I’d spoken to the insurance company to ask them about buying it back when it was recovered and a week or two later got a phone call from them asking me if I knew where the bike was as – apparently – the police hadn’t been in touch with them.

Since then? Not a thing!

This morning I received a phone call from the Met. Wilf has been found somewhere in Lincolnshire!

No news on its condition or anything and of course it now belongs to the insurance company but if it’s not been totalled, I may well see if I can buy it from them. It should be worth less as a stolen recovered vehicle anyway and of course it’s almost a year older, but it’s worth asking.

In the meantime, I’ve got an appointment for early next week to give a statement to the police to say that it certainly wasn’t being used or stored with my permission so they can (hopefully) prosecute the scrote that had it.

This amounted to quite a substantial loss to me but when I went through the policy and the small print, I realised they were actually being fair. I’d stated the value of the bike as £4,000 – eBay adverts the week of the theft showed that was under-stated – and whilst I was aware there was a £250 theft excess, I’d ignored/overlooked the clause that says if the bike isn’t garaged at the time in a locked garage, the excess rises by £250.

So quite a loss to me, but I can’t fault them for the speed with which they settled my claim. Recommended.

1. The insurance company has declared it a total loss which means they’ve decided to pay up. The argument now will be over a valuation, but I can back up the value of the bike by a PDF print of the MCN used bikes of that model for sale earlier this week that were all well over £4,000. We shall see.
2. Talking of total losses, the Metropolitan Police have written to me to say that due to the lack of evidence they’ve dropped the investigation. Hmm. I wonder if the lack of evidence is as a result of the lack of any investigation? They decided not to send SOCOs to fingerprint anything and they didn’t send any officers to talk to the neighbours. Too much like hard work, I suppose…

The Gixxer has gone: stolen. The remnants of the padlock which had been bolt-cropped are still there but the thieving bastards even took the Abus chain with them. The Met. Police have been telephoned and should be in touch within the 24-48 hours to process it. I mentioned the lock and that they might be able to do something with the bits but the operator was non-committal… I doubt they’ll even bother interviewing the neighbours, even though one is almost always there. It has been alpha-dotted and marked with SmartWater, so who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky and get it back.

So if you’re offered a low-mileage, immaculate 2004 Suzuki GSX-R750K4 engine number R741-100646 VIN/frame number JS1B3111200100375 it’s mine!

So with another trackday looming at Rockingham next month, through the Motorcycle Folly as usual, and a three day special at Jerez in September with Tracksense (not sure whether to use Wilf or the ZRX for this one), I thought I’d better get myself sorted with another mount.

I’ve therefore ordered an SBC24 through Camera-Mount.com who are the UK distributors. I’ll post how it goes in terms of fitting, etc. when it arrives.

Then I fitted some R&G fork protectors before taking the camera out to take a few photos:

Wilf in London

In order to get a quote, you have to agree, amongst other things, that:

“5. The motorbike has not been modified in any way.

6. There are no accessories fitted to the bike.”

That must mean they insure very few bikes…

Turns out it’s a Micron carbon can which looks like it’ll be fairly loud, but also is smaller and much lighter than the OEM can. I fitted it in minutes and fired up Wilf to be greeted with a much deeper exhaust note which wasn’t that much louder after all. We’ll see what it’s like on the road in due course.

Second accessory was a satnav mount that fits into the stem, the “Telferizer”. Using this, the TomTom Rider v2 can be fitted either up in front of the instruments or – better still – just above the tank indent. Now all I need to do is sort out the power lead to the battery and I’m good to go without worrying about the batteries running out. A really nice bit of kit and recommended.

This evening, I drilled four big holes in the garage wall and screwed on the Abus WBA 100 Granit Wall Anchor and then screwed it all to the wall. So far so good. Final touch was to screw in the bolts that hold the plastic cover on and … the screws are too short! Grr!

Still, it’s sturdy and will be excellent to chain Wilf to when the trailer and ZRX are back in Norfolk or elsewhere.