Fitting the Shift Support

Once I could bear to be in direct sunlight this afternoon I ventured out to the garage clutching my new bit of metal in my hands. A quick look at the gubbins I would be fettling with embarrassed me as to the amount of crud had built up on the undercarriage since its last proper clean.



Something will need to be done.....But not today. My head hurts.

And so did my knees! when I stood up from my first inspection, Jeevus, I felt my age. 10 minutes of searching failed to turn up my knee pad trousers so improvisation came to my aid. Improvisation, 2 pound land jumbo car sponges and a couple of bungies to be precise.



The technology demonstrator needs a bit of work though as the hooks were digging into the backs of my knees. 10 minutes more searching revealed the knee pad trousers, so all was well.

I put a scribe to the end of the shift rod to make sure I put it back in the correct position, then realised that there is already a datum punched into it at the factory.



Honda,eh? What can you say.

At this point I wasted another 15 minutes searching for my thread lock (cheers for the warning Craig). In the end I had to give in and drive to the auto factors. That's another thread on its own for later. While I was gone, my beloved took this photograph which she insisted I include. She calls it "The Silent Driveway or Yet another job Ken starts without having everything he needs."



I return.

 

The new bling. It's a real shame you can hardly see it in situ. It's such a pretty, feely thing.



After wrestling with the single sentence of instruction, translated from "ze Jerman" I realise that the 'basic plate' which the spacers need to be attached to are actually the footrest plate and nothing to do with the support or sidestand. Logical, I know but hindsight is always 20/20.



The new bolts are not as nice to look at as the factory ones, and hating alloy to steel fixings I put a couple of Stainless washers in behind for future proofing purposes.



Cruel fate. As the the footrest dangled and touched the ground, of all the planet this poor wood louse had to be stood...



My inner Buddhist is gonna keep me awake tonight!

The fit is flawless, like OEM.



Yes, you guessed it. 20 minutes to find my torque wrench! According to Haynes 44 Newtons per metre.



All pinched up nice and tight.



Then a chance at redemption. A half pissed wasp nearly trapped in my socket set was rescued from certain death. Karma of sorts for the wood louse.



Done and done.




So a couple of rounds of beans on toast and a test ride and what's the difference?

Surprisingly quite noticeable. I've never suffered the dreaded false neutral and have learned to live with the somewhat agricultural nature of the 954 gearbox. This has not changed with the mod. But, the affect, still noticeable is damped out beautifully by the support, so it feels like changing gear through an orthopedic mattress. That's better and I'm impressed.

However, the big surprise came on downshifting. It's soooooooo much smoother and a much more pleasant experience now, even though I never thought there was much wrong with it before. It seems to have made me much more inspired to stamp down the box approaching bends, making it less of a chore to get into the right ratio for the right entrance speed. I'm here to be told otherwise but an adaptation to the gearbox seems to have improved my cornering.

A great mod, easy to do. A few quid cheaper from Calsport than anywhere else and it came so quick, I'd opened it before Jamie sent me the email saying it had been dispatched. It's beautifully cast and the only anal moans are that a better description of what goes where would have saved me 10 minutes to waste elsewhere and the replacement footrest bolts would benefit from being closer to OEM in appearance.

If you haven't got a Gilles Gear Shift Support, get one.

Cheers

Ken

 

f$%k off Philistine.

 

£58 and pence delivered from Calsport, £62 odd plus delivery almost everywhere else. Plus, I didn't tap Jamie at Calsport up for any Forum discount, seeing as he's a member. But I wanted it in a hurry and I can't remember when he was last online. I spoke with Arthur and he fits them to all his bikes. Nutty too. Then I spoke to Hudson who has the same bike as me and he swore by it too. 4th is apparently a bit of an achilles heel for the 954 and the flexing of the shift rod is thought to be contributory to it failing, so smoother and preventative.

 

It's the hangover wearing off Megs. My body's starting to remember how old it is.

 

I now have to clean half a pint of squash off my carpet and wall, thanks to that sponge pic, the mrs ain't happy!

 

On a slight tangent, on the way home I called in to see a customer of mine who collects bikes and convinced him to start fitting them on his Dan like garage full of motorcycles and he let me scratch an itch that's been bugging me for a while and let me ride his Firestorm. I now see why nobody has a bad word to say about them. What a jewel of a piece of kit it is. What a great commuter bike it would make alongside the blade. What an expensive divorce that would be.

 

When I bought the blade I was looking for a big Honda V but discounted the Firestorm as not having a sporty enough demeanour. All the SP1's locally were ratty and the SP2's, when they actually came up for sale, were similar in price to a slightly used stealth bomber. I bought Bill and the rest is history. But since then I've listened to those who've owned the Firestorm and begun to think I'd done it a disservice. Now I've had a play with one, I'm convinced I did.