Trail Tech Vector Has Arrived

The Trail Tech Vector that i ordered a couple of days ago arrived today!

As you can see from the time in the photo, i only managed to get to play with it late at night, so certainly not had chance to install it on the bike yet but i couldn't resist getting it out of the box and having a little play with it.

My initial impressions of the Trail Tech Vector Stealth are that its a pretty solid looking product. Well mate and a lot more glossy in colour than it looks on the TrailTech website.

I ordered the complete kit for my KTM 300 exc which includes the inline temperature sensor, the speedo sensor and mounting bracket.

I was pleased to discover that the temperature sensort housing is made from  black anodised metal, and not horrible plastic as i was expecting. Also the cable is very flexible, if possibly a bit  short, but i wont know until i try it on the KTM.

The Speedo sensor is the magnetic type. I need to attach the included magnet onto my front brake disc and the sensor on the brake caliper bracket.

The cable from the sensor the the main unit is cased in a protective sleeve to help keep it safe from rocks and branches.

On the back of the unit is the battery compartment and two captive nuts for mounting the unit. The battery in the TrailTech Vector is a CR2032.

Here you see th back of the box describing all if the Trail Tech Vector's functions and features.

One thing i have been disappointed to discover is that the "Hour Meter" is based on the wheel speed sensor, so it will record moving hours, and not actual engine hours. 

This is disappointing because since im fitting this to the KTM300 and the bike wont always be moving forward when the engine is running, so the "Hour Meter" working on wheel revolutions is going to record a very different figure to an proper engine hour meter fed from the ignition coil.

Besides the hour meter disappointment  im pretty impressed with the unit so far. Of course the real test comes when i come to install it on the bike..

New KTM 300 exc

Today i took delivery of a 2006 model KTM 300 exc.
Considering its age, its not in bad condition. Im going to spend some time checking it over to make sure its as good as it looks, but so far, im very pleased with the new addition to my garage.

The reason for buying the KTM 300 is because im intending to start Greenlaning and Enduro riding. Never done any greenlaning or enduro riding before, the closest i've ever got was when i was a young lad racing around farmers fields on old Yamaha DT road bikes. Its going to be very different to riding my GSXR!

New Winter Tyres for the Audi A6

With all the crazy winter snow we're having, i decided to treat the Audi to some winter tyres.

The Pirelli P-Zeros that it had on the OEM 19inch Le-Mans alloy wheels, were useless in the snow and even with the 4WD Quattro, i was still left slipping and sliding and scrabbling for grip.

So here they are, a full set of 18inch "Hankook Winter I*Cept Evos" on a set of Diamond SC7 wheels.

I opted for these wheels as the 7 twin spoke design looks pretty similar to the OEM Audi wheels so many wont notice i've swapped to winter wheels.

Lots have people have said I'm crazy for spending a large chunk of money on a set of winter wheels and tyres, but over in Europe, its law in many countries to have winter tyres on the car  in winter and summer tyres in summer. Also, whats the point in having a 4x4 car in the snow with summer tyres?

 As you can see from the picture, the tread on the winter tyres is much chunkier and better designed for gripping on cold snowy roads.
What you cant see from the photo is that winter tyres have a higher silica content which means the rubber in the tyres stays pliable at much lower temperatures compared to summer tyres.
When summer tyres go had and lose grip, winter tyres stay soft proving more grip on cold wet roads.

In fact winter tyres are best whenever the temperature drops below 7degrees, which in the UK is quite a few months of the year!!

New Car - Audi A6 Avant S-Line Quattro

I'm collecting my new car today. I needed something practical. The requirements list was as follows:

1. Must be an estate car to fit the dogs in

2. Must have 4x4 to cope with snowy conditions

3. Must NOT be slow (3l+ engine needed)

4. Leather interior (nobody has cloth!)

5. Built in Sat-Nav

So this is what i ended up with - its a Audi A6 Avant 3.0L Quattro S-Line Le-Mans.

Its fully loaded with all the toys like driver and passenger memory seats, rearview reversing camera etc etc... 

Bet of all I managed to buy it for about £4k less than its market value, thanks to an impatient dealership who just wanted to get it off their forecourt. 

It has been part-exchanged for a brand new car, and the dealership wasnt an Audi dealer so they just wanted it gone. I saw it, test drove it, made a silly offer and they accepted!

Once ive had it for a while, i'll write a review, but so far, very pleased!!

 

My New Summer Toy - GSX-R 600 K7

So, after many year out of the saddle I decided to get back into motorcycling.

My first ever motorbike was a very old Yamaha DT50 (with twin rear shocks!) which my Grandad bought for me as a present when i was 10 years old. We spent many happy hours stripping it down and putting it back together, and i've loved bikes ever since.



I passed my bike test when i was 17 years old (many years ago!) but because of living in London, its always been difficult to own a bike. Without secure parking, bikes are too easy a target for thieves and vandals, so apart from a short stint with a Gilera Runner SP180 (that people kept trying to steal!) i've not ridden on the roads for about 6 years.

Now that ive moved out into 'the sticks' (Sevenoaks Kent), and i have a secure double garage, i decided i no longer had any reason not to get a bike, so i started looking and found this very clean, '57 plate Suzuki GSX-R600 K7.  The GSX-R (or GIXXER) was always one of my dream bikes as a lad, so the possibility of owning one was pretty exciting.



