Uncategorized | Moto-Abruzzo

04/07/2021

Missed it

Aprilia Caponord ETV1000 Rally-Raid 160,000 miles And so the moment came and went without fanfare after a year of lockdown, no trips back and forth to home in Italy, no big holiday rides here in the UK. A year where mileage clocked up painfully slowly, the Capo sitting idle way more than doing what it does best – eat miles and promote smiles!

In the end, it was on a big fat roundabout on the outskirts of Oxford that it rolled through its 160,000th mile. No one stopped and applauded, no one cared. No fanfare, no brass band. Even I was too busy navigating the mindless Wombles I shared the road with to notice the moment. Only as I accelerated away on the dual carriageway did I see the display roll over to 160,002, the aftermath of what should have been a jolly nice photo opportunity. Bugger.

23/12/202023/12/2020

Bath-time 2 – In at the deep end!

A bit of feedback on my first outing with the sparklingly shiny new 6 litre ultrasonic cleaning bath, the highlights and lowdown’s. First off, here’s my simple bullet point list to get things going:

Be patient!
Fill with pre-heated plain water or whatever your preferred cleaner pre-mix is
Be prepared to help the cleaning process along with a soft brush etc
Let it do its thing in peace – wear earplugs or get out!

That’s it in a nutshell! YouTube video’s make it look like you’ll clean a 50 year old gunked up prop-shaft in two minutes – wrong! Not in a domestic cleaner you won’t. I used a mix of (so called) ultrasonic bath solution diluted 10:1 as specified. I made the mistake of filling the tank from cold believing the in-built ‘heater’ would do the business … well it does after a fashion, but oh so slowly. It would have taken about 2-3 hours to go from 13ºC to 50ºC – so I boiled the kettle in the end and made up a solution that was almost at the required temperature, so no wasted time waiting around! The old rear caliper was dug out of the parts store and stripped down. It came off the Capo back in January 2013 with about 40K miles on it and had simply been boxed and hidden away, unfortunately since it’s return to the UK it looks like damp had got in and caused some corrosion. Luckily this was confined to where the pads sit and nowhere else, thankfully the pistons and seals came apart beautifully.

So time for a quick pic, then into the bath!

Initially I ran it for five minutes, unsure of how aggressive the solution/ultrasonic cleaning action would be. The solution was noticeably discoloured, but the calipers looked hardly touched. So in they went for another ten minutes. They looked much better this time … so in for another ten minutes. One half was now almost perfect, but the other needed two minutes of TLC from a rotary brush, then they went back in for a final 10 minutes. Hence, be patient and be prepared to give the process a helping hand!

In the end, as the saying goes, all good things come to those who wait:

It only remains to mention my final bullet point. Initially I sat about 6ft(2m) away from the bath while it was running, the noise is not pleasant but bearable or so I thought. After about five minutes I started to feel a little nauseous. The lid was on and it was operating in a well ventilated area, so I didn’t think it was fumes from the cleaning solution, so figured it was exposure to sound I COULDN’T hear – it is an ultrasonic cleaner after all! In the end I left it to do its thing and sulked at the far end of the workshop and within a few minutes felt better again. The unit doesn’t come with any warnings beyond electrocution (lots of them!) … so be careful folks and don’t stay too close when it’s operating!

Conclusion – I’m happy with the results bearing in mind that the caliper was well used and had suffered in storage. Now it is resplendent with new seals, a light wipe over with ACF50 and new home in a Zip bag and a better box. I’m really looking forward to using this cleaner on the triple bridge Brembo calipers and that may well be sooner rather than later, as Mr Postman has just this minute delivered the new brake lines and banjos from Venhill, wahoo!!!

25/05/2020

Well I never ….

I don’t know if I should be flattered or annoyed … or a little of both, let me explain. I had just had a chat with my wife about a press release from ACEM regarding the dire downturn of European motorcycle sales. As the conversation started, she got confused with ACIM – the Aprilia Caponord International Meeting …. and that sowed a seed at the back of my mind to have a look on the internet to see what ACIM was up to. All well and good.

Later that evening I found them on Facebook and lo and behold, the group banner picture is of my old Caponord on a back road in Abruzzo! In fact it’s a picture of mine lifted from a post I wrote a few years ago (the post). So now I am a tad curious to see if someone from ACIM reads this over here then says something over there ….. 🙄

Anyway, I’m glad someone liked it enough to use it!

