No excuse now, I’ve been out and taxed the LE! That means it’s now time for the acid test!.

So it’s on with the riding jacket and wheel the little lady out of the garage. Get my helmet and gloves out of the sidecar and we’re ready to go.

Fuel on, set the choke, turn her over a few times to prime the cylinders and then switch on and give her a kick.

On the LE, Velo described it as a “Footstarter” rather than a “kickstart” since it took so little effort to start the engine and it lived up to the name, a gentle prod and the engine is running.

Wait about half a minute to warm up and take off the choke and it’s into gear.

Bit of a crunch suggests the clutch needs adjusting but we’ll see to that later, ease the clutch in and we’re moving, easy pull away but feels a bit sluggish.

Into second gear and she pulls away nicely initially but soon runs out of puff.

I’m thinking “Last time I rode an LE it was smarter away than this, but hell, I’m used to the 800cc BMW.

Going up the hill out of the estate and it’s obvious something is not right so I turn right onto the main road, it’s down hill and I get into top gear, a quick check, ammeter showing a charge so the generator is working OK, oil-pressure up to 30psi so that’s OK bot there seems a lot of lost motion in the twistgrip.

Turn right back into the estate and back home.

First time out a run of less that a mile but a couple of problems have shown up.

Still she ran nicely, sounded sweet but badly down on expected performance.