My Kingdom For a Bike

Number of motorcycles owned - 2
Number of motorcycles serviceable - 0

I was hoping to get the Hongdou back on the road today. I got a package from M&P in the post this morning containing new grips and levers.
The grips where spot on as they are identical to the ones already on the bike (i.e. I only have to change one). This was particularly impressive as there was no picture on the website, just the description "Moto-X grips, black".

The levers where another story, I took a chance and ordered some levers for a Honda XLR125 as I am buggered if I'm going to pay £12 for the "proper" (monkey metal) ones off eBay.
Plus my past experiences of eBay Chinese bike importers has shown them to be less than reliable.

On first inspection they didn't look too bad (apart from them being silver when the description on the packet said "front brake lever black"). Not the end of the world I thought, silver levers will look quite cool. The profile of the part of the lever that depressed the master cylinder was only slightly different to the original. So after five minutes of judicious filing it working like a charm.
Unfortunately it had completely escaped my attention that the part of the lever that operates the brake light switch, was nothing like (D'OH!).

So I have relented and called the guy who I bought the bike off.
"Ok, no problem, send me an email". I shan't hold my breath.

I've also managed to bugger the SV up as well. Noticed the brakes where binding a little bit when I wheeled it out of the garage on Saturday, so I whipped the calipers off and gave them a cleanup and applied a dob of grease where needed.

The backs where about shot so I nipped into town to Hein Gericke and bought some new ones (and some fangled HH sintered ones at that !).
I was struggling to push the pistons back far enough to get the caliper back on the disc and bent the back plate of one of the pads, cracking the friction material. The sintered pads seem to have copper back plates (weight saving ?) which are rather soft. D'OH! (again).