Ignore the blog time/date stamp: this a retrospective update while I get things back up to date: the timings and workload weren't conducive to the real-time update that will follow from this point forwards.

Thursday 15th April 2010: 22.00am

With a hundred miles over the thosand showing, and a few hundred miles planned for the weekend, the plan to combine fte thousand mile service with the first upgrade was shelved: of the parts required, some were in Chester, but some were grounded with the no-fly zone over Europe and no-one really knew when that was going to change.

The motor was settling in nicely, and the only concerns were a rattle from the exhausts on fast tickover on choke - which was identified as one missing and one loose bolt on the upper exhaust mount that I'm now keeping an eye on - and play in the clutch and throttle cables, both of which form part of the assigned checks anyway.

The question relating to wheels was asked - as in do I treat them with something - to which the answer was 'yes, frequent cleaning'. Great. My favourite. Still, it's got to be done.

I'd been aware if some great dusts settling onto the bottom of the wheel rim when parked and immediately wondered whether it was caustic brake dust or Icelandic ash, and dusted it off anyway.

The trick with wheels is the same as any aspect of washing the bike: don't just wash the easy bits ... the visible bits. As it happens, Andy the Ad man had brought something from Quasar products for us to review - see main blog. Called the Strong Arm lift, it's beautifully simply and allows a single operator to lift the front or rear wheel off the deck, according to where it's placed, and Steve, Chester's tech, told me the blindingly obvious trick to avoid using the oil tank's sump as a levering point.  Introducing something between the frame rail and lift on the primary-drive side, about the same height as the timing side's protective skid, allows you to lift the bike 'square', and the stand located further forward that you would otherwise be able to do, by which time the frame gets narrower than I would prefer for the sake of stability. A lump of soft wood does that beautifully - and was what was lying around in the shed - without any chance of marking the frame's paint, but I'm emailing the guys at Quasar next to ask them whether a sliding collar might be even better: one that can be moved into position on bikes that need it, but moved out of the way if not.

Bike upright and stable, and with the front of the bike held off the desk by a block under the front engine mount, I can spin both wheels easily to clean them AND because the bike isn't leaning on the sidestand, the primary side of the engine's fins - so frequently forgotten and the first bit to start looking tatty on a black and chrome motor - are visible, accessible and easily to clean ... with a rag: they're machine finished and sharp as hell. It also makes it a lot easier to get to the front of the motor, which really cops for the road dirt thanks to the block tread pattern and the short front mudguard.

Other than all that, the bike gets a clean bill of health and we can start to use it increasingly harder.

The big problem about trying to make running modifications to a bike you sometimes need to use, is that you sometimes need to use it, and last weekend that's what happened.

It was set against a background of the rear tappets on  the Cyclone needing a dose of looking at and its back tyre that would be taking the piss on a 300 mile round trip, and combined with incorrectly diagnosing the re-emergence of the Shovel's slipping clutch as a blocked return from the primary, leaving me with an oil-line too damaged to refit as-was and too short when trimmed. It would have been easier to work on the Shovel if on the bike lift but the partially dismantled Victory was already there and logic dictated that having reassembled it to take it off the ramp, I'd be as well to tax that and take it to Talgarth, which is what I did.

Slightly more pragmatically, it also meant I'd have a bike that I could take to the people who've offered assistance with some fabrication work, 'cos I don't do vans ... 'cos I haven't got one. And because there's a 120/70x21 front end with my name on it sitting in an attic in Surrey: a wheel, tyre and a front mudguard that has the Vegas' rib beaten down it's centre which will bolt straight into the front and allow me to pick up the original; 90/90x21 next time I'm passing.

Spent a miserable few hours at the unit the other day measuring, plotting and planning the single sprung seat conversion, and the more I looked the more I saw. The basic thing is relatively simple, but getting it 'right' has all the hallmarks of being a bugger to get right.

The fender struts are cosmetic covers that hide the mounting bolts for the mudguard and the pillion seat mounts, and because their front is ordinarily buried beneath the conventional saddle, you can't tell that they are a) cosmetic or b) open at the front.

It's not viable to replace those struts without a load of work, although for a moment I did wonder about changing the rear mudguard ... except that I'd lose the raised rib that runs the length of the bike. They could be reprofiled at the front with something robust which would make them look more like they were structural - I'm not 100% sure what's beneath the chrome plate, but I suspect it's a heavy cast alloy. The downside of that is that I was originally planning on relieving them to accommodate the ChopperShox springs ... so might have to rethink that completely. At least there would be no need for them to be rechromed at the end, because I think I can work that into the paint scheme to advantage.

