The VFR spent most of the last few weeks in the shop waiting for a water pump. It started the afternoon after getting home, I popped back into the garage and noticed a small puddle of coolant on the floor. Not a good sign.

I rang the local bike shop, a new one as I'm in Canberra now. The guy on the phone said something about "Don't worry, they'll do that when its hot and the overflow tank fills. No need to bring it in."

I sat back after hanging up. I've had this bike for ten years and 140,000km. I've ridden in hot weather, sat about in hot traffic and parked it when it's been much hotter. It's never done this. And certainly not with an almost empty overflow tank. I decided to head to the shop. Somethings wrong.

Up the road is another shop, so I dropped in and asked to grab some coolant. I topped a little in the tank and it immediately ran back out. Yeah, nothing wrong huh*. I carefully rode on to the local Honda dealer.

In the end they decided it was in need of a new water pump. Spent a couple of weeks waiting for the part. I guess a good thing about the VFR is that 12 years later, Honda are still making the same bike (and even now, it's going to be basically the same bike in the new one). So parts are easy (though as they always seem to need to order them from Japan, they don't break often.... but we all knew that)

Got it back and headed up to Sydney for my normal weekend at home. That's when I noticed that the speedo was all over the place... it was like speed roulette.

It has been sort of liberating, riding without speed limits, so to speak.

So I'll have to take it back to the shop. Maybe the speed sensor is out (has happened before about 6 or so years ago) or the shop nudged or bumped something. They can take a look and fix it.

Not sure about the shop though. I'll give them this chance.

* to be fair, the tech was trying to diagnose over the phone, that's never easy.