'll explain why Google didn't help me much.

S-M-D?

Yeah, not an option really. Tickets are booked and time off work is limited too. I'm tied to Calais now.

The default route suggested by Google (the bit after Calais anyway) is 200 miles and takes about 3½ hours. I'll be getting to Calais at about 09:11, so allowing time to de-train I'm guessing about 09:30. There's no set time I need to be in Leiden, it's an informal social gathering, but I think I'd like to get there for 2pm at the latest, as that allows a bit of contingency for little diversions. So that gives me about 5 hours. That'll probably mean sticking to the main route most of the way, and popping off it for one or two stretches where it looks more interesting. I think that puts my options at: going a bit more coastal to Oostende, then over the Western Scheldt, through Flushing. going a bit more in-land The trick will be finding a route that isn't just all hard-core industrial regions

Yeah. Previous longest trip was a London-Hastings thing, about 230 miles in the day. I have been to Leiden many times by air and once by car. Challenge will be to find a nice balance between staying off the motorways and not taking forever to get there. Bit of both, I guess. Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

I always nod, although less often if it's a scooter. What can I say? I'm a bit of a snob. Any bike though. I got plenty of nods from big bikes when I was on my 125. In bad weather I'll nod to damn-near anything moving that's not got a roof. Was in the car a couple of weeks ago, and out of sheer habit nodded at a biker coming the other way. He gave me a positively confused nod back, but I guess he worked out I was just a caged biker Stop and get a number?

So I'm supposed to be going to Leiden in August to meet up with some pals, we try do this once a year or so. Now that I have my grown-up bike, it seems like an ideal opportunity for a little road-trip. I have two choices really, with the current availability of transport: Ferry: Dover-Calais Should cost about £150 in tickets and fuel, about 650 miles of riding in total (half on Friday, half on Sunday) EuroStar: Dover-Calais Should cost about £120 in tickets and fuel, about 550 miles of riding in total (half on Friday, half on Sunday) Those are the direct routes using mostly motorways etc. I'll probably end up ditching that plan and go on more interesting roads. Basically it looks like this:

So it's going to be a great weekend, weather-wise, compared to what we've become used to recently. Is anyone aware of anything interesting going on down in the Home Counties-ish area? Otherwise perhaps a little visit to Box Hill or thereabouts might be in order.

Any chance the calendar could be updated so the date drop-downs aren't limited to 2004, 2005 and 2006? I can type a date in (in US format ) but it would be nice if the date-picker worked, and it might be putting some people off adding events.

Is the calendar just for YOC-specific events, or any bike-related events?

I was scared of soldering more than I needed to - my new garage doesn't have power (yet) so was limited in tooling a bit. I luckily found a truly shite little gas-powered soldering iron I bought from Maplin years ago, and I used that to extend the lead from the adapter, but the way it was spluttering and spewing gas flame about the place I didn't want to use it more than absolutely necessary Next time I'm near the garage with the car I'll run a real iron from the inverter I have. Or park the bike nearer the house when it's not pissing it down outside. Really need to sort out some power options for the garage, unfortunately it's not attached to the house, and the neighbours probably wouldn't like a 150m extension lead trailing around the neighbourhood. Something like this 12-240V Power Station with JumpStart and Inverter from Amazon should do the trick.

All done! I couldn't find anywhere particularly easy to get to the headlight power, at least not without removing a lot of fairing, so I went for the back light instead. The wiring out of the lights and fuses etc is very compact, so I had to chase the cable back until I could find enough slack to attach my charger's lead. I removed the pillion grab-rails and the little bit of fairing on the right-hand-side and found a rubber flange where the tail-light (and other stuff) connects into the larger loom. That's the squished rubber thing in the bottom-middle of the image: I stripped back a bit of the plastic covering the three wires to the tail-light (ground, 'always on' power and 'brake light' power) and used a clip that came with the USB adapter to piggy-back onto the middle 'always on' wire: Seems to work okay, and as I mounted it to the bracket that holds the upper front fairing to the body, it's completely hidden, but still quite easily accessible.

Oh yeah, that's fine, its just the lighter sockets seemed to be offered up as solutions. Headlight power could be perfect - saves me routing through the chassis.

Doesn't solve the problem of wiring it in somewhere though.

Heh, no worries, sometimes the obvious stuff is the easiest to forget about. I'm pretty good with electrical stuff, I just don't want to hack about more than necessary. Unfortunately I'm busy until after this weekend, so won't be doing anything as fun as this

Oh my - have you seen the size of the battery compartment and the fuses themselves? They're TINY little things. That box has all of them in it, and it's about 5cm by 2cm. The wiring is so neat and compact too, it's hard to find a bit loose enough to hack into.

Didn't realise it was quite that easy to get under the tank - so that's what I did. Did have a bit of a worried "is that petrol I can smell" moment when tipping the tank up on the pivot caused a bit of fuel to dribble out of the overflow hoses. I could get one of the two electrical connectors off the tank though, so had to perform a bit of juggling to hold the tank vertical while messing about underneath it, but wasn't too bad. I've had to leave the cable disconnected in the battery compartment for now, because it was starting to get dark - really need some power and a light in my garage! No idea yet where I'm going to get power from - the battery terminals are very tight, and ideally I need to find a "switched" live from somewhere.

Okay, so I have the adapter now (looks exactly like the one SpeedShop posted - sorry I'd already ordered elsewhere by the time I saw your post) and am looking for somewhere to fit it. I have seen that there's a bracket holding the front fairing to the bike, almost directly below the throttle but under the small plastic filler fairing (not the main whole-front fairing) and that looks like a good place to put the socket, as it'll be out of sight, out of the way of any moving parts and also protected from pretty much all weather. Now I'm in a bit of a sticky wicket regarding routing the cables. The bike's cabling all seems to head to the back of the bike directly under the middle of the tank, and I really don't think I want to remove the tank to run this cable, so I was thinking of running it along the back of the thick chassis bars, should be pretty discreet if I use black cable-ties. (Possibly the line in the image below.) The main thing that's stopping me right now is getting access to everything. Most of the fairing panels are held on by simple allen-bolts, but some of them are these odd little black pop-studs. Now the only experience of this sort of thing I've had is my old car door-panels, and they invariably snapped when trying to remove them - how do I remove these pins without breaking them? (Example of what I mean is circled in the image below.)

The only problem with the cheap eBay options is that they rarely declare the output current. Most USB chargers and converters I've seen are 1A at most - many are 750mA. Most modern smartphones and nearly all the tablets can charge faster with a >1A supply.

I'm also a bit curious about the Ordnance Survey Getamap thing - you sign up for £20 per year, and you can print any OS map at any scale and area you want.