Lavers Hill via the Great Ocean Road          Sunday 15th June, 2003

 

Suzuki GSXR1000       Ray Walker (leader)                 Honda CBR929           Ben Warden

Suzuki GSXR1000       Daniel Kosinski                        Kawasaki ZX12R        Cliff Peters

Honda CB400/4           Ron Johnston

 

It was cold, wet, and a strong southerly was blowing. I was pretty surprised to see anyone at the West Gate Shell Servo on this bleak, winter’s day. There are some seriously sick people in this world.

 

Daniel was there with his new blue and white GSXR1000. He seemed to be having electrical problems – the bike was hard to start and a red dash light had come on, Daniel assuming an alternator or low battery problem. Then again, his bike hadn’t been riden for three weeks and the battery may have been low.

 

Luckily, Ray was awake to this red light peculiarity. The light indicates any fault, from the fuel injection engine management systems to a faulty battery. Or it could mean nothing! That is, turn the ignition on and off, and the light goes away! This is a known problem, especially with 600s, according to Ray. The trick is to take it to the dealer with the fault showing, they reset something in the black box, and it never occurs again. Of course, it is tricky to get to the black box without taking the key out to get under the seat – you need a second key.  By the time we had sorted this out Daniel had already removed the globes (thinking he was still on his VFR). The bike ran faultlessly for the rest of the day.

 

Now 15 minutes past the nominal 9.30 am leave time, we headed off over the West Gate Bridge. I took up the rear riding station, a fairly easy task with this group of hard chargers. It wasn’t long before Ron was starting to feel the effects of the strong southerly blowing his little bike down on power and really struggling. By Little River, now off the Freeway, Ron pulled over and indicated that he was leaving the ride, not wanting to hold the group up. A wise, if somewhat frustrating decision for him, his Bandit in bits, the decision to rebuild the motor a costly and time consuming process.

 

The four of us worked our way down to Lara and around the back blocks of Geelong and on to Moriac. We were making good time but the wind was strong and constant, degrading fuel economy dramatically. At the Winchelsea intersection I figured I wasn’t going to reach Lorne, my low fuel indicator light flashing most unexpectedly. So after conferring with the team, I headed up to Winchelsea for fuel, agreeing to meet them in Lorne.  Playing catch-up, I was stopped in the Otways just above Lorne for a licence check. No dramas given the moist conditions. I heard that night on the news that the Otways received 70 mm of rain over the weekend and I reckon I met every one of those millimetres.

 

Now quite delayed, I continued on through Lorne, knowing the lads had seen me and would catch up. At about half way to Apollo Bay Ray caught me and we dawdled along to Apollo Bay where we stopped for lunch. It was agreed to call it quits, the roads wet everywhere. Lunch was leisurely as we disrobed and warmed up in the large takeaway, lasagne the meal of choice. Ray barely touched his and hence Daniel did well, scoring a second serve.

 

We headed back down the Great Ocean Road all the way to Anglesea, stopping outside the Bakery. Cliff continued on to Geelong to visit relatives. The three of us then continued up to Moriac and around to Lara where Ray continued on the Bacchus Marsh road to Sunbury and home.  Daniel and I rejoined the Freeway at Lara where I immediately pulled in to the new, enormous BP, a kilometre or so after my fuel light started winking again. For other interested 929 riders, the bike took 15.41 litres to fill, meaning reserve is about 2.8 litres (assuming an 18.25 litre tank – which I have proved a couple of times!) meaning you have about 45 km on reserve at 16 km/litre.

 

There were very few cars on the road and we had a good ride, the group staying together for most of the day. Traction was surprisingly good, though Ray did get all crossed up somewhere, all those horses trying to escape.  Home by 4.30 pm with a total distance of 430 km travelled. That evening I found myself back in Sunbury for a full night’s viewing of the MotoGP and World Supers. Thanks Ray and Katrina.

 

Ben Warden (Honda CBR929)