willedoo

I spotted this Ural M-63 frame on marketplace, same year model as the one I picked up recently. You don't often see photos of bare frames for comparison; sometimes youtube restoration videos can show some detail. The only thing I learnt from this photo is what the tank rear mounting bracket looks like, as mine has been removed. Only of any use if a stock tank was going to be refitted, which is highly unlikely. Good luck to him trying to get $1,000 for it.

It did it tonight, that's why I posted that short story.

One thing I love about my place is when showers sweep in from the ocean side at night. If they're slow moving and you are out on the verandah, you can hear the noise as they move in across the valley raining down on the canefields. Sometimes you can hear it coming for a full five minutes before it hits the tin roof.

On that subject of Beach Petroleum, this photo is their geothermal / hot rocks project on the eastern side of the Flinders Range. It was taken in 2011, and a bit better quality than than previous instamatic photo. This one was taken with my little Panasonic Lumix compact. Myself and a mate went down there for about five days to do a small job. Just to the left of the well head, you can see the Beverley uranium mine at the foothill of the Flinders, which is where we were accommodated. It's a pity the project fizzled out.

Yes, I kind of visualise the mineral grid patterns as being similar to hydrocarbon 3D grids. They can be a fairly tight pattern with lines every 400 metres over a fairly large area. They could be pegged to have a vibe point every 40 metres, usually three vibe trucks with the centre one vibing at the peg. What a boring job those drivers have, drive 40 metres, lower the pad and shake the ground, lift it up and drive another 40 metres and do it all over again, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I think these days they don't even lower and raise the pads any more; it's done remotely. The only excitement they get is when someone has a flat tyre. Lucky for the environment the 3D intensive grid work came about around the same time as GPS, so that was a quantum leap in environmental protection having GPS surveying and GPS fitted machines. I can remember the days when they would have two chainmen working one vehicle. The driver would take off from a peg holding the chain out the window while the bloke or girl doing the running would let the tail of the chain overshoot the peg, then stomp on the chain when it shot past, pulling it out of the drivers hand. The runner would pull the chain back those few metres to the peg, then wave to the driver who would jump out and knock in a peg at his end. Then the driver would take off again while the runner ran up to the new peg and they'd repeat it all over . Now it's one person in a vehicle and a GPS telling them when to stop and put a peg in.

onetrack, that's a beast, that Cuthbertson Landrover. That's what I need for getting up and down the driveway. The only thing I've ever had to do with nickel was in the Kimberleys, about halfway between Halls Creek and Turkey Creek in 1986. That was just putting in some access tracks for the geologists to have a scratch around, no grid work.

To keep within the photography thread topic, but on the same subject, this is a scan of a photo I took in 1984 with an instamatic camera. I'm not sure of the format ie: 126 or 110, Peter, red750 might be able to help there. It's a very small three wheeler drill rig that was used to drill shallow upholes on the surface of Lake Eyre South. I wasn't involved with it, but from memory they towed it with a Honda trike and the Argo buggy in the background was used to haul cables. I remember they had a heap of trikes on that job. It was right at that period in history where trikes were on the way out and quad bikes were first appearing on the market.

onetrack, there's a few in the Simpson a bit older than that one, some dating back to the early/mid 60's and later 70's. In the 60's, I think the McDills and Hale River wells were the first.

onetrack, I think you're right about the welder's signature. Now that I think back on it, I've seen a lot with signatures and a lot without. As far as a sense of humour regarding the naming of that well, It's not specifically meant as a joke. It's a Beach Petroleum well and all of their wells that I know of had beach and coastal themes in their names. I've seen a fair few of them as we used to contract for Beach quite a lot. Reg Sprigg did most of his early exploration work around the beaches off Adelaide in the 1950's and 60's with his company Geosurveys, then formed it into Beach Petroleum in the early 60's. At one stage they hired a dive instructor to teach them to hookah dive and did some seismic work on the gulf bed off Adelaide. They were a great mob to work for; of all the companies we contracted for over the years, I put Beach at the top of the list by a long way.

Peter, I don't know him. I'd have to check to see who's name goes on those abandoment markers. I'm fairly sure the information on them is a legal requirement by the various state's petroleum regulations. It could be a simple tradition of the welder adding his name to it, or more likely it's the name of an authorised person attesting to the closure of the well. That possibly could be someone from the drilling company OD&E which was based in Toowoomba, or someone from Innamincka Petroleum, or if they used a contractor to seal the well, someone from that company. Schlumberger and Halliburton were the main well services contractors out there.

Jerry, I'm assuming that's an intentional pun and not a typo.

Have a good trip Pete, a good time of year to be heading out there. It's been over 14 years since I retired from working in the back country and haven't been there since. If I got my vehicle up to scratch I'd like to do another trip out there as I've never been there on a tourist basis, always working. From the east coast of S.E. Queensland it's bitumen all the way to Innamincka now. Last time I was out there the bitumen had extended from Jackson to past Ballera, but fell short of the border. It had been a good season with a good body of Mitchell grass as far as the eye could see. In that same batch of photos, I fund this one of an abandoned well name plate at that field where we worked for a short time. Top line is Willowie No.1, the well name - ie: first well in the Willowie field. Second line, the well owner, