Is anyone planning on getting out on their bike tomorrow? (Saturday). :popcorn:
Yep. Been out today as well!
I'm still "behaving myself", but I have to admit my patience is wearing a bit thin now.
Let's see what Boris says on Sunday but to be honest if he does not end my lock-down I'll probably be thinking of doing it for myself.
Failing that I might be headed to the Horseshoe Pass to get a leg of lamb - mind you the lamb tends to run away or struggle a bit up there...
I certainly hope so - I've a need to collect some shopping, so the old CB750 will be pressed into service!
There's a chance that I will be out, weather permitting....however my close friend and ride out buddy was stopped by the PSNI the other day, and was grilled about where he had been, so caution is required here..... he did have a genuine reason BTW.
I have been out all day on the bike removing the extras :mfr_lol: :mfr_lol:
Tomorrow Sunday 9th is meant to be lovely ...just right for a "Sanity Ride" ... :cool: However for me it is a day at home as it is my daughters birthday on Monday so we are having a lockdown celebration .. A bottomless brunch in the garden, then off to a local pub (in the lounge) then to another ( in the dining room) etc ... all set up with replicated pub names and boards etc ... should be fun :yes: .. so I shall be in no fit state to do much ! :grin:
I'm wondering if you're in a fit state now cos tomorrow is Saturday :mfr_lol: /color]
Quote from: PRD on May 08, 2020, 06:50:10 PM
Yep. Been out today as well!
Business or pleasure?
Quote from: Rynglieder on May 08, 2020, 06:53:37 PM
I'm still "behaving myself", but I have to admit my patience is wearing a bit thin now.
Let's see what Boris says on Sunday but to be honest if he does not end my lock-down I'll probably be thinking of doing it for myself.
Failing that I might be headed to the Horseshoe Pass to get a leg of lamb - mind you the lamb tends to run away or struggle a bit up there...
Don't expect miracles, he's being very crafty making an announcement on Sunday rather than yesterday, (Thursday) which assuming I'm still capable of deciphering the days of the week marked the three weeks since the beginning of the second lockdown.
Quote from: flatfour on May 08, 2020, 07:18:20 PM
I certainly hope so - I've a need to collect some shopping, so the old CB750 will be pressed into service!
Make sure you've got good breakdown cover. :popcorn:
Quote from: O.C. on May 08, 2020, 07:37:12 PM
There's a chance that I will be out, weather permitting....however my close friend and ride out buddy was stopped by the PSNI the other day, and was grilled about where he had been, so caution is required here..... he did have a genuine reason BTW.
Tell them to mind their own bloody business. :mfr_lol:
Quote from: Rusty on May 08, 2020, 08:48:12 PM
Tomorrow Sunday 9th is meant to be lovely ...just right for a "Sanity Ride" ... :cool: However for me it is a day at home as it is my daughters birthday on Monday so we are having a lockdown celebration .. A bottomless brunch in the garden, then off to a local pub (in the lounge) then to another ( in the dining room) etc ... all set up with replicated pub names and boards etc ... should be fun :yes: .. so I shall be in no fit state to do much ! :grin:
Roger he'll have had a couple of Shandy's. These Southerners can't take their Ale.
Quote from: Lonewolf on May 08, 2020, 09:11:45 PM
Tell them to mind their own bloody business. :mfr_lol:
Funny you should say that.....he asked if they knew that it was now ok to visit graveyards, as that is where he had been...to his parents grave...they weren't impressed with his attitude....he was right though :mfr_lol:
Quote from: Lonewolf on May 08, 2020, 09:13:42 PM
Roger he'll have had a couple of Shandy's. These Southerners can't take their Ale.
Roger can you guess which southerner this could be, it was all my fault I should never have let him have that rum truffle :whistling:
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-PgwVjZw/0/13a9f0ba/XL/i-PgwVjZw-XL.jpg)[/url
Pleasure
So far (and who knows when I will be proved wrong) only the Benelli 750 Sei has failed to take me home (once) in well over 45 years of riding old bikes! Sometimes we've returned without a full complement of cylinders, however we've always made it. Once I also needed to superglue the contacts back onto an ignition switch, however they then held without problem, and would most likely have stayed working if I hadn't changed the switch. There is also the advantage that, by staying mainly with one make, I have most spares needed as I buy whenever I see useful items in stock at David Silver or CMSNL.
Experience has taught me that the more modern bikes with their unfathomable electronics are far more likely to cause me to have a long walk.
As well as breakdown cover though, my riding friend of many years is, in retirement, delivery driver for a large local motorcycle dealer and we have access to help there if needed.
