6/9/2014 : 3rd Servicing @ 7,272 km and Installation of Goodies on Black Stallion

It's make-up time, for Black Stallion at least. In my last blog entry, I mentioned that I had some plans for Black Stallion and well, I decided to drop off Black Stallion at my regular mechanic's place for the tune-ups and upgrades.

Ah Ho's place was packed with super bikes when I got there, so I wasn't sure if he would be able to assist me today. But having been his loyal customer since I started playing with bikes of 250cc and above, he told me to leave Black Stallion with him and to pick the bike up on Monday. That meant that I couldn't go for a ride on Sunday morning; but oh well, you gotta give and take sometimes.

One of the customers there was pretty interested with the bassy aftermarket exhaust that Black Stallion was using. He had a Naza Blade 250R that was using the Twin Brothers Racing ("TBR") exhaust slip-on, but he felt that Black Stallion's had a nicer feel to it. He asked if he could check out the exhaust setup and I gave him the go-ahead.

The exhaust set-up was courtesy from another shop, and nicely resonating the V-twin fierce growl that bikers would appreciate. He asked if I would be interested to trade with his TBR exhaust and I told him that I would think about it.

The new items that would be fixed by Ah Ho on Black Stallion included the following :

1) Barracuda-style carbon fibre side mirrors with LED indicators;

2) Barracuda-style Quadra LED indicators;

3) Ermax-style tail tidy number plate bracket;

4) Borsh double BM horns;

5) Monster Energy reflective wheel liner stickers;

6) Rubber shift sock for gear;

And since I have to leave Black Stallion over the weekend at Ah Ho's place, I also asked him to do some gear tune-up and changing of motor oil on the bike; although the bike registered only 7,300 km thus far and the next servicing was actually scheduled at 9,000 km.

This was the first time that Black Stallion was to be serviced externally as the previous 1,000 km and 5,000 km servicing was done at Naza's authorised dealer as the bike was still under the 1-year or 10,000 km warranty. Now that the warranty period has lapsed, I would prefer for Ah Ho to service the bike as per what he has done for my other bikes thus far. The current mileage was 7,272 km while the next servicing was supposed to be 9,000 km i.e. 1,728km away. But since Black Stallion was there for those works, why not do it another round of servicing then?

(Note to self : With the current servicing, the next oil change would be 11,272 km.)

Oh, and since the battery was more than a year old, why not do it together?

Well, the above would cost a pretty penny but it's all worthwhile to ensure that Black Stallion continues to perform in top-form for riding safety and enjoyment. Until I get her back and update on the matter next Monday, we would just have to reminisce her through her pictures.

Brief : Naza Blade 250R EFI aka "Black Stallion"

Can you tell the 250R apart from the 650R?

Known as the Hyosung GTR250 EFI in other parts of the world, the Naza Blade 250R EFI ("Blade") was one of the sportiest and prettiest modern sports bike that you could get at its price. It looks very much identical to its bigger brother i.e. Naza Blade 650R EFI.

An easy way to tell the difference of the 2009-2012 version to the 2013-current version by cosmetic was to look at the frontal headlamps- with the previous version being more round while the latest version had a sharp kink at the top similar to the Yamaha XJ6 Diversion. And of course, the carburettor upgrade to EFI had also modernise the handling of this bike.

Retailing in Malaysia at RM14,300, the Blade gave Kawasaki's Ninja 250R (RM22,000) and Honda's CBR250 (RM20,000) a serious run for its monies.

The standard bike came out from the factory looking like this :

The service schedules were at 1,000 km, and every 4,000 km after that. Warranty period as given by Naza was 1 year.

1 year on, the warranty on this bike has since lapsed with accumulated mileage of 7,220 km as of today with the next servicing scheduled at 9,000 km. There were a few e-mails from fellow readers requesting for real world pictures of the Blade.

