Great rides, and great pics guys, well done! It's been a really busy week for me, flew to Queensland (Mount Tambourine) for my son's wedding reception on Saturday, flew back Sunday.
Monday promised to be nice, so I did an oil and filter change on the Kawasaki ZZR1100. Mine has centre stand mounts, but no centre stand (probably due to the aftermarket 4-1-2 exhaust system) so Spotty had dropped off some race stands (and a guitar!) when he came over to feed my cats on Saturday night. It was easy enough to get the big black bike up on the race stand to do the oil and filter change, and I was very happy that the oil that came out was almost as clean looking, as the oil that went back in! Unlike a lot of sports bikes, access to the sump plug and filter cover is easy, with no requirement to remove fairing panels.
ZZR1100 Monday 24 November 2025 1 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
Once I changed the oil and filter I thought it was a good idea to lube the chain, and happily discovered that it has a new DID chain and new sprockets. I used some adhesive chain grease. Not specifically for motorcycles, but all I had in my garage, and so I just fired the big ZiZR up, put it in gear and sprayed the gluey grease on the chain. unlike a lot of chain lubes I've used, there was no pool of lube on the concrete afterwards. I went to wipe some overspray off the rim, but this stuff is so sticky, that I couldn't just wipe it off with a shop towel I had to use engine degreaser. I finished everything, then had to take my car off to do some errands.
I came back around 3pm, and thought, "Fcuk it, I want to go for a ride". Now 3pm on a Monday in Melbourne is not the best time to go for a ride, because the mum's (Mom's) in their SUV's are out picking up their kids from school and I have to pass 3 schools to get out of the 'burbs, then of course the freeway was clogged with cars and semi-trailers clogging the roads at walking pace, so I had to use the emergency lane where I could sneak around the cagers, who weren't at all happy with me "Jumping the queue", even though the traffic jams were created by 4 and 18 wheelers, not motorcycles. Anyway, I finally managed to get off the "freeway" and onto my favourite "B" roads, and away, to a degree, from the madding crowds.
The big Kawasaki was running fine, but the heat generated by the stop-start traffic was annoying it, and every now and then would activate it's thermatic fan and blow a burst of hot air at me, in protest. Once away from the huddled masses though, it was in it's element, and cruised along at slightly illegal speeds (not as fast as I've been on it before, too many kids around) and just enjoyed riding along on a warm sunny day. Because I had left quite late, I cut the ride short (60 miles) but was happy that the return ride was so much less congested and had a lovely ride home. For the rest of the week I've been cutting down trees and really pushing my new brush cutter to it's limits in an effort to clear 34 years worth of debris around my fence line, in anticipation of having new fences put up next week. I'm happy to report that I dropped 5-6 trees with no injuries to myself, except I may have heat seized one of my several chainsaws, from working it too hard. Hopefully I'll be able to fix it, it's just an old "Solo" that I picked up at a swap meet a few weeks ago, but is much lighter than my "Echo" which also did a great job, but is bloddy heavy compared to the Solo.
But I digress. Ride # (no idea) was great, and I'm looking forwards to many more before the year is out.
ZZR1100 Monday 24 November 2025 6 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
