Tracer's First 1000 Miles; June 2020
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Running-in the Tracer
Even though the government has eased COVID-19 restrictions to the extent I can ride anywhere in England I'm confining myself to my home county of Dorset. My reason for doing this is that while daily new infections are running at an estimated 8,000 and daily deaths are still counted in hundreds of deaths, I don't think the government should be allowing us to drive anywhere in England other than for the purpose of conducting our business. What sort of message does last weekend's scenes at Bournemouth beach and Durdle Door send to those who have been on the COVID-19 frontline? So today, 4th June 2020, I went for a ride around Dorset.
The Tracer is booked in a for a service next week so I decided to ride an anticlockwise loop of Dorset to get to its first service mileage of 600 miles. (Three and a half months to do 600 miles!) The unusually hot weather came to an end yesterday but, to be honest, the riding weather was perfect for me today. It was dry and partly cloudy with temperatures in the high teens.
The route was around 135 miles and pushed the Tracer's odometer to 560 miles. I left home heading for Shaftesbury and from there I headed onto Cerne Abbas via Sturminster Newton. From Cerne Abbas I went through Beaminster and onto Marshwood. Then it was around Bridport, along the coast road to Abbotsbury, up past Hardy's Monument to Dorchester and home via Blandford and Witchampton.
I'm loving the Tracer. I'm still running it in but the engine feels very good. It feels very tractable and willing even with it being limited to 4,500 rpm during running in. It's much lighter than the Varadero and puts out 20 more BHP so performance isn't going to be an issue for me. With its comfortable seat making a good seating position for my old bones and negligible vibration I felt like I could do lots of miles in a day on it. It's a shame I'm not going too far at the moment as I think it will be a great little tourer now that I've added a SW-Motech rack for my huge Givi top-box.
If I was picky then I would criticise the positioning of the ignition. It's recessed in front of the handlebars and it can be difficult with winter gloves on to insert and turn the ignition key. The gearbox is OK but I'm hoping it gets smoother after a few more miles. It could just be me getting used to it? With the low revs I haven't really had a chance to play with the quick shifter. Riding gently I achieved 58 mpg. I think a realistic range between fill-ups will be about 150 miles (excluding reserve). The Varadero used to do over 200 miles on a fill-up so a bit bigger fuel tank would have been nice. But this is nitpicking. It's a bike that really suits me and I'm very pleased with it. Hopefully I'll get to tour on it, if not this year, then next?