Can't really leave them off because they're necessary to disguise the sheer height of the rear mudguard ... I think, although the paint scheme could be reworked to deal with that, and I could disguise some of the mounting points with a permanent rack and either fixed leather bags or a rail that would allow leather bags to be attached.

And then there's the front of the rear mudguard which is flat to accommodate the seat, and I blow hot and cold as to whether that's an issue of not: once the seat's bolted on, you won't notice it unless you look, but then if you do look it will be an obvious bodge.

I'm starting to realise why people modify Harleys with simple bolt-on stuff, or start from scratch without having to work round anyone else's work.

It does show how well the Vegas has been designed as a complete package, but being so complete makes it difficult to change easily.

Ignore the blog time/date stamp: this a retrospective update while I get things back up to date: the timings and workload weren't conducive to the real-time update that will follow from this point forwards.

Sunday 11th April 2010: 22.00am

I'd briefly considered staying over in Darlington after the Adrenalin Moto open day, but Amanda was going stir crazy and needed to get out and go somewhere – anywhere – and the weather was set to hold fair for the Sunday. Fine by me, the mileage was cranking up but I still wanted the 1,000 mile out of the way ASAP, so pulling the Buell back from the warehouse – because I really didn't want to end up sitting behind the FT500 for a day – we retraced her rain-sodden training route up to Lake Vyrnwy.

Excellent A-roads all the way were a welcome change after the necessary evils of motorways and a roadwork infested A1M up to Darlington, but the best of it was that Amanda was making good progress on the Buell. Actually, she was making bloody good progress ... she was off! Gone! Brilliant! Bloody hell, that girl can ride! She's reading the road well, and her improved confidence isn't at the expense of caution. It's going to be a good day.

Thankfully, she's happy to stay within posted speed limits so I was able to keep pace relatively easily without compromising my running-in regime - which it turned out was stricter than the one posted in the owner's manuel. Apparently I only needed to cosset it for the first 500 miles, but then it also suggests I should be able to shift into top at 55mph but should avoid lugging the motor, which suggests that either UK bikes have taller gearing, or that I have a different definition of lugging the motor.

No matter: I'm not out to prove anything, just enjoying throwing it around on increasingly tighter bends, practising the outboard footpeg weight distribution thingie, and remarking upon the fact that while I've scuffed my heels a few times, the rubber on the footpegs is still unmolested. That shouldn't be a major surprise, really, as the fat front tyre matched to the wide rear means the whole centreline of the bike moves across when heeled over, and it really seems to make a difference.

The tyre compounds, too, seem to be well-matched to the handling characteristic, or else define them, and I can't help but wonder whether Michelin are developing a specific tyre for next year's Fat Bob, or whether it'll stick to Dunlops. There is one strange thing you notice from the tyres, possibly because of the abbreviated mudguard, but more likely because of the tread pattern: the front of the motor gets a good coating of road dirt. It looks to be more than the regular Dynas get, and something to keep an eye on, and add to the cleaning regime.

There's no doubt that the Buell was the more agile of the two bikes, but the Fat Bob gave a very good account of itself. It might have an FL's wheel fitment, but it is truly an FX in its behaviour, and a sporting one at that. Those twin discs up front bring it to a halt quickly and efficiently, and the only negative side of that is I'll need to keep an eye on the alloy wheels: brake dust is horribly caustic, and it just needs a spot of rain to distribute it further and draw it into the aluminium. We might have missed the salted roads, but that's no reason to scrimp on the cleaning regime.

For all that, though, you're always aware of the front wheel. You know it;'s bigger than it needs to be, and there's a sense of the gyroscopic effect when cornering sharply, but the trade-off is that you know it's not going to skip, and that the tyre's footprint will give you the grip that you want, once you've established full confidence in the tyre's tall, round-shouldered profile, which sometimes makes it feel a little awkward – like getting used to a big rear tyre – until you work with it and let the bike roll through the bends.

By the time we got home, as disk was falling, I was starting to look forward to the circulation pads that will accompany the touring upgrade in May/June, which is probably a result of yesterday's 300 miles as much as the 160 of today, but the bike's first thousand miles were nearly up. Just fifty to go, and Chester Harley-Davidson is thirty-five miles away. Shame I've got another hundred and some to do before I can get it booked in, but I'm told that we're within acceptable tolerances so all's well with the world. Well, except for forgetting to take some pictures

Ignore the blog time/date stamp: this a retrospective update while I get things back up to date: the timings and workload weren't conducive to the real-time update that will follow from this point forwards.

Saturday 10th April 2010: 22.00am

Okay, so the bike's running well. Rumour has it that the parts for the first upgrade will be around by sometime next week, and we really need to get the first service and that upgrade sorted out before Rich takes the Fat Bob, rather than having to continually swap bikes. So, where to go?

