I seem to be one of those rare people that actually figured out how pointless it is to blow all your money on booze, act like a dick, make a fool of yourself, throw it all up again and waste your weekends being hungover, although I certainly spent a fair share of my younger days doing this, before I learned my lesson. Being a family man now I do have much more important things to do with my time than prop up a bar so I don't really go to pubs, but still I do like to have the occasional drink, especially after the kids have gone to bed and you finally get some peace and quiet :-) and the pub still is the only social place to go most of the time when you meet up with people.

I actually went off beer some years ago and since then the only thing I drink is cider (or snakebite and black which has always been my favorite since I was a teenager), and even then only very specific ciders. I can't stand the usual pub fare of Strongbow or Woodpecker etc, the only ones I can stomach in the pub are Magners or Bulmers, or when drinking at home my preferred tipple was Frome Valley Sweet cider which is a real cut above the rest, so you really should give it a try if you are a cider drinker, especially the sweet one if you don't like dry, they sell it in Tesco. 

Then I discovered pear cider and it was an instant love affair. The first (and by far the best) one I ever laid eyes on was Koppaburg pear cider which is very refreshing, especially over ice, easy on the pallet and hails from Sweden. There is even a non-alcoholic version which tastes almost exactly the same. The great thing with Koppaberg is that you can happily drink it all day long, which is perhaps a bad thing also :-)

Since I started drinking Kopparburg it seems to have become quite popular and other brands have started to appear in the supermarket and I am even told that some pubs have even started to stock it now. I have tried most of the other brands, and I have to say at time of writing they really do not hold a candle to Kopparburg, which has a unique taste of its own. I recently introduced a friend of mine (Johnny the hat) to Kopparburg, and it is now the only thing he drinks at home, which is quite something considering he did does not normally like nor drink cider.

So if you haven't already tried it, give it a try, I would imagine it is kind of like marmite, you either love it or hate it.

Here also is a quick run down of the others I have tried

Brothers Pear Cider

http://www.brotherscider.co.uk/

The absolute worst one of the bunch, tastes nothing like either pears or cider as far as I can tell, its the cheap lager of pear ciders. I will never buy this one again.

Bulmers Pear Cider

http://www.bulmers.ie/

I quite like Bulmers ciders in general, and the pear cider is not half bad in its own right, as it is a totally different taste. It it quite fruity and refreshing but not as distinctively different from regular cider as the others. If it was the only one you had tried then you would probably be quite happy with it, but after trying the others then Bulmers will probably be resigned to you "only if nothing else is available" option.

Gaymers Pear Cider

This one feels like a cheap copy and when compared to Kopparburg it really doesn't stand up well. But like the Bulmers it doesn't make a bad drink in its own right although there is nothing special or distinctive about it and you probably wouldn't associate it with pears if you didn't know what you were drinking and you certainly wouldn't buy it if any of the others are available.

Maguires Pear Cider

http://www.halewood-int.com/maguires.php

This has been the cheapest option I have found so far and bizarrely is actually my second favorite so far. It does have the distinctive refreshing pear flavor and even when compared against Koppaburg it fares pretty damn well. So if your looking for a cheaper alternative to Kopparburg or simply need an alternative when Koppaburg is not available then this may be your best bet, you may even find you like it as much as or more than Koppaberg.

St Helier Pear Cider

I have only just recently tried this one and I was pleasantly surprised. St Helier comes very close to being as good as Koppaberg for me, I certainly have no qualms about choosing one over the other. The main difference is that St Hellier has a stronger flavour, it tastes more alchoholic than Koppaberg, so I would imagine for a lot of people this would make it the preferred choice.

