So I finally fried the last of my clutch getting to Box Hill today. Got the weekend with the SD because Amy's gone to parents with all the kids so I have a weekend of SD fun planned. Wake up at 6 as usual but it takes 6 hours to get the twins and the two year old up and fed and a hundred nappy changes and clean up after breakfast and then lunch and then I'm finally on my way and free for the first time in ages.

Hit the roads and it's fine and dry and I've got unlimited time, trip counter set to zero, full tank or fuel and the whole of West Sussex to explore. Been living here for about six months but not got the chance to find any decent roads yet. Head out towards Crawley looking for roundabouts, I know there's a whole network of them somewhere due west so I'm thinking about the new Racetecs, (K3s), I've got on, only done a few miles since fitted, and incrementally getting them scrubbed in. Also I've sanded down the Brembo pads I have on the front cos they got contaminated when I first fitted the the Braketech iron discs and I got a bad judder so they need re-bedding in as well. Looks like I need a hundred miles or so of good bends and braking hard.

Been a while since I rode hard, winter's over and I need to blow the cobwebs out of my brain and the SD is raring to go.

Great afternoon, rediscovered fast road riding. tyres fantastic. Good to be back on Racetecs. Better than the M5s I had on before but then again it wasn't wet and cold. Brakes finally got better and better. Just when I was really starting to enjoy things I start sensing that the clutch slip I already knew I had was getting worse. I think that riding through winter I'm only using semi power most of the time hardly ever full throttle but today I'm just ripping wide open every chance I get and suddenly I'm realising that anything over 6 or 7 grand is causing slip and the revs are rising but I'm not going anywhere. Bummer.

Still. I can go fast. There's plenty of other bikes about and I'm going faster than most of them. Roads quite good - better than I thought they'd be for round here, not much traffic and no police presence. Find myself near Box Hill and think, wow never been there so I take a detour and go see. Legendary bikers meeting place although on Saturday it's pretty empty. Might go back tomorrow and see what it's like on a Sunday.

The guy in the photo is checking out whether my bike has a Motobox on or not. Turned out he has an SMT and reads this forum and knew all about the LC8 throttle body mods!

I got out for the firs time today as well Bic. Felt so good to be out terrorising the countryside again bummer about the clutch though. At least it hasn't left you stranded or anything though. Have fun tomorrow. It's meant to be sunny all day.

I was out too on one of the new Tuono V4's. Really good bike but if it were mine it would be run in T (track mode) with the TC turned down to 1 all the time. It comes as standard with quickshifter and slipper clutch. The one I rode was 4 miles old so unscrubbed tyres and limited to 8000 revs but it would still hit over 100mph. Once the first service is done it revs to 14000

I am out again tomorrow, got 2 hours on an RC8R. I hope I like it but it needs to be really good to compete with the Ape.

Bic.........looks like you have changed the rake angle

I personally would not ride the bike until you can fit new plates and definatly put in a fresh filter with oil due to higher than normal contamination