It is about time that i posted up online about my long awaited ride to the biggest hills. What better place to start than here...
Way back in the 1990s, somewhere the idea got lodged into my head to have a "touring" motorcycle... I guess it was after riding the bike and hearing tales of friends like "Captain" Vivek and others going up to the himalayas many many times. Back then I felt that the RD was that dream motorcycle and it has been my dream for so many years.
It was in 2002 that I brought my RD and by 2006 the dream was almost dead. The bike was hardly reliable. She kept getting one disease or another, went from one quack to another and to make a long story short, i had already started the other journey to buy a 4 wheeler which i thought will take me up the mountains. Then in 2006-2007 I joined RDD and brought the CDI and filters for the RD, after that I knew the RD "tourer" dream was back to life.
Well my 4 wheel drives and the escapades with them along with the problem of getting leave for a month have kept me away from this dream since 2007-2008.
Finally sometime in March this year, I got a go ahead from office to have this 1 month long vacation this June.
Since then I started wondering if I need to plonk in all the goodies that i have saved up and take the RD to the hills or take it as is ....
Thanks to Ron, I got an LT-Combo setup with Wiseco hotrods and 5th oversize pistons etc, about a year ago... As it was, the bike was a HT with some blessings from RDD some time ago. Back in 2009, when i had the bike stripped for a paint-job, baba had observed the sleeve having rotated and blocking some of the ports... he had put in some blessings to keep it going for a while... to take this running bike or the "LT-Combo" build with all the goodies was the question. This is the same blessed bike that i seized (due to a poor quality tap) and still ran up the nandi hills in some 1min 42 secs.
Taking the LTcombo or ride the running HT - I adopted the common "Middle Path" - "The Indian buddhi" way.... I think i will keep the LT-Combo build for many many more rides which i hope will happen soon and checkup the running HT
Thus started on opening the RD and "checking it" It was at approx 150on the comp meter .... Ron was quite reluctant to help with my greed of retaining the good setup for later... he felt that the LT-Combo build was ideal for the himalayas and hardly wanted to get involved in some "Jugaad" / "Stop-gap" measures on the RD... somehow, my fortune smiled on me and Ron too decided to help me with the mini-checkup :-) ... opening the RD turned out like a can of worms... the piston showed 0.5 on the top... when Ron measured it, turned out to be a 0.3 size piston. The bore dia turned out to be 0.4

I would like to thank Ron from the bottom of my heart for the amount of time he and Prd spent on the bike. More so the amount of time they needed to put up with me eternally looking at them as if they are going to snatch my dream away and flush it down the toilet

Now the bike has got assembled at home by the experienced mechanic who has also been very patient with me and my shenanigans and yesterday, me and a friend finished some 150kms and again Ron and Prd were there to soothe away my worried forehead... i was riding around 3.5k RPM and felt the bike was hardly there

Thanks RDD, but for you my RD-Dream would have remained only a dream...
Now whatever happens to the ride on the RD, I sure know that it is only now, only after i met all of you that my trust in the RD would even have a chance of giving this ride a shot
Cheers