Where did the rattles go?

A couple of weekends ago a gaggle of five of us leave Manawatu Motorcycles for points north. For this ride it was great to see the return of Sir Als Kawasaki H2. It certainly looked bright and shinny in the morning sun. A real chromy! The top end has just been refreshed with a rebore, new pistons and rings. Also, a set of Hagon shocks have been added to help the back end behave itself for when Sir Al does his wheelies and fish tail starts! This ride needed to be a 'gentle' running in ride with a mixture of throttle work. A run to Hooterville via Vinegar Hill met the chosen criteria so we headed out of town along a well worn path that took us to the top of the Cheltenham hill via the back of Feilding for our first stop. Ian had brought his DR 400 along for spin, with Kim fronting up with his lovely (cough cough) Rothmans Honda NSR 250. Dave T came out for a spin on his grunty GSX 1100 and yours truely on the ever reliable XJ 750.
Our next port of call was our favourite cafe in Hunterville, Hunters Cafe and Motel. It is a great place for a feed and judging by the parade of gumboots outside the entrance the locals seem to think the same. It certainly was nice sitting out in the sun enjoying our food and beverages but we had to make our return. Sir Al thought it would be a good idea to top up the H2 before we headed home and his exit to the petrol station seemed be missing something in the audio department! A strange whirring sound that was very uncanny coming from an H2 having got so used to the usual rattles! Those new bore clearances sure must be tight!
All to soon we were heading out of town for our usual back road return following the Rangitikei River as closely as one can whilst also avoiding State Highway One. Dave left us and headed home to Feilding at Mount Biggs and Kim headed home with Sir Al, Ian and myself stopping off for a quick natter. After a quick conversation around how the world would be a better place with more people riding heritage motorcycles we headed home to attend to more mundane matters. It is certainly great to see another chromy back on road and we are all looking forward to having a few more join Sir Als H2 in the near future.