Biker Blues

You would think that by buying what were, essentially, new bikes, that we would have no problems with them, or with the seller, Blade Motorcycles, Swindon. One of the Dukes we have bought had just been run in and serviced for the first time and the other was returned by the original owner, new and unused and had to be run in, by us and was then serviced.

OH HOW WRONG CAN ONE BE?????

We left the UK with a beautiful shiny trailer containing our 2 fresh from the dealer, newly serviced and ready to ride bikes. The member of staff who handled the sale at Blade Motorcycles in Swindon, could not have been more pleasant or helpful. He was a decent person. A huge discount would have been nice, but none was given, unfortunately.

The drive all the way through Spain, from Bilbao in the north to the Mediterranean in the south, was uneventful. So imagine our surprise, when we arrived at our final destination, emptied the trailer, cleaned it and found a bolt, about 3ins long on the floor! Something that size will have an important job to do, it couldn’t be ignored.

Much searching of the trailer later, we decided it must be from somewhere else. The trailer was fine. The obvious next thing to check was the bikes. And there it was. A hole. A hole made for our wayward bolt. In Jens bike. At the top of the rear shock absorber. It’s job? To hold the shock absorber firmly in place, so that it can do it’s job, safely.

“I may be an adventurous sort of person, but riding a bike with a slack back end isn’t my idea exciting. It’s more my idea of exiting….in an untimely manner.”

We replaced the bolt, having checked the manual; you can’t just bung these things together you know. We had to secure the bolt with a particular type of Locktite glue and then tighten it to a specific torque.

We needed an adapter for our wrench and some magic glue, both of which we were spending time looking for, time we’d earmarked for other things. So, we phoned Blade Motorcycles, Swindon, talked to our sales rep who was perfect. Our rep apologised, said he would find out how this could of happened and, of course, get the parts to us ASAP; he even confirmed all this in a brief email. Several weeks later and a follow up email or two from us and we’re still waiting.

In the meantime, Wally’s bike was behaving very badly, so badly that he checked the tyre pressures and the rear was at about 10lb psi. He was pumping the thing up and cursing Blade Motorcycles Swindon, as I noticed, glinting in the hot Mediterranean sun, a nail in the tyre. So this one probably wasn’t Blade Motorcycles, Swindon’s fault. A local guy plugged it for 10 Euros.