audiomick

Me? It was a Ford F350, ex-ambulance. Old, and probably not well looked after. The first thing was a radiator hose. The next thing was the bit where a cooling hose went into the block, or came out. Basically, the cooling system was on the edge. When the first weak point went and was repaired, the next one came right behind it.

Yes, of course. But it was a Trio, no keyboardist (thank god...), and the bass player formed the band, and was the owner of the vehicle. This is them, and the "coming just in time" in the first video is truer to life than is funny.

Have you asked your insurance? Or a towing company? One or the other should be able to give you an idea. I have a membership in the ADAC, roughly translated the "General Geman automobile club". It is similar to the RACV, the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria, in which I was a member whilst I was still in Australia. They both provide emergency help, i.e. they will come out to you and try and get your vehicle going again. If it can't be repaired on the spot, they will tow to the nearest affiliated workshop. That works well, but they, the towing companys, of course earn the bucks with fixing the problem in their workshop. If you want to get the vehicle home, or to "your" workshop, that's your problem. The system works, though. I've had to use them a few times, and was very glad to have the membership. Costs about €60,- a year, I think. "Wasted" money most of the time, but when you need it, worth every cent. PS: as far as distances go: I spent a year working for a band in Australia. We were on our way from Adelaide to Sydney, and the vehicle blew a radiator hose somewhere east of Swan Hlll on the New South Wales side of the river. 65 km back to the previous town, and 70 km to the next one. The bass player hitch-hiked to the next town, and the RACV (or RACNSW) came out and towed us in. All well and good, but they only repaired the blown hose. The next weak spot blew at about 3 in the morning, somewhere near Yass, I think. The Auto Club there refused to come and get us in the middle of the night, but were there at 9 the next morning. They had to go to Goulburn to get parts, but they did the job properly, and refurbished the entire cooling system. We got back on our way at about 2 in the afternoon. I should mention, we had left Adelaide after a show at about 2 in the morning. The second breakdown was at about 3 in the morning the following night. "Back on our way" was at about 2 in the afternoon of the third consecutive day without having been in a bed. The plan had been to check in to a hotel in Sydney, sleep a bit, and then go on to Newcastle to play a show. Because of the breakdowns, we drove through to get to the show. Of course we got a flat tyre about a mile short of the venue, but we had a spare. After the show, we drove back down to Sydney to the hotel. Because I was the only one who hadn't drunk any alchohol, I drove. Newcastle to Sydney is about two hour's drive. I don't remember any of it.

It's good. Definitely. Back in the day, when I started riding, the laws in Victoria, Australia restricted lerners and probationary license holders (initially the first year, later two years, if I recall correctly...) to a motorcyle with a maximum 250cc capacity. That worked quite well for a while. When I started, it was mostly 4-stroke Japanese bikes: Z250, GSX250, CB250 or XS250. They were all pretty much a down-sized 400. The 400 was for the Japanese market, dictated by the licensing laws there, and they were "de-stroked" and "de-bored" to match the laws in Australia. And then, in the late '80s, came the two-strokes. 250 production racing produced a plethora of race-replica two-stroke 250s, the RGV 250, the KR250 and then the KR1, the RS 250, the RZ250. Very light, very fast. Which inevitaly led to absolute beginners going out on the street to learn to ride on what was effectively a race bike. Not good. Eventually, the law was changed to a "power-to-weight" regulation, which is much more sensible for beginners. I find the European regulation fairly good. There is a license that a 16-year-old can get, restricted to very small motorcycles. The A2 is, as far as I know, restricted to less than 48 ps. Adequate to learn on and gain experience, but not enough to get too silly. It's ok that way.

Hallo Jaide, welcome aboard.

Yes, I also reckon the bolt is too short. Maybe 4 or 5 mm more would be good. I read somewhere, written be someone who should know, that there should be a minimum of 1.5 to 2 turns of thread proud of the nut, at least when it is a lock nut. And the lock nut does look a bit shabby. But why the nut on the bottom? I see no reason for that. On the contrary, I expect it is a lot easier to tighten up with the nut on top.

No, they don't. I've had my V35 Imola gearbox open a couple of times. You need something to hold the input shaft to get the nut off (110 nM), and a longisch Allen key to get to a particular screw inside, but that's all. The rest is standard metric nuts and bolts.

It would indeed be an interesting tyre if the radius wasn't exactly half the diameter. Despite that, thanks for the explanation.

