2025 Glacial Lakes MC Grand Tour

  Part 3 Friday, 8th August.   The replacement hose was received this morning, and the metal 90* bend that had been a problem was now smaller, and a fter lunch, I performed a "dry" test fit and confirmed that the new hose no longer fouled the fork leg.   That was the good news, because the bad news was that I found that the replacement brake line was the incorrect length.   It was 10 cm shorter than the original kit brake line and the OEM brake line. click on image to enlarge Bugger. So, it was back on the phone to the Distributor.  Now, my first inclination was to "scream & shout" but that rarely achieves much, so I calmly thanked Mark* for the quick shipping, before explaining the new problem. Needless to say, Mark* was surprised and confused.  Truth be known, I am not sure he believed what I was telling him.   So much so that he opened two similar kits they had in stock and found that both those kits had brake lines of the wr...

Part 2 After what seemed like weeks but was probably only days, my friendly Workshop Manager gave me a call to inform me that my new shims had arrived. Now, as everyone will know, each shim has a 2-digit number etched on one side. This number indicates the thickness of the shim. click on the image to enlarge For example, a shim marked as 85 means the shim has a "nominal" thickness of 2.85 mm. Likewise, a shim marked 05 has a "nominal" thickness of 3.05 mm, and so on. I say "nominal" because the actual thickness of a 05 shim can be anywhere between 3.035 and 3.065 thick, and by knowing this, it is possible to "cherry-pick" shims for your engine if you have access to enough shims to choose from. So armed with my trusty micrometer and a list of what shims I really wanted, I headed down to the Workshop, and after sweet-talking the Manager for a while, I was eventually given permission to root around his collection of shims. This chart shows the resul...