Ginny's check up

March is the most important month of the year for Ginny. It's the month she was 'born' and she'll be eight in four days time. Being birthday month, it also means it's MOT and insurance time. Yesterday was the MOT. I never have any worries about her passing, she's well looked after, being regularly serviced and despite her advancing years, and with 44,700 miles on her clock, she still fires up first prod of the button after 3 months in hibernation. She passed her test with flying colours and now sits patiently, waiting for me to put some more miles under her wheels.

This year the plan is not to go abroad, if you don't count Ireland as abroad, so there won't be as many miles clocked up this year, as in previous years, unless I start ticking things off my list of UK places to visit. I shall be spending a few days away with Phil in August, where we're doing the British MotoGP round. We had talked about it and now it's all booked up.

An embryo of a plan, is to take in some the the sites on my places to visit list, that are clustered around Southampton, one of them being the Solent Sky Museum, formerly the Supermarine Museum I believe. I've asked my friend Helen if she fancies a day out, which will give her an excuse to get her NC750 out of the garage. I can pick her up on the way down, as she lives in Guildford. There's no date for that yet but she's on board with the idea.

I've not sorted out Ginny's insurance yet, I have a few days before it auto renews, so will need to get cracking on that. It's not easy finding like for like and also very time consuming. The renewal's not a bad price but still, it's always worth checking out other avenues.

That's all for now. Spring has sprung, roll on summer.

Catch up time

Hi once again. Time for a news update. 

On returning from my MotoGP trip, the focus was very much on Ginny. I had booked her in for the suspension work and the oil leak to be checked out. I also wanted them to look at the overheating problem but as it turned out I dropped that idea.

Cutting a long story short, they discovered what was causing the oil leak, which was a problem with the gear actuator assembly. That needed to be replaced.  Kerching! 💷 Time will tell if that actually was the problem.

Moving on to the suspension, they told me at first that they thought the bushes were in need of replacement but removing them could mean damaging the shock absorber unit itself. A new shock is almost £1000! On further investigation they decided it wasn't the bushes but it was the ball joint. They replaced it but that didn't cure the problem, so there was nothing left but to replace the shock itself. 💷💷

6 weeks after dropping Ginny off I went to pick her up, credit card in hand 💳, to pay a bill just shy of £2000! I have an extended warranty but as I quickly found out, that only covers suspension up to 30,000 miles!!! 

It was the worst case scenario, having the shock replaced but I instantly noticed the difference on the ride back home. Ginny's now like a granny with a new hip, so should be good for a few more years. She is now tucked up for the winter and will not make an appearance until March, when her MOT is due.

In other news, Phil and I are looking at going to the MotoGP at Silverstone in August. I didn't want to go abroad next year and it's been a while since I did the British GP, so a plan is being formulated as I write. Watch this space.