Well, sharing is caring, so hope you guys and gals enjoy the attached pictures below depicting my Black Stallion from various angles :

From the above pictures, you could see that Black Stallion was still fairly stock-standard with the exception of the following :

- Black-colour front windscreen to give it a more menacing frontal look;
- Fully-debadged like my Toyota Harrier;
- Front stacked headlamps tinted blue for a contrast against the black profile;
- Seats re-wrapped in racer red for contrast yet again; and
- Stock S&T Hyosung exhaust can replaced with an aftermarket slip-on designed to bring out the growls of the V-twin engine.

You could easily change your Blade to the same match with some investments. Not bad at all as it really changed the Blade into a more menacing machine.

Going forward, I have a few other minor mods to be introduced to the Blade, and I would update them on this blog as and when the mods came into place.

The bike rides well, although its very racy profile may not be up to everyone's taste. Compared to my previous Green Hornet (Kawasaki ER6-f) and Silver (Aprilia Tuono), Black Stallion's riding position would have more pressure placed onto one's wrists so it does take a bit of getting used to it if you were coming to this bike from the said other bikes.

I would update further in other entries to come; and as usual, ride safe and let the good times roll!
  

The Story So Far... Sym VTS200 and Hyosung/Naza Blade 250R

My last blog entry was in November 2013, and I would apologise that I have not been active hereabouts as my job has been increasingly demanding as I rose up the ranks, and having the fortune of being blessed with another sonny.

Juggling between career and family meant that biking had to take a back seat, so I partly indulged in my other hobby that was safer and could be indulged at times when the brood had gone to sleep. I am of course referring to my horological journey @ http://andywristwatches.blogspot.com.

Switching to and fro between Japanese and Swiss watches, it was a hobby that was neither time-consuming nor demanding compared to my previous hobby of dabbling with 2-wheelers.

But as bikers would know- once a biker, always a biker.

To keep things simple, I am now dabbling with smaller runabouts that would be easier to maintain and would be nimble in the city-traffic.

My main 2-wheeler garage would be mostly based on the Sym VTS200 maxi-scooter that I fetched my wife for the occasional movies at times, and a Hyosung GT250R (otherwise known as Naza Blade 250R locally) that would be useful for the occasional spin during stressful times.

Both these were relatively affordable bikes in Malaysia, with the following prices:

Sym VTS200 : RM10,000
Hyosung GT250R : RM14,300

I may just keep this blog active again, God-willing; and hopefully, we'll have good adventures together again. Till then, ride safe and let the good times roll...

Questions, Questions, Questions in My E-mail Inbox

There have been an influx of questions as to the reason that I have not been updating this blog of late.

No worries, I am alright here- just that I have been a tad busy plus the fact that I have yet to receive the bike that my friend was to sell to me, so there was really nothing much to update.

The story goes that my friend wanted to trade-in his Kawasaki Z750 CBU bike for a higher-capacity bike, and the bike shop would only offer him a pretty low trade-in sum with the reasoning that most bikers would prefer the Z800 CKD so there was very limited demand for the Z750 in the market.

Hearing the lowly trade-in price, I informed my friend that I would be willing to top-up an additional RM2k on top of the shop's offer, to take-over his bike. It would have been a steal of a price if I had been able to secure the purchase of the bike at less than RM30k. He had initially agreed to sell to me instead since I am able to offer him a higher price than the shop; but it has been weeks and he was said to be having second thoughts about upgrading for another bike since he stood to lose so much monies in depreciation. So here I am waiting for him to make a "jawapan muktamad".

In the meantime, perhaps I could write about Malaysia bikers' favourite scooter instead ie Sym VTS 200. You see these scooters everywhere, and there are really a huge following for this bike. In fact, there has been quite a no. of e-mails from fellow readers that requested that I get my hands on the VTS 200 and begin on modification works. I do have one, but I have hardly ridden it so perhaps I would hereafter utilize it to fill in the spaces now.

So it could just be scooter-mania in the following entries. Ride safe, mates.