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Correct! This is one of the weak point I had to verify prior to the purchase. The stock rims are known to crack over time. On my Quota they were replaced by Akront rims. They have been purchased by the way.

Congrats! During the two first tour I did, I kept sending suggestions. None of them made the roster. I also found a dealership in Houston, willing to sponsor the tour. The owner fit the criterion of running a family operation. He never was contacted. When I asked the tour director about it, he said they had no room for new sponsors; yet each year, some old sponsors are dropped and so new ones come.

When I saw the title of the thread, I thought he was simply hoping for better weather....

Si tu as des difficultés pour comprendre, il y a des membres Français du forum qui peuvent t'aider. Tu dois donc contacter @Scud qui possède des ressorts de remplacement qui sont plus solides que les originaux. L'administrateur du Forum the propose de suivre les conseils d'un des membres techniques du forum, pour ne plus avoir le problème du ressort de rappel du selecteur cassé. Bonne chance!

And it would have been true... Listen to God Save the Queen played on a Benetton Renault F1 engine!

When I did my final exam to become a mechanical engineer, they gave us a blueprint, and we had to select the type of material, thermal treatment, tolerances, together with a slue of other technical and economical parameters. But this was old school. Today, they have software that can tell you all that without you needing any specific knowledge. It is no longer seek and error like it was when Carcano decided to put together that V8. And sooner than later, AI will be able to diagnose everything without requiring any help from a human being. Each of the big Tech companies is working hard to get their AI model the best. ChatGPT, Meta, X, Amazon, Apple, Google. Of course, you will still need a pair of hands to hold the wrenches.

Another who needs to learn how to say Guzzi and when he refers to his Ducati "Paso" named after Renzo Pasolini, that is pronounced Pazolini... I can't condone his taste in colors, though...

I always follow the Dakar, as I think it would be a great race to participate into. Actually, they have a "Classic" category, but it is limited to cars. Doing the Dakar with the Moto Guzzi Quota would be something. I have seen guys my age doing it, obviously on four wheels. Back to Dakar, it used to be mainly a European racer's only, but as we can see today, the top competitors are coming from everywhere. Daniel Sanders has a name that goes well with his performance... lol... he won 5 stages this year, including three in a row. He is on his way to make the Dakar his. He has been first since the race started. So, an Australian is going to put his name at the top of the roster. Not bad for a farmer, and bee specialist...

Thanks for the feed-back. I am always prudent when it comes from unofficial modifications. I have no knowledge of who Joe Caruso is, apart from the song "Caruso"; I have seen modifications not properly tested long term, fail. Not saying that Caruso's gear sets are like that.

Sorry, can you elaborate? I make long runs on my V11, probably less tomorrow has I now have two bikes, however gears wear less than a chain, chain tensioner? you see, I recently had to replace the tensioners on my Porsche 911, both sides. On a Porsche 911, the tensioners work with the hydraulic pressure from the engine oil. However, they are also spring loaded, because when you start the engine, there is no pressure. I would think that having gears would be an advantage, since you can do without a tensioner, no?

As bad as Christine?

We spoke about losing all the precious memories you had accumulated over the years. The photos, the videos. I watched a few videos of artists who have lost all their art in the fire. As a guitar player, I have a lot of guitars and amplifiers and music related gear in my house. Including gear that is no longer made, or very limited editions. It's insured of course, but cannot be replaced. All my books, especially those that I brought from overseas, which are not published anymore. Last, all one's precious motorcycles, even if they can be replaced, but the vintage stuff is always full of one's emotions. I treat my machines as if they were living things. They have a soul, and they are bringing a lot of joy and emotions. I would not want to be put in the front of a decision to leave them behind.

They also need to cope with looters, including some smarty pants that disguise themselves in firemen to blend in. I am really curious to understand how they are going to recover. I just learned that even if your house has burned down completely, you still need to pay 2/3rd of your property taxes. The land is what has the most value. I was naive enough to think that because the main usage of that land, was for you to live on it, if you have no more construction, then the land would serve no purpose, especially in this kind of catastrophe, because you have lost all viability power/water/communication. Then there is the valuation of the land itself. Are people going to even want to rebuild?

This is how it works normally. In my Parisian appartment, I upgraded to 380 Volts to install a baking oven. The utility company did the upgrade free of charge. They would amortize their cost with the monthly consumption using an energy glutton appliance. I thought it would be the same here. If I wanted to install a DC charger in my garage, Center Point Energy which only provides the lines but not the energy itself, would obviously benefit from the increased consumption. But apparently, I also need to pay for the installation. Cherry on the top, they also told me that because it would be a dedicated installation to my house, any malfunction or maintenance cost would be born by me. Not really an incentive.

They may be able to install AC chargers, but not all can install the DC chargers that require massive power input. Buc-ee's has now Testla charging stations, and they have installed massive AC to DC transformers, and they have also installed dedicated medium voltage lines. I am skeptical that those rural gas stations can afford the upgrade to run DC chargers. It would have to be subsidised by either the State or Federal. As I make my own bread, I wanted to purchase one of the special humidity oven. They work on 380 or 440 Volts. I contacted Center Point to ask them how I could get this kind of voltage, and they told me I would have to purchase the transformer, and finance the entire cost myself.

I finished reading a report that owners of rental appartment in LA have increased their rate to capitalize on the disarray of those who have lost everything in the fire; because why not make money during these exceptional circumstances, by adding insult to injury. Mind you, the same happened here when we got bunch of refugees from Louisiana after Harvey...