Adrenalin Moto are having an open day in Darlington. That'll put a good few hundred miles on it. Okay, so 311 to be precise - or about 300 if I stick to the motorways. So 311 it is.

North to Preston, cut across the A59 to Harrogate and up through Ripon onto the A1M. A slight detour on the way back, picking up the more challenging Pateley Bridge road out of Ripon, down through Skipton for fish and chips and back via Rich's on the east side of Manchester for a magazine debrief and to find out when he'll be ready for the Fat Bob.

Highlights? The sheer number of Harleys out on the A59 in the morning sunshine. Low points? The endless roadworks on the A1M that made me regret not knowing the roads better and taking the country roads further North to Leyburn.

An excellent cross-section of roads, with motorways, fast A-roads and hairy twisting B-roads, the Fat Bob dealt with them all ... far better than it had any right to. I keep banging on about this being the first FL Dyna, but even with the balloon tyres front and back, this rides like a streetbike. It truly is the European streetfighter of the range and you can easily see why it is the best seller that it has turned out to be among the performance-oriented Brits.

The seat is wearing after 150 miles in the saddle - a tank's range is do-able but only with the last twenty-or-thirty miles shifting from cheek to cheek: the touring kit is coming with a touring seat and a couple of circulation pads and I'm looking forward to seeing how they work. Still, better news for a pillion. Amanda went all of five miles the previous evening on the small styling flourish that masquerades as a pillion seat and has made it very clear that she's not in a hurry to repeat the experience.

It's the first time I've needed to put fuel in to the tank, and I've determined to keep a log of mileages. Filled-up it shows a range of 197 miles which is bloody impressive. Not as impressive as it will be if it delivers that but my hopes aren't high. At least not until the engine has bedded in. Dullard that I am, I'm going to put those numbers into a spreadsheet and produce a graph off the back of it showing fuel consumption, which I'll link into here, reproducing the exercise that taught me how to use a spreadsheet all those years ago.

I take it pretty steady on the way North, cosseting the engine and with an eagle eye on the speedo, but as I get increasingly confident with the bike I push it a little harder. On the bright side, as the miles accumulate, the engine will take a little more, and I happen to know that 80mph is about 3,000rpm in top so I know I'm not going to hurt it providing I don't race or rally it. What I don't account for is just how happy the bike is to do 80mph in 5th without breaking sweat, which is thankfully identified easily in the dark by the lack of an illuminated '6' on the white-faced speedo, but it's hard to see in daylight and all-but invisible at dawn and dusk.

The engine feels really happy. Crisp on the throttle with the revs decaying quickly when it's shut down, and the only concern is over-revving the motor at this early stage. You start to get used to when you're in the wrong gear, and it's typically as you run across slower moving traffic, cog down to make sure you've got plenty of passing power without  lugging the engine, and then forget to change up again afterwards. Easily done: the engine is that happy.

More disconcerting, however, is when snicking back up the box you realise that the tell-tale is still not lit and you were running in 4th ... and it was just as happy. It might well be happy, but while 80mph corresponds to 3k in sixth, it's closer to 3,300rpm in fifth from recollection and 3,600 in fourth, which isn't best practice when running-in, At least not over protracted distances.

While the motor is still a long way from being run-in, I've settled down with the bike and can pronounce myself content. The low fuel light came on before leaving Darlington, which means the 197 mile range is closer to 157 at this point of its life, but that's only to be expected. It was slightly worse on the return journey, which I've attributed to a couple of longer stops: stopping and restarting the motor, especially when it's had chance to cool down, has some impact on the consumption, which is either the instruments having had chance to recalibrate themselves, or else needing a little more choke.

The last  experience of the day was something of a surprise: I'd started the day with incoming on-line comments saying nothing positive about the twin diminutive headlamps, and finished riding down known but unlit fast sweeping A-roads and surprised at how good the headlamps were. We're still looking into why that might be the case and will keep you informed.

PS. Thanks to Debbie at Adrenalin for the pic: inexplicably, I spent all my time avoiding getting the Fat Bob in the shots.

PPS. watch the main blog and the magazine for more details on the Cafe Racer, 'cos I took that out for a blast round the country lanes ... well, wouldn't you?

Ignore the blog time/date stamp: this a retrospective update to get things rolling: the timings and workload weren't conducive to the real-time update that will follow from this point forwards.

Friday 9th April 2010: 18.00am

At last: a chance to put a few miles on it, blow the cobwebs away after putting the magazine to press, and deal with some important business that was deferred while the production crises loomed all at the same time.