Oakleys Pear cider

Not tried it yet

 In general I have been very happy with the performance of the stock V Star 1300, but having been riding it for a while now and getting used to all its little nuances I did decide it could do with a little boost in the low end as I felt I was having to exert a little too much clutch control a little to early and too often when slowing down and when in traffic and a bit of extra torque and rumble wouldn't go amiss either. So I decided it was time for a set of after market exhausts which would give me what I wanted and would also give me that sweeter Harley like exhaust note. My first thought was Vance and Hines as they have probably the best reputation and I have had them before on my V Star 1100 and was happy with them, plus they are easier to get here in the UK. However V&H only do a 2into1 for the 1300 and I am not overly keen on that look and wanted to replace my stock 2into1 with a 2into2.

The next most popular seems to be Cobra , and they have a good choice of exhausts for the 1300 and the sound seemed to be what I wanted. I did initially want the Slashdowns but these proved very elusive and no-one had any as they are very popular it seems, one of my suppliers Eastern Cruisers  told me he could get a set of speedster longs, so I went with that. Unfortunately after they had been fitted it turned out they had had got me the shorts, but I decided to suck it down after all the hassle getting them, I will get a set of slashcut tips to achieve the look I want.

In addition I also got the FI2000 digital fuel processor, which is supposed to provide better throttle response, no backfiring and smoother cruising and you need one of these with after market exhausts.

Anyway, the result of these exhausts + FI2000, I have no idea how the exhausts perform without the F2000 or how the FI2000 performs with the stock exhaust.

PROS

They sound great, much better than stock and are LOUD if that is what you like, at least to the human ear they sound very loud. I have recorded the exhaust note which you can hear in the video below, but it really doesn't sound anywhere near as loud in the video and it doesn't do them justice, you need to hear them in the flesh.

Performance wise there is a definite improvement in the low end, exactly what I wanted in fact. More torque and less clutch control required. You can go faster in lower gears (easily 30mph in 1st, 60mph in 2nd), slower in higher gears, so you no longer feel like you are going to stall if you don't get down to first gear quick enough or when doing a hill start.

CONS

While I do love the sound in general and it is useful for "being heard" and tearing up the neighbourhood, I do find it an annoyance on the motorway which is where you appreciate the much quieter note of the stock exhaust, especially on long journeys where you just want to chill out. After an hour or more riding I am usually half deaf. It would be nice to be able to switch between quiet and loud whenever you wanted, like the peacemaker pipes from national cycle, but I wasn't brave enough to buy those :-)

In the high end (70mph+) I have lost some torque and performance. Previously I have had this baby at 100mph with more to go. With the cobra exhausts and FI2000 I was at full throttle by the time I got to 100mph. I will be giving the FI2000 pots a tweak to see if I can fix this, I will report back when I have done it, but in general the low end performance improvements are more important to me as I spend more time driving at 30-40mph than I do at 100mph and I have used to it by now anyway :-)

There is also increased vibrations. My mirrors now vibrate, even at low speeds, they did not do this before. I also cannot ride so long without a break now, but I am more sensitive to the vibrations than most, so others may not notice this.

If you want to hear how they sound, check out my video on youtube.

If you are a parent with a small child and own a car with ISOFIX fittings, then you may have also taken the seemingly impossible challenge of trying to find ISOFIX car seats. If you don't know what ISOFIX is, see the explanation below. Note that ISOFIX seats can also be secured the old fashioned way using a seat belt, so they are also good for when the grandparents visit and want to take the kids out in their old banger :-)

Despite the fact that these are the safest and most recommended car seats you can buy and it is now a legal requirement in all new cars, it is still strangely hard to buy them, and virtually impossible to find one for Group 2 & 3 which is suitable from 3 up to 11 years (Groups explained below).

We searched high and low for many weeks, even mothercare do not stock them, so we then decided we would have to resort to buying online, which was not really our favored solution as when it comes to child seats you really want to test them out in the flesh and make sure they are suitable. But even finding one online proved to be a challenge, as most of them do not have the ISOFIX connections built in, you need to buy a separate ISOFIX base that the seat slots into, which can easily double your cost and can do so without you realizing as on most web sites we found that the seats will actually say they are ISOFIX but do not specify that they require an ISOFIX base, so you could easily buy the seat and then discover that you cannot use it unless you also purchase an ISOFIX base.

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