Month: October 2024

Rune finally gets a new front tyre – in just 30 minutes!

Posted on by roadriderblog

In the long-running quest to put a new front tyre on my Honda Rune – a simple enough task, you’d have thought – I finally got it sorted. Such joy!  In the end, it took only half an hour and cost a mere £35 for labour, plus a not-inconsiderable sum for the tyre.

Regular readers may recall that the much-loved Rune had worn its front tyre down to – and possibly slightly beyond – the legal tread limit. Finding the OEM tyre, a Dunlop D251, seemed impossible, but folks on various Facebook groups offered advice on alternatives, with Metzelers a favourite, including using larger-section tyres on the front.

The other issue was finding someone who could remove the front wheel. One major dealer in my area had spent three hours wrestling with the problem and had to admit total defeat. He recommended a motorcycle tyre specialist who said he’d get back to me but never did. The bike weighs 440 kg and no one seemed to have a lift designed to handle the weight and touch the necessary support points. A kind Rune forum member near London very kindly offered to let me use his own lift if I could organise the tyre; unfortunately he lived near London and I wasn’t prepared to risk a 200-mile trip on what was left of the front rubber.

The Rune sat in my garage for the summer while I travelled and got on with other things but a few weeks ago I called Hunts, a former Honda main dealer in Manchester. They are now a big Yamaha dealer but said they could handle the matter. Yes, they could order an OEM front tyre. The supplier was quoting delivery in three days, but they did add the caveat that the last time they ordered a Dunlop tyre it took two years to arrive! Oh, and the price of the tyre would be £260, which was way more than I’d ever paid for a motorcycle tyre and £10 more than I’d paid for a high-spec tyre for my Jaguar XF when I lived in Abu Dhabi. But, faced with the possibility of a Rune that couldn’t otherwise be used at all, it seemed reasonable.

I needed a dry day to get the bike safely to the dealer, 19 miles away. With the fickle British summer of 2024, that took some planning and a re-booking when the weather didn’t match the forecast, but one recent morning I finally headed off to Hunts to get the tyre fitted and the annual MOT (roadworthiness, for those outside the UK) test done. The service department produced the tyre (saying I was lucky to get hold of such a rare beast – and they weren’t kidding), placed the bike on a hydraulic ramp, and got to work. The big problem for anyone attempting a Rune tyre change is finding a way of supporting such a heavy bike with no obvious jacking points. There is a special angle-iron support frame thingy that came with the bike, but this got lost by the shippers en route from South Africa. Hunts simply placed a small scissor jack under the crankcase, protected the crankcase itself with some thick rubber matting, and raised the front end. Off came the wheel, then the old tyre, on went the new tyre, the wheel was balanced and then reinstalled. After all the drama, all the head-shaking, Hunts Motorcycles of Kingsway, Manchester, completed the job in just 30 minutes and charged the standard rate of £35. The MOT test was a doddle, as always, and I was soon back on the road with a fully functioning Rune on a rare warm and sunny autumn day. Bliss!

Our smallest and largest Hondas hit the Dales between rainy days

Posted on by roadriderblog

Great Britain has had a rubbish summer. I know this for two reasons: first, I wasn’t there, and secondly because the Met Office confirmed that it’d been the coldest summer for nine years.

I spent June, July and most of August out of the country, staying at our place in South Africa. But because the technology makes it so easy, I frequently checked the weather back home and found that, almost every time I checked, it was warmer and sunnier in the depths of South Africa’s winter. This was great for riding, because most days down there it was in the low 20s, dry and sunny. Unfortunately, I didn’t get out on the bikes that much because my wife and I had committed to major house maintenance: sanding all external woodwork (and there’s a lot of it) back to bare wood and applying three coats of varnish, with careful application of wire wool and turpentine between coats. That took about seven weeks.

Then, in the absence of a plumber willing to do the work, we spend about three weeks installing a whole new wastewater treatment system, which was exacting, laborious and ultimately successful. In between times, I got out on the newly repaired V-Strom and the trusty Tiger 800; unfortunately, the TL1000S had developed a bad case of seized front brakes, so the green beauty had to stay in the garage. I’ll get to it next time.

Back in England, it was now late August. My wife wanted to get some riding time in on her new CB125, and I wanted to get better acquainted with my “new” (to me) Gold Wing. Hah! They’d been on trickle chargers and were all ready to go, but it was raining. Or cold. Or both. We had to wait until about the last day of August to brave the elements, but we did manage it.

We rode some wonderfully empty backroads up into the Yorkshire Dales to the Cat and Fiddle pub, which was closed. Turns out it’s been closed for years and now operates as a whisky distillery. I’ve passed it many times without knowing! Happily, we were there for the roads, the views, the sunshine and the fresh air, and there was plenty of all four. It was the first time we’d used our Shoei Neotec 2 Sena intercoms bike-to-bike, which was novel, and they worked well. Normally for us it’s just a rider-pillion thing. There was a bit of whistle through the system from the wind, I admit, but we’ll figure that out. For now, it was just an opportunity to enjoy our new bikes. Peter professed herself happy with the 125, while I wondered why I’d waited so long to get a Wing. It’s fabulously comfortable, natch, but handles like a bike several hundred pounds lighter. Brakes well, plenty of power for my needs, great torque. It’ll take us back to Norway next summer and, if the weather doesn’t play nice, the Wing will take it all in its stride.