22nd January - 9th February 2015 3...2...1... Dissapointment

I’m totally shocked! She’s ready to turnover… Max has loosely fitted the gauges, so we can see all the pretty lights, he turns the key and THERE THEY ARE! Pweettyy lights! You can hear the fuel pump sucking in a load of fresh petrol and everything seems perfectly normal. With max’s finger hovering over the starter button, we cross all our fingers, toes and everything else crossable …. 3….2…..1…nothing….literally… nothing. Not even an ounce of try. Cheers Fazer… thanks a lot. So back to the drawing board we go. Max is the intelligent one, so while I watched funny cat videos on Youtube, Max took out the starter relay and tested it… also nothing! So easy fix…NEW RELAY!  Down to CMS Motorcycles in Pinhoe, we go, to get a new one, when we arrived and explained to the guy what happened and he said he would test the relay for us on his multi-metre and it made a mysterious ticking noise… just like the bomb in the harry potter puppet video.. if you don’t know what I mean just go onto Youtube.. You’ll find it. Anyway the result was that the relay did work...oh well, after a long chat with the very knowledgeable and helpful guy at CMS we came out with some new ideas and a working relay! The way the Haynes manual tells you to test the starter relay was a little hard to understand… but using a multi-metre is much simpler than first thought and we even managed to nab one off of Max’s dad!

When we got the bike, it was explained that the previous, previous owner - if that makes sense - fitted a really nice alarm, however at some point during its use something went wrong. Hmmmm. To start the bike you had to turn the key and flick a switch under the seat to disable the alarm, this switch also acted as a starter button so once it was flicked over the alarm went off and the bike started. This switch was wired using thin speaker wire and duct tape so was a bit of a mess so this is where we decided to start investigating. Max followed all the wires from the alarm into the wiring loom and took them all out. So we tried starting it again using the started button… still nothing… AAAGGHHHHHHH! Turns out that once that alarm is fitted; its nie on impossible to strip out correctly without ALOT OF PATIENCE and experience. Out of pure laziness and in experience we hit ebay for another loom, as this one was never going allow the bike to start without it afterwards. eBay time! New wiring loom ordered (we checked it had never had an alarm fitted) after what felt like years, but was only really 2 days, the loom arrived. Within about 30 minutes, the old wiring loom had been stripped out and the new one put in place. P.S a wiring loom looks like a snake with loads of heads… I was amused for literally hours! Kept me out of Max’s way I suppose.

We had a spontaneous and crazy idea to bring our ‘mad-as-a-hatter’ springer x cocker spaniel down to the shed to keep us company, so we took down his bed and his blanket and made him a home in the corner of the shed. He. went. NUTS. He was running circles around the Fazer and was playing with everything, he shouldn’t have been playing with.

Note: conventional dog toys don’t work for Gus… he will destroy any dog toy he can get his paws on. So we gave him toys that we thought he would really love… a few intercooler hoses! Yep! He loves them! (They were washed beforehand obviously) That kept him entertained for the rest of the day!
That should now bring you all up to date with the build, any questions or help is very welcome! Hope your enjoying it so far, things will get more exciting and interesting from now! Also there will be more pictures!!