Quote from: Lonewolf on May 08, 2020, 09:45:26 PM
Roger can you guess which southerner this could be, it was all my fault I should never have let him have that rum truffle :whistling:
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-PgwVjZw/0/13a9f0ba/XL/i-PgwVjZw-XL.jpg)[/url
Ermmmm... now let me think :whistling: :mfr_lol:
Wine gums are very strong ya know
I always hankered over a benelli 6 back in my youth!
Quote from: PRD on May 09, 2020, 10:58:48 AM
I always hankered over a benelli 6 back in my youth!
Wow what a memory :whistling :popcorn:
Quote from: flatfour on May 09, 2020, 08:48:32 AM
So far (and who knows when I will be proved wrong) only the Benelli 750 Sei has failed to take me home (once) in well over 45 years of riding old bikes! Sometimes we've returned without a full complement of cylinders, however we've always made it. Once I also needed to superglue the contacts back onto an ignition switch, however they then held without problem, and would most likely have stayed working if I hadn't changed the switch. There is also the advantage that, by staying mainly with one make, I have most spares needed as I buy whenever I see useful items in stock at David Silver or CMSNL.
Experience has taught me that the more modern bikes with their unfathomable electronics are far more likely to cause me to have a long walk.
As well as breakdown cover though, my riding friend of many years is, in retirement, delivery driver for a large local motorcycle dealer and we have access to help there if needed.
Your modern bike is 1,000,000% more reliable than a Benelli Sei or anything else from the 70s or earlier. The only difference is that most of us know nothing about modern electronics, so on the incredibly rare occasion when it does go wrong we can't fix it with baling wire and a hammer at the roadside.
On the flip side your 70s or earlier motorcycle had under half the power, awful brakes, foul handling and often 6v electrics that barely illuminated the front mudguard. They were also unreliable with awful electrics, and in many cases piss poor build quality.
I think there is a bit of the old rose tinted specs going on here as my 60s/70s bikes let me down on many occasions. The only time I've had an 80s or later bike not get me home was for un-repairable punctures, crashes or that one instance when I destroyed the gearbox in my 1986 GTR1000 in southern France. My GS550E dropped a valve, My XS500 would coke up it's exhaust valves and lose power, the GoldStar never ran right and I had to tighten every damned bolt every weekend just to stop it falling apart. My friends 900SS had to be rewired from scratch and every bolt wired, his CB750k3 was pretty good but threw a rod in southern Italy. Almost all of these bikes had 30-70k miles on them.
Additionally most of the bikes back then were un-faired so getting at stuff was a lot easier at the roadside.
Don't get me wrong, I like older bikes as many of them had a lot more "soul" than the modern ones.
My 1989 GTR1000 still gets ridden more often than my GTR1400.
But no way are the older bikes more reliable.
I have nearly 200k miles on my 1000 and 75k on my 1400 and not one of those 60s/70s bikes would last that long without total rebuilds.
The Benelli was always odd in its habits. I once rode it to Caron (Whisky distillery in the north of Scotland) in the company of a Honda CB750 and a Virago 750. We rode there in one day (572 miles, I have recorded it as) and spent a week riding around Scotland, before making the journey back, again in a day. On reaching the village that we lived in, I called at the newsagents for my magazine order. The bike would not then restart for the half - mile home and I had to push it fully loaded! Another time when out, the gear lever fell off in the road.
I bought the bike in original condition, but dry stored for 17 years. I did quite a lot of dismantling and refurbishment to return it to good order.
It had belonged to an American air force pilot who had bought it and was soon afterward posted to Germany for advanced training. He put it into storage with his mother, and was killed whilst undergoing the advanced training and it remained in storage until his mother died 17 years later. A Brit then bought her house and found the Benelli in the garage, so imported it to the UK to sell.
The bike was featured on the cover (and inside as a road test feature) of the March 2008 The Classic Motorcycle, for anyone who is interested.
1970s classic bikes have been a passion of mine for many years and I've owned a 'few', like George ( Boomer) says they are generally unreliable, some say that's part of the fun, well that may be the case for some as it was for me back then, but not any longer, these days I enjoy my biking more when I can rely upon getting home safely
Classics are great to look at and even fun to ride.......occasionally
I see most bikes (and cars) as reliable in day - to - day use, whether modern or older. The key issue, in my view is to ride them within their limits. Whilst I don't deliberately ride the old bikes more gently, the exposed riding position and lower power output does mean that they are not normally held at high speeds for very long. They do, of course also require much more maintenance.
During our annual trips to France, Spain, Italy, Austria and other places, my friend has often accompanied us on his early (1970) CB750 and we've never had a problem with it. Whilst not consciously reducing speeds for him, we are aware that he is completely without weather protection and so probably slow down a little without thought.