The bike was being sold by a dealer down in Southampton, so i popped in to take a look. I liked what i saw, but i didn't show too much interest. When i got home i found the same bike for sale on eBay with an "Offers" button, so i clicked the button, put in a cheeky offer (£250 less than the asking price) fully expecting the offer to be rejected. The next morning i woke to see an email saying my offer had been accepted - I was soon to be the proud owner of GIXXER!



So i HPI checked the bike, transferred the cash and arranged for it to be delivered to my mum's house in the New Forest saving myself an expensive delivery charge from Southampton to Sevenoaks.

The plan was that i would go visit my mum, check the bike over, take it for a short ride around local roads to get back into "Biking Mode", then ride the bike the 110miles home. Of course this meant that my first ride on a bike for over 6 years would be a 110mile ride on motorways on a powerful sports bike, that i'd never ridden before - Needless to say, many people thought i was crazy!!

The day of the ride came, and i was so excited - not at all nervous (i don't really do nerves). I got on the bike, fired it up, and immediately got back into "Biker Mode". Having learnt to ride as a kid, the controls were all very instinctive, and I had no problems remembering how to ride. In fact it was just like being a teenager again on my Aprilia AF1-125 that i had when i was 17.

After a local ride round my old neighbourhood, and stopping off to show a few old mates my new toy, i set off for the epic first ride home...

130miles later  -yes i took a few detours ;) i got home. I had a sore bum, but apart from that it was a very enjoyable ride.....  Feels good to be "A Biker" again....

Samsung Galaxy S2 - Ice Cream Sandwich

Yesterday, my UK Simfree Samsung Glaxy S2 phone (on vodafone) started flashing a message saying "Software update available". Knowing that it was likely to be the Android Ice Cream Sandwich update,   I waited patiently all day until i could get home onto my home Wifi network before allowing it to upgrade. However when i got home and connected to the mothership,  it then said "no upgrades available"... hmmm

After a quick search i found i had to plug the phone into my laptop and let Samsung Kies do the upgrade...But first I found i needed to upgrade my version of Samsung Kies.
80mb download later (only 29Mb for Apple!??) and what seemed like ages for the installation to complete, and i was ready...
First hing i did was back up my phone. This took about 10mins as i seem to have quite a few photos and music files on there. Next the upgrade started.  A fairly painless process that completed whilst i was eating my dinner.

After dinner i was then ready to use my newly upgraded SGS2. First impressions were that the Pattern Unlock looks very strange, and the clock on the lock screen looked odd. Not the nice big round buttons i was used to - just little circles. not a big problem  i can live with that, and am now getting to like the new look.

Once the phone was unlocked i noticed all my shortcuts had been wiped and replaced with a bunch of default widgets and shortcuts which i promptly deleted. Where had all my carefully placed shortcuts gone??

After a few minutes messing about looking for new features, and discovering the cool new developer options and other new stuff, i started to realise the phone was not as responsive to touch as it had been prior the the upgrade. in fact touch sensitivity was appalling! I activated the developer option that "shows  touches" and when navigating around the phone, i could clearly see that i was lightly touching the screen as a circle would appear, yet the phone seemed to ignore my actions unless i touched for an extended amount of time. Very frustrating.

So what used to take just a light tap of the screen, now takes a more deliberate press-and-hold type action.
In reality this probably only adds about 10ms to the act of tapping, but  none the less, its noticeable, and its very frustrating...
Overall, not a total disaster, but also not really the enjoyable experience I was expecting from the much hyped, much anticipated Android ICS upgrade for Galaxy S2!

My advice to other SGS2 users?  don't bother with the upgrade - stick to what you have now until its been patched to cure the touchscreen sensitivity problems

Replacement for my trusty old Asus M50 Laptop

After many years of faultless service, the time has come to replace my trusty Asus M50 laptop.
Its been a great machine, solid, reliable and after the SSD upgrade it's more than sufficient for knocking out code or surfing the web.
However, its getting a little noisy, the fan is going most of the time, the battery only lasts a few minutes, and the palm rests are uncomfortably hot. I've tried sucking the dust out with a hoover, but to no avail - i guess its just starting to feel its age.
So the big question is, what will i replace it with? Ultrabooks are cool, but not big enough. Asus dont seem to have a direct replacement that offers all the same features (movable web cam, fingerprint scanner etc etc) so im open to suggestions.
Has anyone else out there found a good replacement for an Asus M50 laptop? if so, please let me know what you decided on, and how its worked out for you.

New SSD for my old Asus M50 Laptop

So my old Laptop was starting to get a bit slow, Windows Vista was taking ages to boot, and i've recently tarted using UBUNTU as my OS of choice. I wanted to make Ubutu my main OS, but didnt want to format my HDD and lose my windows installation, so my solution was to buy a new hard disk... So I did, but I took the opportunity to buy a new Solid State Disk (SSD) to see what all the hype was about.

A quick visit to Crucial.com and a few clicks later i'd ordered the "128GB Crucial m4 2.5" SSD with Data Transfer Kit"

Well today it arrived, so out came the screwdrivers and in went the SSD. Took about 5mins, to pull out the old disk and insert the new SSD - My old trusty Asus M50 laptop was reborn!!

Unfortunately i've not yet not had the time to test it out fully, but suffice to say that Ubuntu 11.04 will now shutdown, and restart in under 30seconds and most of that time is the BIOS checks so i'm very pleased so far :)