Bike bling. Worth it? ... No.

My bike is pretty done up, all the normal stuff that it ride better like end cans, better brakes and trick suspension etc but its the pointless little things that i liked when i first saw it, the things that make it individual (or chaved up to the max) like the gold suzuki decal on the tank (rather than silver) the fake carbon fibre yoke protector and the gold valve caps on the loverly gold rims. Its these caps that have caused me a huge amount of annoiance this weekend just passed.

On sunday afternoon I decided to go for a ride with my mate, great fun and with the good weather both of us where pushing our bikes pretty much as fast as we could get them to go (he was on a k3cbr600rr and i was on my tls) rode out for 100 miles and then started the trip home. Anyway riding on one of my favorite bits of a road (the 413 between buckingham and aylesburry) I took a long sweeping left at 140 stood the bike up and slammed on the anchors to get round a right thats good for 80 and my front sudenly went very odd and i couldnt turn the wheel. Ended up going onto the grass verge and discovering that my valve had split leaving me with no pressure at all in my front tire.

Speaking to my garage they think its because these valve caps weigh so much more than normal plastic ones and that the breaking forces caused the wheel to slow down but the caps kept going. The whole valve had ripped itself out of the tire and i very nearly binned it in what would have been a very bad situation. Ive heard of this sort of thing happening with tireflys (the little led flashing things that go on your valves) but never with metal caps. So inconclusion i would take this as a warning cause i promise you do want to have to deal with not being able to get round a corner.

I would also like to say that within 2 mins of going off the corner a very nice guy showed up on a y reg r6 that was as clean as kwaks sv1000 and gave me a lift of maybe 40 miles to my local pub before going on his way without asking for anything, really nice guy and good to see bikers looking out for each other. (and please dont have about how fast i was going, i like going fast when the road is empty)

Heavy valve caps can cause problems with the valve itself. Your better off with the rubber ones or the lighter small aluminium caps. Some IMHO are too heavy.

Originally Posted by fat_brstd

I took a long sweeping left at 140 stood the bike up and slammed on the anchors to get round a right thats good for 80

congratulations on the worlds fastest SV650 !!!!!

Originally Posted by Captain Nemo

congratulations on the worlds fastest SV650 !!!!!

It says he was on his TLS