The amazing yellow peril...

[millemille]

This...



...is the yellow peril.

A 1999 SV650S that I paid the princely sum of £350 for.

It was advertised on another bike forum, having a misfire at high rpm and it had been to the moon and back, with 74,000 miles on the clock, and bore the scars of 16 years of London commuting. On the plus side it had a recent suspension refresh with hagon springs and shock, heated grips, scottoiler, braided hoses, givi rack and other useful bits and pieces and had been well looked after mechanically by the owner.

I was looking for a cheap bike to use for commuting whilst I waited on a personal injury claim to pay out (I got knocked off in London last year by a lorry changing lane with no warning and my right knee is borked as a result), at which point I was going to sell it and buy a Ducati Multistrada with the compo payout to commute on and for some two up touring in Europe with the missus on the back.

The misfire didn't put me off as I've got loads of SV parts in the workshop due to the project bike I'm building - I thought it may have been coils or carb related - and sure enough, on the test ride, over 6,000 rpm on full throttle it was stuttering. But nothing to be bothersome.

The engine pulled really well with no horrible noises and you'd not have known it was such high mileage from riding it.

After a few days the stutter became a refusal to run on both cylinders, so a quick check with my IR temperature gun showed that the rear header was cold.

Lifting the tank to investigate and something doesn't look right with the rear cylinder coil. One of the spade connectors wasn't fully pushed on. "Could it be that simple?" It only bloody was.....

I took the missus out on the back of it and when we got back I cautiously asked her - as her **** and pillion seats are akin to the princess and the pea - what she thought of it. She said that of all the bikes I've owned that she's been on the back of (from Ducati 748/916/996's to ZX12R to KTM adventure bikes) it was the most comfy.

Hmmmm, thinks I. Why would I want to buy a Multistrada if the SV could do the job?

So I bought a set of 2nd hand ginormous Givi panniers and a top box and modified a CB500 Givi pannier rack (you can't get Givi racks new for the curvy SV any more) to fit and had more luggage capacity than the average Pickfords van....



..and filtering was pretty much out of the question as it was now wider than your average family car.



What next?

Well, I organise a charity motorbike event that sees riders of bikes costing no more than £300 attempting to ride from John o'Groats to Lands End in 24hrs, not using motorways, on the 21st of June....

www.thelongestdaydownchallenge.co.uk

...and we were looking at using a different route this year, coming down the west coast having cut across Scotland along the A82 by Loch Ness and over the Glencoe pass and by Loch Lomond. This route needed to be trial run to see whether it was possible, and safe, to use for the challenge.

So it was the ideal opportunity to see how the SV coped with long distance riding with all that luggage on. The Bank holiday weekend just gone was chosen as the time to give it a go.

It started to get a bit concerning when a friend who lives in Wick sent me this picture of the A9, just south of Inverness, taken a few days before we were due to go....



Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Saturday morning and I'm fully loaded, with the top box and panniers crammed to their maximum load weight and beyond to give everything a real workout, and ready to set off from Kent to Wick, where we'll be staying with said friend.



I was riding with a mate on his Aprilia Falco, so it would be a real test of the SV to not hold him up.

720 miles and 12 hours later we arrived in Wick - having done some high speed (90mph and higher) cruising up the endless motorways in very windy conditions where the SV emptied the tank in 100 miles and I emptied my stomach at the idea of the "food" on offer at the Scottish service stations...



...and then a blast through the Cairngorms on the A9, thankfully free of snow on the roads but plenty on the mountains, blatantly ignoring the forward facing average speed cameras...



...and then some spirited scratching from Inverness to Wick along the deserted A99 coast road (does everyone in the north of Scotland go to bed at 5pm?) made all the more interesting by the howling gale blowing in off the north sea, which meant that tipping into every corner - and there a lot of them - was a bit of a lottery. Plus the petrol can of fuel in the top box - petrol stations are few and far between up there - moving around made for some interesting handling mid corner.

Torrential rain was forecast for Scotland on Sunday so we set of from John o'Groats at 00:crack sparrowfart in defiant mood...



About half way to Inverness it started raining and it just got heavier and heavier until we stopped by the side of Loch Lomond, having been riding for 7 hours and only covered 250 miles.

The A82 from Inverness to Glasgow, via Fort William is an awesome piece of road - but not one to be ridden when you're trying to stick to a schedule. It's basically 150 miles of bend after bend after bend and you're scratching for all your worth if you want to make any time, and that was our problem.

The route for the challenge is worked out on the basis that you can always ride at the speed limit.

The A82 is mainly a single lane national speed limit road, with a few sections of 30 and 50 through villages. We were ****ing all over the speed limit on the short straight sections and pulling off increasingly naugtier and ruder overtakes but were averaging a smidge over 50mph.

As it stood at that time we were so desparate to make up time and get on schedule that we were either going to crash - the run off from the rain on the mountains was causing streams across the road and we were both having moments with the bike sliding and spinning up when we hit these - or have to slow down and be looking at another 20 hours in the saddle when we finally got to Glasgow.

The SV was performin flawlessly - it hadn't missed a beat, used any oil, caused me any moments and was setting a pace that the falco had to work to match.

Discretion overcame valour and we retired to The Drovers Inn and proceeded to drown our sorrows in the bar and admire the amazing and, at the same time, disturbing collection of taxidermy....



Sunday morning dawned bright, sunny and hungover.

It took another hour to get to Glasgow and by that time we'd agreed that the route wasn't going to be suitable for the Challenge and we'd revert to the east coast route and that it wasn't fun any more and we wanted to go home.....

Cue earphones in, MP3 player on random and a concerted blast down the M74, A74, M6, A66, A1 and M25. Never going below 90 unless forced to and with some funky filtering saw me home in under 7 hours.

So the yellow peril...

What a bike.

£350.

1,493 miles in 3 days - flat out scratching, motorway blasting, stuipdly huge and heavy luggage, torrential rain, howling gales, never missed a beat, put a foot a wrong, used a drop of oil.

Wow.

[Luckypants]

Great story, sounds like a proper adventure!

[Bibio]

superb

[Jayneflakes]

Wow, that is impressive.

[littleoldman2]

WOW

[Ch00]

Epic ride.


On a side note thats my old bike!!! I sold that to a former member of this parish in 2006 with 19k on the clock. The old girl is doing well

[ophic]

Originally Posted by millemille

..and filtering was pretty much out of the question as it was now wider than your average family car.

That looks like it'll fly.

excellent write up

What a cracking story, better testament to a bikes long term durability than a so called long term test in a bike mag where a journalist has ridden a brand new bike for a couple of thousand miles and calls it a long term review.
I hope the story continues, I'm sure I'm not the only forum member that wil be interested to follow " The Peril's Progress " .

[maviczap]

Great write up

Just goes to show that the SV engine is good for high miles if looked after.

Your bike doesn't look like a 74K machine