Post by mlbv on Aug 30, 2015 15:57:55 GMT
Okay, a little background...
A week and a half ago, i took the bike to to Bath to help my brother move house... The bike was sitting for a couple of days, and after a horrendous time waiting for keys and lumping and humping boxes in the rain, i jumped on the bike to come home and a mile or so into the journey the front brake locked on so flexed the AA card and got taken home....
After all of the stress i was of the opinion that if the easiest thing to do was to throw money at the problem to make it go away, that was what I would do, so i cracked the banjos on the callipers to release the pressure and limped the bike to a local bike shop on the back brake only to got him to repair it... I said that I think the seals in the master cylinder were at fault, BUT he said it would be the callipers, so he did those....
Well, the bike seemed fine for a week, so I rode from London to Leeds on Thursday for a funeral on Friday, leaving the bike parked up for two days and started the journey back at 10am on Saturday, and this is where the real story starts....
About a quarter of a mile from the hotel, the front brake locks on again, so I limp it into the car park of a block of flats and call out the AA again, now, i know that the AA won't come out for the same fault more than once, and even though i had paid to have the fault fixed (but it wasn't) I decided to say that I had an issue with the drive shaft under power (something they couldn't/wouldn't be able to verify)....
I made the call at 10.15 in the morning and the first chap came out pretty quick to tell me that he wouldn't/couldn't help and he called out the tow truck who arrived about 20 minutes later...
by now it was about 11am....
we loaded the bike onto the back of the flatbed and I thought 'meh, I'll have to go toe to toe with the bike shop when i get home, but at least i can snooze in the back of the crew cab for the rest of the 200 mile journey...'
How wrong I was...
The flatbed was only taking me as far as Leicester, oh well, that was the start of the three man relay race with my bike as the baton...
We arrived at Leicester services and unloaded the bike and I was informed that the next stage of the relay would be along to take me further down the M1...
a couple of hours of leaning against the bike which was loaded up with my stuff so I couldn't really leave it and blokey number two turns up, he constructs the trailer and half an hour later we hit the road again, this time only going as far as Toddington services, where the bike was unloaded and I was left to mooch about in the car park for an alleged 40 minutes...
An hour later i called the AA and asked where my next man with a van (and ridiculously overcomplicated trailer) was... they told me it was expected at 8.30pm....
I grew increasingly annoyed during the two hours plus that i was waiting to the point that just as I was counting out 150 quid for some random bloke with a flatbed I spotted in the lorry park to take me the rest of the way home when the final part of the relay pulled into the services...
I said sorry to the chap I was just about to employ and we loaded the bike onto the third and final trailer and we were back on the M1 at about 9pm... a full eleven hours after i started my journey....
I finally put the key in the lock of my front door at 11.35pm, 13 hours and 20 minutes after I first reported my breakdown and over 12 hours after the bike was loaded onto the first flatbed...
I had joined the AA only 10 days previously and paid 140 quid for the home start, take you home or where you are going cover, not the cheapest package by far, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, instead of the 140 quid and 13 hours of utter hell and boredom, I would rather have hired a transit for sixty quid, slung the bike in the back leaned against a p*ss stained mattress and strapped down and done the journey in just five hours...
A week and a half ago, i took the bike to to Bath to help my brother move house... The bike was sitting for a couple of days, and after a horrendous time waiting for keys and lumping and humping boxes in the rain, i jumped on the bike to come home and a mile or so into the journey the front brake locked on so flexed the AA card and got taken home....
After all of the stress i was of the opinion that if the easiest thing to do was to throw money at the problem to make it go away, that was what I would do, so i cracked the banjos on the callipers to release the pressure and limped the bike to a local bike shop on the back brake only to got him to repair it... I said that I think the seals in the master cylinder were at fault, BUT he said it would be the callipers, so he did those....
Well, the bike seemed fine for a week, so I rode from London to Leeds on Thursday for a funeral on Friday, leaving the bike parked up for two days and started the journey back at 10am on Saturday, and this is where the real story starts....
About a quarter of a mile from the hotel, the front brake locks on again, so I limp it into the car park of a block of flats and call out the AA again, now, i know that the AA won't come out for the same fault more than once, and even though i had paid to have the fault fixed (but it wasn't) I decided to say that I had an issue with the drive shaft under power (something they couldn't/wouldn't be able to verify)....
I made the call at 10.15 in the morning and the first chap came out pretty quick to tell me that he wouldn't/couldn't help and he called out the tow truck who arrived about 20 minutes later...
by now it was about 11am....
we loaded the bike onto the back of the flatbed and I thought 'meh, I'll have to go toe to toe with the bike shop when i get home, but at least i can snooze in the back of the crew cab for the rest of the 200 mile journey...'
How wrong I was...
The flatbed was only taking me as far as Leicester, oh well, that was the start of the three man relay race with my bike as the baton...
We arrived at Leicester services and unloaded the bike and I was informed that the next stage of the relay would be along to take me further down the M1...
a couple of hours of leaning against the bike which was loaded up with my stuff so I couldn't really leave it and blokey number two turns up, he constructs the trailer and half an hour later we hit the road again, this time only going as far as Toddington services, where the bike was unloaded and I was left to mooch about in the car park for an alleged 40 minutes...
An hour later i called the AA and asked where my next man with a van (and ridiculously overcomplicated trailer) was... they told me it was expected at 8.30pm....
I grew increasingly annoyed during the two hours plus that i was waiting to the point that just as I was counting out 150 quid for some random bloke with a flatbed I spotted in the lorry park to take me the rest of the way home when the final part of the relay pulled into the services...
I said sorry to the chap I was just about to employ and we loaded the bike onto the third and final trailer and we were back on the M1 at about 9pm... a full eleven hours after i started my journey....
I finally put the key in the lock of my front door at 11.35pm, 13 hours and 20 minutes after I first reported my breakdown and over 12 hours after the bike was loaded onto the first flatbed...
I had joined the AA only 10 days previously and paid 140 quid for the home start, take you home or where you are going cover, not the cheapest package by far, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, instead of the 140 quid and 13 hours of utter hell and boredom, I would rather have hired a transit for sixty quid, slung the bike in the back leaned against a p*ss stained mattress and strapped down and done the journey in just five hours...
.