17/05/2020

New main menu item added

As I write this, the UK is slowly beginning to come out of lockdown and taking our beloved Caponords out to stretch their legs is finally becoming a reality …. before then I have tyres to fit, wheels to deep-clean and a poachers bag full of other little jobs to do – on the Capo and on the website.

To that end I want to bring to your attention if I may, the addition of a new heading in the main menu – PARTS. Currently a work in progress, it contains two sub directories (O-Rings & Hose Clamps) but this will be expanded hopefully to include bearings, seals and hoses. All items that we may (or not!) still be able to get from Aprilia, but which may have cheaper and more easily sourced alternatives available. The idea is to present them in independent sections using graphics and hotspots so you can quickly locate the item you need and get the alternative information if there’s any available.

I appreciate some of this information and other alternative parts can be found in the likes of the AF1 forum ‘OEM manufacturers/suppliers’ thread, however it’s a random collection regarding all sorts of parts and sometimes searching can be very hit and miss. Here, I hope to make the search for a particular seal, clamp or O-ring nice and easy – enter the subsection, click on the link to the parts location – fuel pump, cooling system etc – find the highlighted item in the graphic and hover your mouse over it. There’s the part number and current UK price, click on it and any alternative and size info is given in the field on the right hand side – simple. I hope!

Anyway, to help bring this to fruition, I’ve ordered one of every O-Ring I need to measure where that info isn’t readily available, I’ve also ordered a range of Ezyclick and Zero leak clamps to do the same for particular areas of the Capo oil/cooling system. With any luck all this data will be up on the website in a week or so. After that, bearings, seals and hoses.

One last thought ………. is there any mileage is selling bags of O-Rings – say a service kit, or engine kit for example ….. maybe oil/coolant clamp kit? Just an idea to throw around, what do you think?

Finally, a huge thank you to folks who have donated toward the website this year. Without your help this little project may well have not happened or been way down the line. Website plugins are usually free, with limited functionality – Pro versions have a price tag but have infinitely more functionality – your kind donations have bought those Pro plugins! Thank you.

12/05/202012/05/2020

E10 ……… no it’s not a boy band!

Did you get around to watching ‘The Last Motorcycle on Earth’? Well this post is about a little of that fiction meeting reality right here, right now.

After much deliberation it looks like E10 fuel got the UK government green-light in February 2020 and will be on a forecourt near you in 2021 … probably/maybe. It’s been on the horizon for almost a decade, but thankfully we’ve not had to deal with the tank bloating, seal destroying gut-rot fuel that’s the scourge of the EU .. but times are a changing as the song says. It looks like the current ‘Premium’ fuel (E5) will become the ‘Super-Unleaded’ and E10 the Premium. Like Europe, it’s use will be optional unlike some countries where it’s introduction and use are mandatory. One note of concern though …. the proposal only protects E5 supply for up to five years after E10 is rolled out, presumably supply could then disappear from forecourts almost overnight, making refuelling an unmodified Capo awkward to say the least. And five years isn’t a long time!

On occasion I would use it while travelling through Europe, but only one tank at a time, then I’d use E5 fuel to clear it out of the system and always on a journey where I knew I’d burn through it before I arrived at my destination. I never left it stewing in the tank for longer than a couple of hours. So this looks like it’s time for one of those other jobs that have sat firmly on the garage shelf for the last 12 months – lining the fuel tank with Caswells Epoxy resin. Even after that’s done, I think I’ll try to steer clear and take the price hike to ‘Super-Unleaded’ on the chin…… while I can anyway.

11/05/202011/05/2020

The Last Motorcycle on Earth

Stuck in lockdown and looking for something biker related to watch? Well here’s a real thought provoking treat for you. I found out about this a few months ago and yesterday it popped up on Amazon Prime UK for £2.49 in HD. It’s part one of a trilogy by the looks of it. If you like bikes and worry about what the politicians may do to our lifestyle in the coming years as they push ever harder to ban fossil fuels and rush headlong toward electric and autonomous vehicles, then you might just like this film. I loved it …. and maybe the back-story sat all the harder as I work in the autonomous vehicle industry!

12/10/201921/10/2019

Seal of disapproval

Fair to say, things have REALLY dragged on this year. The fuel tank overhaul I mentioned in May and planned to do in July is still firmly on the to-do list -why?

