Grease Monkeys

	Was time for some DIY bike maintenance this week, with a box full of parts from the interweb, a Haynes manual, some spray paint and a mates empty garage available to invade we set about sorting out some of our final bike issues and Operation Blackfork was set into motion ..
	Paula highlighting the shoddy BMW flakey paint on her front forks. Clearly not spiffing at all. Time for a jolly good ol' bit of painting..

Ze forks get a few coats of Waffen SS black.
Time to give the Transalp some attention and re-solder my heated grip connections - obviously a completely crucial accessory for riding the Sahara desert!

Turning Robs immacualte garage into a make shift Messerschmitt hangar. We replaced the seal on the left fork, after the required brute force removal technique, re-sprayed the tubes satin black and re-assembled them with a total in-effeciency that the Luftwaffe would have scoffed at, but fuelled on tea, biscuits, BBQ and a British willpower to succeed against all odds we got the job done.

We also took the oportunity to upgrade the flacid black gunge that the last mechanics had filled the forks with for Rock-oil 10 weight oil, which instantly made a huge difference. A pair of £20 gaiters went on too, to finish off the job Jerry hadn't bothered to do back in Deutschland and the whole thing looked and felt a thousand times better.

Lots of thanks go to Rob for his duties above and beyond by cleaning the bike in our absense and refreshing the tyre paintwork. Also his family for putting up with our own little German invasion.



The final assembled black front end, complete with gaiters, stealth BMW logos, go faster chevrons, Puig touring screen and aluminium chainguard. Looking good!

My bikes flew through it's MoT on wednesday, with an advisory on siezing front brakes - which I already knew and had an effort at clearing a while back. So as far as the bikes are concerned it's just an oil change and front brake rebuild for the TA and we're ready to go! - Mark