InvictaMoto's Red Pepé Blog

Today was fitting day. After a few days of unseasonably warm and dry weather, it turned a little damp and colder. Luckily it stayed dry and with Claire bringing the tyre in the car I took the motorway route. Amazingly, the amount of mud around the new junction wors  on the M20 and the road down to Kingsnorth covered a once clean under carriage.  Once fitted I had a ride back. Luckily Pepé didn't need the dbPower to start at Laguna as he did first thing in the morning.  With "miles to empty" showing 23 miles I decided to drip into Tesco just up the road.  The fuel station was packed with three or four cars queuing for each row of pumps. I rode through and off to the M20 home. With the gauge telling me in about three miles that the 23 had become 0 I decided to fill up. I went along the coast to Seabrook and filled up. Nought to empty meant I could only get a fraction over 17 litres into the 24 litre tank. The first fill up since October! And a ...

So. Wuss time. The weather through the week was either heavy frost (car scraping) or light snow. So I emailed Laguna to say if the weather didn't improve maybe postpone today's booking and re-arrange. Jim emailed to say they would come and pick it up. Free of charge. I accepted. Pepé went this morning. Back this afternoon. Test passed but an advisory on front tyre that's getting low. I know that it is getting near replacement time.

Took the bike up to Laguna Triumph at Ashford and left it whilst we had errands and a visit to my Aunt to fit in.  Why choose Laguna to fit the tyre I had sourced myself?  Although Oponeo have a network of fitters there are none within 50 miles of where I live.  In fact the nearest two were in Essex and Brighton. I had a look at a few of the places I have had tyres fitted before and the nearest ride in/ride out place was in London and 65 miles away!  Also, these guys are tyre sellers too. Laguna charged me half an hours labour inc taxes and that still meant the tyre was £40 cheaper than they would have done it for as supplier and fitter of the big fat Avon. When I collected it they had noticed an exhaust clamp had broken and so they had replaced that in the same labour charge. It will need a bit of scrubbing in. It's the first "road" tyre I have had fitted to a bike for many years.  The last was years back when I had BT020/021's fitted to the G...