I had 90% of the parts on the shelf in June and only had a couple of ‘O’-rings to order. The parts lists don’t give a size for these particular seals, so I needed new ones from Aprilia to measure for future reference – no problem really, they’ll only take a week or so to arrive I thought. Yeah right.

So I put together a list of parts and punched them into the Fowlers online ordering form. All items were available – except one. The dreaded ‘back order’ item. The deal was, wait for the back-order part and we’ll ship them all together, or we’ll send the in-stock items and charge you £3.95 to post the one remaining tiny back-order item. I decided to wait.

And wait they made me do alright ….. almost two months in fact!

In the end the parts arrived of course, but by then the warm and dry summer weather had given way to almost daily rain and nights drawing in earlier and earlier. But on a positive note, I have now measured the main O-ring I was interested in and can finally post up the size and alternative (UK) that you can have delivered within a day or two, not months! Far quicker and quite a saving on the £30.30 plus delivery for the genuine part.

AP8144478 Equivalent: 142.88mm ID 5.33mm cross section – Viton

£13.91 plus VAT (for two) from Simply Bearings Ltd (October 2019) – Thanks to Beasthonda for measuring for me!

04/05/201904/05/2019

May update

Well it looks like the website is up and all the links work again – hooray! In the end it took about 24hrs of fiddling in the database to sort out, but I got there in the end thankfully.

Meanwhile, the rear panels were removed from the Capo for a trip to the paint shop. The years have been pretty kind to the base coat, but not the lacquer unfortunately, especially where the decals are located. As luck would have it, I already have a set of decals that were kindly given to me by Manuel from Motrag.com a few years ago.

We use chippingnortonbodyshop.co.uk for some parts on our autonomous cars and the results have always been excellent, so it’s fantastic that they are willing to have a look at the Capo panels for me. Plus it’ll be great to finally get a color match given that Aprilia don’t provide paint codes.

28/04/201928/04/2019

Finally back again!

Saturday 27th April

Oh boy, where to start …… first, last year was a real learning curve with a new job., so the number of posts fell through the floor. Then is late 2018 my website host said they were shutting their doors – move your domain (and name) or lose it. I did ….. and that’s when everything went horribly wrong!

Through December to February I tried all sorts to get it to spring into life again, but nothing seemed to work ….. and frankly I was steadily getting pissed off with the whole thing. In the end I hardly glanced at it for a couple of months.

Then this morning, while thinking of something totally remote from websites, an idea popped into my head and I sat down at the PC ….. a couple of hours later, the website popped back into life-ish! Unfortunately, it’s still not right, but it’s a start and I think I can get the rest of the links to work over the next week or so.

Sunday 28th April

The website theme has been updated and is now based on the WordPress 2017 one … the old one was from 2010! This adds a load of new functionality (some good, some a nuisance!) but should look better on bigger screens. I’ve also sorted the links to loads of pics from pages … yet to do posts. The downside (more frustration really) is that the links to PDF documents won’t sort themselves out. The links are fine but they just loop around to a 404 page. Oh well, that’s for next week!

20/06/201828/04/2019

INNOVV K2 – a quick update

OK, so this is a no-frills post while I’m on the road in Italy …..

Some folks have asked how the INNOVV K2 is getting along after I fitted it to the Capo a few weeks ago. Well here is a quick update for you! The install is a semi-permanent arrangement – the recording unit and GPS module are in the under-seat storage area and the front camera is hung from the right-hand fog lamp, while the rear camera hangs from the right-hand pannier rail. Both are very much temporary mounts and as such suffer from a little vibration (front mostly) but it’s only noticeable at certain RPM’s. This will disappear once they are mounted permanently on more robust mounts.

The 12v/5v power supply sits in the same spot as the old unit – on top of the ECU. 12v is taken directly from the battery and the sensing/switching connection goes to the tail lights. No lights, no cameras!

The system has run faultlessly from day 1. Start the bike, turn on the lights and away it goes …. no fuss, no drama. I have not experienced any of the shortcomings of the old K1 – corrupt files, frozen recording etc. The K2 has done its job exactly as it should, in fact I’ve got so comfortable with it that I no longer check the video or setting on the app every ride …. I just fire up and go! At the end of the week I’ve checked the SD card and been really pleased that all the files are recorded just fine with no corrupt or dropped frames in sight.

So that’s it as far as a quick update is concerned. Once I’m back in the UK I’ll go more in detail about image quality etc, but for now I’m really pleased with the K2, it’s a real improvement over the K1 in all aspects.