In all of the tours that we have undertaken overseas, the only real problems that any of the group have had was misfiring/loss of cylinders/refusal to start (Triumph Tigers, two bikes) gearbox problems (Yamaha FJR 1300 5 speed, two bikes) and loss of coolant, severe surging and poor rideability (Triumph Explorer). In the end, the bikes did take their riders home on each occasion.
I didn't buy a "modern" bike until 2003, and only then because my Brother persuaded me to. This was because he had found that on the holiday trips, riding a modern bike is far less tiring when packing 500 miles or more into a day, every day until reaching our destination. They are also much easier to ride through more power, better braking and less challenging handling!
Did you buy that z1 in Japan in the end?
Pete, no I didn't. I've sent one of my oldies over from here instead.
Bikes registered before 2004 are not too difficult to import and register there, anything later is a real (and expensive) problem!
I'd love a Sei 900 and a VanVeen OCR to go alongside the Z1300 and the XS500 in my imaginary garage.
All I need is a lottery jackpot win.
As for rides out, I haven't ridden either of mine since February.
Depending on what BoJo says tonight, I may go for a ride next weekend.
George, the good news there is that classics really hold their value, with no sign yet of the trend changing. If you bought the right bike at a sensible price (they are around, most readily through the owners' clubs) then if it is well maintained well and kept clean, there will almost always be a queue of buyers for it if you need to turn it into cash again quickly!
How I wish that I'd bought an MV Augusta 750S in the early 2000's when they were fetching around £20,000. Now, the same bike will fetch £60,000 - £85,000 on any day of the week.
I parted with my well - loved Honda CB500/4 last year (just too many bikes) and the interested party turned up with a carrier bag of cash on the car seat and said that whatever it cost, he wasn't leaving without it.
Quote from: flatfour on May 10, 2020, 06:06:02 PM
George, the good news there is that classics really hold their value, with no sign yet of the trend changing. If you bought the right bike at a sensible price (they are around, most readily through the owners' clubs) then if it is well maintained well and kept clean, there will almost always be a queue of buyers for it if you need to turn it into cash again quickly!
How I wish that I'd bought an MV Augusta 750S in the early 2000's when they were fetching around £20,000. Now, the same bike will fetch £60,000 - £85,000 on any day of the week.
I parted with my well - loved Honda CB500/4 last year (just too many bikes) and the interested party turned up with a carrier bag of cash on the car seat and said that whatever it cost, he wasn't leaving without it.
We get that in Bradford but here they're usually buying drugs or guns! :mfr_lol:
Quote from: Lonewolf on May 10, 2020, 06:35:52 PM
We get that in Bradford but here they're usually buying drugs or guns! :mfr_lol:
:mfr_lol:
P.M says from Wednesdaynext werk travel in order to exercise is permitted
So rev it up
Steve, having dealt with numerous locals from around here over the years, many seem to deal only in cash. I did take the buyer to the bank though and asked them to check and count the funds, in case they were curious as to the origin of the deposit!
Two of my friends would not consider a bank account for years, and stacked their funds in milk churns that they then buried around their respective farms.
On occasions where they were given a cheque for something that they had sold (they were farmers) and I operated a group owned aircraft, they would sign the cheque on the reverse, pass it over and ask for it to be banked against their share of the next bill to come up.
Quote from: flatfour on May 10, 2020, 08:03:37 PM
Steve, having dealt with numerous locals from around here over the years, many seem to deal only in cash. I did take the buyer to the bank though and asked them to check and count the funds, in case they were curious as to the origin of the deposit!
Two of my friends would not consider a bank account for years, and stacked their funds in milk churns that they then buried around their respective farms.
On occasions where they were given a cheque for something that they had sold (they were farmers) and I operated a group owned aircraft, they would sign the cheque on the reverse, pass it over and ask for it to be banked against their share of the next bill to come up.
Colin, your last paragraph sounds like what we in the trade call money laundering. :whistling: :mfr_lol:
Wind up merchant :mfr_lol:
Steve, in these rural areas the barter system or cash are still preferred methods of trade.
Many of those that I know have a great mistrust of the large corporate institutions and an even greater mistrust of the state!
Perhaps it's just the company that I keep?
No, Colin I'm with you on that one. There's only certain folk need to know how much money I have, the Mrs claims to be one, I'm unconvinced!
Banks, Governments etc, they are not on my list of need to know! :mfr_lol:
Quote from: Lonewolf on May 08, 2020, 09:45:26 PM
Roger can you guess which southerner this could be, it was all my fault I should never have let him have that rum truffle :whistling:
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-PgwVjZw/0/13a9f0ba/XL/i-PgwVjZw-XL.jpg)[/url
Rum Truffle indeed Steve ... !!!!! I think you spiked it :mfr_lol: