The first JH600 in Nanjing?

[bikerdoc]

jkp,
I am bending a rule or two and riding without for a few days. I have carried the sales contract with me as I understand this gives me a bit of grace time. The wife is on the registration detail as I type this and I should have the plate, insurance, tax paid, etc this week. I am really not too worried. I rode the Chang Jiang for 6 months without a plate and the local police only yelled a bit and told me to go get one. Once I got the plate they were happy. I mainly want to be legal so I can ride longer distances as I think I can trust the JH600 modern technology more than the old Chang Jiang 750 WWII technology. More time riding and less time working on it.

I have done nothing to the bike yet. I have a new muffler from Franki and a new shock and springs coming. But to be honest, the Euro model has a pretty decent suspension out of the box. Making it taller may have worked well to improve this from the ride AW had? I am still trying to identify shop to install the new and improved springs and rear shock as I agree it could be better. I was just pleasantly surprised with the standard units.

I am looking at around RMB13000 for plate, taxes, and insurance here in Nanjing so I am holding off on new Panniers and maybe wheels for few weeks. My monthly fun funds is depleted till I ride the bike around a bit and decide the next priority.

Look forward to meeting up with some of you guys in the future for a mountain dirt road ride or two.

DT

Excellent, this is the kind of information that I like to read (cheers for sharing!) so that I can sway myself to bloody well place the order and have 'er turn up a month or so later... I'm lucky in that I can do a fair bit of bike work myself, and have my own garage which is busting at the seams... I also could use the one of the local dealerships to help me put 'er together too. So speaking about garage...

I got home lastnight after having ridden about 600km in the day, and three tank fulls of fuel on my Dragstar. I rode round mountains around Ningbo, back of Shengzhou, Ninghai and a couple of other places. My battery was on its last legs and decided it didn't want to fire up yesterday after being set aside for more than a week. Perhaps it was just to-spite me! Anyway I connected it up with my jumper-leads to my car battery, and still rode the bike round. I tested it out by parking on a hill after an hours running, and the battery was as dead as a doorknob. No big deal I just made sure that I refuelled in gas stations that had inclines or hills. This then kind of set the tone for where I could ride. Rode round Binhai, to Tangxi over a few mountains to Hengxi then out some back roads to Fenghua through to Xikou into Simingshan (huge mountain range over in these parts). This set me up to ride to a BP that's situated on a steep hill on the other side of Simingshan Village. Turn off bike, refuel, wash hands and face, pitstop for a no.1 gulp down some fluids, and try the starter button. No way-ho zay. No worries crash start... and away we gooooooOoooo! Fast forward to around 7pm last night after having ridden round the back of Xinchang to Shenzhen and the Ninghai hot-springs, as I was riding through some back country into a fairly familiar town, when I spotted a gas station that had a slight gradient to the forecourt. I was still on main tank... after having filled a second time throughout the days ride... so thought well better make it 3. Fill the tank (65 kuai, so I was close to reserve) -so good call I think to myself... then what? I couldn't f^%$*n crash start the bike... no matter how many times I pushed, heaved and lugged that 280kg behemoth round... no matter how much I sweated or strained... she wasn't starting, not on that slope, nor the next one I pushed 'er to, or the third one, that was steeper but then turned into a gravel track... finally after about 1 hour of struggling and pushing a few km's out of that town... I got 'er started and a side road that I was sure she'd not start as the slope didn't look all that. But as luck would have it, vrrrroOOOOoommm! you beauuuutyyy!

Opps... <phone call>

Then I rode the next 70km home.