Transfusions, GROMs, & Zombies.

     It was a beautiful weekend for riding, and riding is what I did. First though, I got to go back to Saturday morning. Saki needed a transfusion, so that is what we did. I woke up and first thing I did was go out and get Saki running. I needed to heat up the oil, so that I could drain it all out. I had to remove a bolt from the left side fairing in order to get my socket in to loosen the oil drain bolt. I wasn't all that concerned, I knew there was a possibility of that, not to mention that I might just have to remove the right side fairing completely.

     Once the oil was drained, I let the engine cool down, while I made a good breakfast. I ate, then cleaned up the kitchen, and then back to Saki I went. I had to get to the oil filter to replace it with the new K&N filter that I got. I tried to find a way through the headers to get to it, but that was no bueno. The fairing was going to have to come off. It took me a little while. I had to get all the bolts out, and then the plastic rivets, that have two different ways of removing them. The larger ones at the bottom of the fairing, had to be pried off with a screwdriver, Once they were up far enough, I could pull them out. The three smaller rivets that are located up near the headlights, had to have the center punched in them, and then pried up. It's not as easy as it sounds. With all of those removed, I still couldn't get the right side faring off. I didn't want to force anything, so I went to work finding a way to just open it up a bit, and getting the wrenches in there.

     I had to put a towel down and lay on my back as far under Saki as I could get. I managed to wiggle the wrench and my oil filter tool in to get it off. It was a struggle, but not too hard. I let the excess oil drain from the filter opening, and then got the K&N filter. I didn't need the oil filter tool to get it on. It had a hex nut molded into it, so that you only had to wrench it on. It worked great. The only problem was, that I couldn't get my torque wrench in there to get the suggest amount of torque on it. It didn't call for much pressure, so I only snugged it up, and not tried to force it tighter. Worked out great again. With the oil filter on, and the drain plug back in, I got out the Motul 300 full synthetic oil. It freaked me out a little. I'd never used a synthetic oil. It was green. I thought for a second that I got the wrong thing, and I had engine coolant. I checked the bottle, and I was good. I bought 5 liters worth of oil. I had a small 1 liter bottle, and a larger 4 liter bottle. According to my bike manual, with the motor fully enpty, it called for 2.3 liters of oil. I put the first liter in, and started it up, so that I could get oil into the oil filter, then I poured the rest in. I made sure that everything was buttoned back down, and started Saki up to circulate all the new fluid through the engine. I had no leaks, so everything was a go.

     After getting that done, I headed into the shower, so that I cold get out and ride. I had a plan, and that plan involved me going to Melbourne and checking out GROMs. All cleaned  up, I got on Saki and headed out. My first stop was for gas. The fuel light was on when I was doing that final run though after the oil change. Once I got out on the road, I noticed something different. Saki sounded great. The engine wasn't as chunky as it always had been, and the rev up was smoother. I couldn't believe what that different oil did for Saki. The change was dramatic. I am a full convert to synthetic oil now. I don't know if it was the Motul oil, or the K&N oil filter, or the combination of the two of them, but that is my standard from now on. It even seemed like there was a little more power in the throttle. That could be because it was so much smoother that the engine actually had to do less to respond. I wrote a small blog on Moto Amino about it, and I got a comment from a guy that races a CBR 1000. He said that he only uses Motul in his bike, and he was going to now put it in his ZX14 seeing how much of a difference in my bike. Race oil is a bit different and I'm sure that he got a different Motul oil for the ZX14. The make oil for racing as well as just normal bikes. I think with that little blog post, I converted a few other people. I got a few people viewing that, so Motul mind find a few new loyal customers. I know I'm one of them now.

     With Saki running better than new, I headed to Honda of Melbourne. I wanted to get a good look at their GROMs and see what they were willing to sell them for. A guy met me at the door as I walked in. Nice guy, but he was throwing the sales pitch on pretty heavy. I was only their to look and think about what the next few months will hold with me getting one. He even offered to deliver the bike to my house if I signed the paperwork that day. I told him that I was in saving mode, and that I was going to buy it outright in a couple of months, and have money left over to mod it out. I'm going full stunt mode on it when I do get it. Crash cage, rear bars, extended rear foot pegs. the works. The great thing, on that little bike, that stuff is pretty cheap. If I did that to Saki, it would cost me a couple thousand dollars. The GROM will be less than  thousand. I got the guys card and told him that I would deal with him when I was ready to buy. I got my info and listed me as a customer, so that he could update me on an sales or things like that. The only thing that concerned me, is that he was saying that it sold at $3200 but it was more like $4500 out the door. I'm going to have to do some wheeling and dealing when I'm ready to buy I'm not paying $4500 for that bike.

     I rode around a little more, to get Saki some good solid new feel ride time in, and then headed home. I rode a little today, and did get a couple of new pictures of Saki looking and feeling good, but my battery was under 20% all of the day, and when I put it in low power mode, it down't upload those photos to the cloud, so I don't have them for you right now. By the way, have I mentioned how much I love the new phone. It was on the charger last, Friday morning when I woke up for work. I just plugged it in, when I started writing this. It was at 1% battery life. Three days. I got three days out of the battery. Granted I didn't really use my phone much today, but I got all the important things in. I posted Picture of the Day on Instagram, and sent said picture to a friend of mine. She doesn't have Instagram, but this is something I did on Facebook and she didn't want to be left out of it, so she gets the personal text daily. I checked my email a few times, and looked over Instagram for a little while, and the battery lasted as long as I needed it to.

     Saturday night I sat down and turned on some Netflix. Oh, I should update you on the no drinking thing. I haven't had a drink in 5 weeks now, and really have no desire to. I did think about it briefly last night, because I just felt the need to have social interaction, but that passed as soon as I pulled up Netflix and saw Santa Clarita Diet was out. It's a funny take on a zombie show. it stars Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant. The play a married couple that are realtors, and Drew just happens to turn into a zombie. Everything is going fine until she finally has human flesh. After that, she can no longer just eat raw meat, so they have to find a way to get her fed. They decide to be a little like Dexter Morgan, and kill bad guys. Oh yeah, they just so happen to live between two cops. Each episode is only a half hour, and they are quirky funny. The first episode is a little hard to take, when Drew goes through the change, but once you are past that, it is all humor and ridiculous attempts at violence.

     Speaking of zombie shows, The Walking Dead returned tonight. That is all I'm going to say about that though, I don't want to spoil anything for anyone. I will say that it was a good episode. With that I will say my goodnight. Whoa, I just remembered something. I transferred the money from savings that I'm going to need to get my exhaust system for Saki. I decided on the Yoshimura. I've heard you don't have to make any adjustments to the tuning for it, but I'm waiting to hear back from Yoshimura on that. I emailed them on Saturday, so I expect to hear form them some time tomorrow. I'm still going to wait a couple of weeks before I order it though. When I do, I'm also ordering the white leather riding jacket I mentioned last week. I'm going all safety with this one, which is way the sales guy at Honda couldn't talk me into buying the GROM this weekend. I have a few things to do with Saki first, and then I will focus on the GROM. The exhaust system is really the last big thing I have to do to Saki. there might be a few little bels and whistles later on, but after the exhaust Saki is pretty much done, and will be exactly the way I want it. Anything else I do will e mostly aesthetic in nature, other than fluid changes and new tires from time to time. That is when I can solely focus on riding. That is when the real fun begins.

     Ok, for real now. I'm off to bed. Peace in and goodnight.