Without wanting to discount intrusion, I reckon it is plausible that it might (also) be condensation. The air inside the box becomes humid it warms up from the warmth of the componentry. When it is all turned of, the casing starts to cool down, causing conensation inside the box. I'm not sure how likely it is in this case, but as I said, plausible, I reckon. The described phenomenum is a big issue with sound systems at open-air events. The solution is generally to leave everything on all the way through. I heard a story from some colleagues that they had switched off the mixing desk at the end of the evening (a Midas XL3, a large analogue console...) and the next morning there was "a litre" of water inside.

The important question is, when did you last have a flat tyre? My current car doesn't have a spare tyre, as did the one before. I did have a flat with the one before: I clipped a traffic island and ripped a 4 inch hole in the sidewall of the left rear tyre. My mistake. That was more than ten years ago. Otherwise, I haven't missed or needed a spare. The current car has, and the last car had, an electric tyre pump and a can of "instant fix". If the flat on the last car had been less catastrophic, that would have been enough to get me home. I fully understand wanting to have a proper spare in the car, but the question about how really necessary it is must be asked.

And kilometres are much more fun than miles.

So what is this "pax"?

Don't overdo it. It's a tractor motor, and it has to rattle a bit.

I'm for "F".

I'm a bit surprised that those tyres don't have nails sticking out of them. Snow like that, and all....

Will mean that the speedo over-estimates, so legal. But a meticulous owner would of course regularly check the wear on the tyres, and correct the calibration of the speedo as needed. Or maybe just consider the idea, and have a beer instead.

I had to go and look for those to curb my surprise. Apparently modern tyres indeed. My first thought was these, which I ran on my z900 in the '80s because there was practically no alternative for the 19" front wheel. Dunlop TT 100 Would look kind of on strange on a V11, I think.

Of course. The law in Australia and in Germany, and probably most other countries, stipulates that the speedo must not show less than the actual speed. Over-estimating is fully legal, and the norm. One can assume that up to 10% over-estimation is normal. The only speedo that I have experienced that is almost accurate, i.e. almost no over-estimation, is the one on my Breva 750. It is only a km or so over at 60 km/h, and maybe 3 at 100 km/h. Why go to the trouble? Calibrating against the GPS is the logical solution. Easy, and easy to remember for multiple vehicles. But if one is installing a new speedo and wants to calibrate it, one must measure something to get a "base value". The method described is the best way to establish the real rolling diameter of the tyre, and therefore the base-value to calibrate the speedo. I've done it a couple of times with push-bike speedos. Takes all of 3 minutes.

A word to the wise: I don't like that dealer. Not that I have directly had a bad experience; I had already decided to avoid him before it could come to that. In the course of looking for parts, I have looked at quite a number of his adverts. The general impression is that he is anything other than cheap, and that he doesn't particularly seem to care how bad the condition of the parts is. He still puts a premium price on them, and often describes something as "good condition" when it is obvious from the photos that the part is, in fact, in a very shabby state. So if anyone is thinking of buying there, have a really close look at the photos first. Twice.

Both.

What I don't get about "bar-end mirrors": It is fairly inevitable that a motorcycle will fall over at some point. An experienced rider can avoid this for a very long time, but said experienced rider must know that this can happen. If he doesn't know this, then he is, in my opinion, not really experienced. So why would one, as an experienced motorcyclist, mount mirrors that will be the first thing to hit the ground when the bike falls over and definitely be destroyed? Further, I don't know how it is elsewhere, but the fashion amongst "really cool bikers" here is to mount the bar-end mirrors such that they hang downwards from the handlebars. Result: you have to look past your arms to see them, and they very definitely hit the ground first. Super idea. Besides that, bar-end mirrors are not really attractive, I reckon.

Really? I never would have thought. The beer I have been drinking for the last 40 odd years was pulled out of my arse. Seriously, it was very interesting to see how it is done. Brewing a batch takes at least 8 hours, and the nuances are not less intersting and not less comlicated than fettling a Guzzi. I won't be trying it myself. I have neither the room to set up a "micro-brewery", nor the time to do it. But seeing how it is done was very interesting.

Yeah, ok. And a #2 Philips screwdriver, maybe.

same as "decko" or "gander", obviously...

My emergency tool kit: Credit card Debit card for my bank account Membership card for the auto club "rescue" service. Did I forget something?