I would be one of those early adopters of H2 Fuel Cells here in Houston, I would purchase the Toyota Mirai no problem. Unfortunately, in Houston, there is not a single N2 filling station. They seem to be only found in California. On top of it, they seem to have the same issues as the non Tesla charging stations. They go offline all the time which results in N2 car owners having to travel long distance just to refill. The reason why Tesla was so successful, is because they implemented a proper charging network before selling the cars. So those who were early adopters did not have to worry. The N2 solution is what's closest to refilling your tank with gas. Why is it not pushed by the authorities? my only guess is that the infrastructures to produce large quantities of N2 does not exist, and car manufacturers do not want to diversify in too many technologies. This is what I don't understand. Each and every existing Gas Station can be overhauled to have an N2 tank and N2 pump. N2 is delivered by tank trucks the same way gas is. No need to build expensive power lines and transformers to remote places. Yes, N2 is very expensive at present. This is why Toyota subsidize your N2 refuelings when you purchase a Mirai. I personally don't think EV is a permanent solution to replace ICE.

I keep an eye on batteries since my company has used Lithium batteries in our proprietary tools from the 80's. A long time before anybody in the public could even say Lithium in a generic conversation. At that time, we had a partnership with a battery manufacturer, SAFT. My company was funding their research for batteries with a longer autonomy, while being submitted to hydrocarbon wells temperatures. At the time, I was a tester for the batteries, SAFT showed me how dangerous Lithium was, and how difficult a Lithium fire was to put out. Anyway, the number 1 vehicle battery manufacturer has introduced a battery using new chemistry; LFP for Lithium Iron Phosphate, instead of what you typically find in cars today; Its interesting to me, because when I left my company, we were using Lithium Oxyphosphate batteries in our tools already. That was in 2015! Here's the article from the horse's mouth: CATL, the Chinese company responsible for powering 80% of the EV market. https://www.catl.com/en/news/6091.html About the Solid State batteries, and when they will become standard in cars, there are only assumptions. What is known, is that all the battery manufacturers, including CATL, are actively working to iron out the known issues of Solid State batteries, the most notorious one is their prohibitive cost, another is reliability. Today's actual target to install Solid State batteries in cars is set to 2027, although a Chinese car manufacturer has it planned for 2026. Some of the major car manufacturers, all are invested in Solid State batteries, which seems to be the next step to break through the EV adoption plateau the world is seeing today. I heard that the US is also actively trying to get a foothold in Solid State battery technology.

In my neck of the woods, the specs were usually 400 m from stop. The very first 500 Kawasaki, the Mach III was a dragster, unlike the later 500 H1 models. Unfortunately, the chassis not very rigid, and there were no brakes to speak of. At the time, it was just unreal and many riders got injured because they let the speed take over prudence. The front drum brake would only give you one slowdown. Thereafter, you had to use your boots...

The Chinese have actually many advantages over the rest of the world. They have secured all the rare metals mining from the places where they can be found, principally Africa, but not only. They have perfected the know how and buit the machines to make the batteries. About every car manufacturer in the World use Chinese batteries, or purchase the machines to make the batteries, the raw material to make the batteries. The collapse of NorthVolt put an end to Europes' attempt to have their own battery manufacture. They found out the hardway that China is ten years ahead of anybody else. The European brands have no alternative but to purchase Chinese components to make their EVs, making them more expensive than the imported Chinese cars. To prevent total collapse, Europe had to tax Chinese EV cars import. But it works against adoption. For example a BYD sold equivalent of 23k USD in China, is sold 38k EUR in EEC!!! You cannot purchase BYD vehicles in the USA. The cheapest Tesla, the model 3, is 30k USD. Then you need to add taxes, destination charges and what not. The Tesla cars use Lithium batteries, and I could be wrong, but if they want to use solid state batteries, they would also need to get theirs from China. Only two manufacturer are not in China: Samsung South Korea, Panasonic in Japan. The US has the know how and technology to make fuel cells. This was used to power spacecrafts since Mercury, I believe. Why does it need to be only EVs?

I don't know about you guys, but each time I stumble to do something using one of my installed software on my computer, I turn to YouTube, and I look for a tutorial simply typing the name of the application, and the feature that I am looking for. Sure enough, a bunch of videos are selected, and I start combing through all the content which is not directly related to the very specific issue I want to solve. I appreciate that all these guys making those videos are actually trying to use their knowledge to earn money through subscription to their channel. YouTube has about four billion videos stored; out of those four, 1 billion videos are strickly educational, tutorial, what not. In December 2024, Google released https://ai.google.dev/api/multimodal-live; Just watch the video below to understand what it can do. I have not yet tried it myself, but I am planning to. Basically, you can use Gemini 2.0 to teach you anything interactively. Of course, it is not yet 100% accurate yet, but it will only get better. Maybe in the future, it will also be able to teach you how to work on your motorcycle. Like telling you step by step what to do, which tool are required, what spares you should ordered ahead of time, which companies are selling the spares, the tool. At present, it works seemlessly with software. You can for example ask Gemini how to make a photo slideshow using iMovie on your Mac. At the moment, Gemini 2.0 is free; obviously, once it is out of the Beta phase, it will go to subscription. It is my understanding that ChatGPT can already code Pithon on your behalf. I have been told by a colleague that simple software development can be coded by ChatGPT. The Software developer still need to plug it in into the existing code. But you can bet that in a few years, this will not even be required any longer...

I knew. I had one. The closest I could get to owning a car that could look as good as all my friends BMW's... Had to sell it when I left France...

You sold the Opel Manta?

This video brought back a lot of memories; of course, for those of you that work on four strokes, it is just an easy job.