Having spent considerable time and effort finding out how to make my FXDX go faster, I reckoned I ought to put some thought into making it stop better.

Whilst the front brake does work, it's not exactly impressive - especially for a twin disc, 4-piston set-up.

And because I'm tight, I thought I'd start with the brake pads. As with engine modifications, lack of choice is not really an issue, with brake pads offered by Brembo, SBS and EBC to name a few.

So here's my first question - who made the OEM pads back in 2002 and who makes them now? I don't want to buy a 'different' set of pads only to find out that they're exactly what I've already got - only this time wearing the original manufacturer's brand rather than Harley's.

What I desperately need is real life information about what works best.

I need your help here! What are your experiences?

Out of the frying pan

A couple of weeks ago I rode down to Leicester to consult my very old and irritable friend Tony, who runs Classic Approach a respected motorcycle paint shop and who is also extremely handy around bikes generally. In truth, I was after a quick fix tidy-up of the Road King which is, bless it, definitely looking its age. Furthermore I was hoping to get Tony to slap on a shiny Twin Cam chain-case I’d scored sometime back and a delicious pair of S&S silencers that I’d bought from Bill at the Trading Post just before he called it quits.

The consultation/piss-take started well but Tony soon spotted a potential problem, both gusset plates supporting the rear loop of the main frame, right by the swinging arm mount looked dodgy, and Tony, apologising as he did so, pushed his finger right through the flaky paint and then alarmingly right through the rusted plates. Damn you British winters and salted roads. A small job had just turned into a major re-build. I can’t say I was delighted, but hey, that’s why I’d ridden the bike over to Tony’s in the first place, he‘s got a practiced eye for just that kind of thing. Not knowing what other rot might be lurking elsewhere around the frame, it was soon agreed that the best thing was just to strip the Road King down completely, blast the frame clean, weld it up where needed and then either powder-coat it or paint it.

Geoff at Cycle Enterprises (Stoke Golding, Warwickshire Tel: 01455 213 007) was Tony’s suggestion for the strip and re-build, so while he sweet-talked Geoff, I rode back to Manchester considerably more carefully than I’d rode down.

Not normally all that flush with cash I however finished a new logo for local mate (Hairy) Pete who was launching a new parts business: Mr B’s Custom Cycles (mr-b-customcycles.co.uk) and then sold a load of my Road King cast-offs to another mate, ex-motorcycle cop Nick who had just recently scored a 1995 FLHR himself. But though he virtually cleaned me out of unwanted chrome kak, I had to let him have the S&S silencers too, which in fairness was all he’d really come over to see anyway.

Some folding now in pocket, last weekend I rode back down to Leicester. Picking up Tony I followed him over to see Geoff and we chatted about what happens next. He’s doing the strip down and rebuild, checking the top end of the motor while it’s out and rebuilding the forks with new seals. Meanwhile, Tony will ferret away parts liberated, clean them, polish them or paint them. So that was that, I tearfully left the Road King there with a down payment.

Here’s the rough check list (subject of course to change):

1. Frame: Bead-blasted clean, re-welded where required then painted or powder-coated depending on bank balance.

2. Engine: Top end looked at, probably de-coked, possibly ported and polished. Serious new and shiny Terry’s starter motor fitted (because I had one - thanks Reedie btw). Re-painted barrels and bottom end, new Twin Cam chain-case fitted (using a one-off adapter to take my old Evo 3 screw derby cover - thanks Reedie again) or strip chrome from old chain-case and polish, re-chrome or paint black. Generally fettle. Possibly new exhaust system, or fettle existing system, the saucily named Bubba Cross-Dressers.

3. Wheels: Re-paint black, leaving only polished rims, JMA front brake disc inners, paint black or at least strip awful old chrome off and polish.

4. Brightwork: Paint to be kept standard (I like it and it’s the absolutely original Road King colour scheme) but brought back to life by Tony and re-lacquered, while other parts looking iffy (like the subframe covers) to be stripped and painted black. Cool.

5. Odds & Sods: Like cables and switchgear. I’ve left them with Geoff, if they go on they go on.

The end result should be really very nice, most definitely a 1995 Evo Road King, but improved somewhat, cleaner and even a bit meaner.

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?