Still plenty of the first tank of fuel, the tyres were scrubbed-in and the sun was up.All three couldn't have been better. I dug out my Hood armoured jeans, and the Switchback jacket that has been tucked away since last summer and set about packing the FXRG waterproofs that we're testing in to their small sacks before heading out to the bike.

Must have spent half an hour working out where I could stash them without them falling off or risking marking the paint/powder-coating with the bungees that were at hand, so I left them in the shed and struck out. Looks like I'll need to be more creative next time.

It didn't matter: it felt like summer, the sky was clear, the forecast positive and I was only going to the other side of the hill that represents the backbone of the country this far south: if it rained, I'd get wet. How wet could you get in fifty miles? What a stupid question! I'd not really thought about it before, but the more time you spend with big lazy American motorcycles, the more that the word 'only' creeps in when talking distances. I used to commute twenty-five miles a day each way and knew all too well that all but the best waterproofs would breach within twenty. But what the hell! The magazine was being printed, the stress was over.

First time out on proper dry roads on a Fat Bob since the CVO model twelve months earlier, I was very aware of the weight of the front wheel and suspicious of the tyres: the Fat Bob is the last Dyna that still runs a sixteen inch rear, and a Dunlop at that, but it was only a matter of adjusting myself to the bike.

It had felt unsure in the wet, but all 'new' bikes do and it doesn't do to push your luck.

I'd resolved to consciously ride this 'properly', which is to say without touching the footrests down unnecessarily: they'd arrived intact, and the great and the good of the motorcycle press weren't going to get their hands on it, so might as well practice 'the technique' from the outset.

Didn't need to on the first fee roundabouts: too busy getting a feel for whether it's going to drop-in as much as it feels like it will - yes it does on the first roundabout, but successively less with every new encounter. And then you scuff your heel, so revert to a the technique of a protectionist riding style.

A what?

Stand on the outside footrest ... well, apply your weight. It's something I picked up from Axel Scherer, CCE Germany's PR man, when we were road-testing kit bikes aeons ago, as about the only way to get their low-riding 'Bomber' with its super-low and unbending footrests round corners. The sight of him hurtling round sweeping bends almost upright has stayed with me, and it was my turn to try it.

It's something else to think about, and it makes corners even more fun, but at the expense of lapsing into laziness on the straights, which is when I discovered that it really doesn't like to do seventy on fast dual carriageways.

It's partly to do with the aggressive riding position, a few people have suggested the tyre characteristics have something to do with it, and I'm not the only one who's noticed it. You'll need your 10% speedo error +2mph and a friendly traffic cop until you get a feel for the feel of the engine, but with a Davida helmet, stock pipes and no tacho, you slip into a cruise-control state that seems to be set at eighty. Uncanny. Slow down consciously, and slip back into it again. Always eighty, almost always automatically. I'm going to dig out my old Momo and see if that lets any more engine noise through to curtail those tendencies. I'm glad it arrived with nearly 400 miles on it.

The fifty-odd miles were covered ridiculously easily, and even a phone call to explain that there were big holes in the magazine where the ad pages didn't match the spaces for them on the magazine's flatplan didn't dampen my spirits, and I managed the return leg in fading light and reducing temperatures without once regretting leaving the waterproof behind.

If this was going to be how the summer panned out, bring it on.

But then, of course, I'll be handing the Fat Bob over to Rich when the Vision arrives, but at least I'll have somewhere to put my waterproofs ...

Ignore the blog time/date stamp: this a retrospective update to get things rolling: the timings and workload weren't conducive to the real-time update that will follow from this point forwards.

Saturday 3rd April 2010: 12.00am

The weather finally breaks: dry roads, a clean bike and bloody good job too: you can't run a feature with a dozen identical shots of a black bike emerging into a grey day from a dark workshop.

It doesn't look like it will hold for long, but then I'm not exactly unoccupied so set off to find a location close to hand, and the best I can come up after riding round a small town for half an hour was a metaphor we've used before with a Fat Boy - a local fitness centre, which has a new playground adjacent that might just work, but in the end settle for a bloody big puddle. An hour later I'm back at the desk banging my head against it: a lot of them - like this one - have a silver birch masking the shape of the handlebars, and I can't believe I didn't see it. Still, I've got enough, and certainly enough to make the feature

It will be the last time I see the bike - with the notable exception of checking the headlamps - until the magazine has finally gone to press. Have covered all of thirty five miles so far, none of them that will give any real sense of what it's like as a bike. Never mind, though. We've got it for six months or so, so there's plenty of time to get in the saddle: the feature will be to introduce the model, its place in the model range, and this: the blog.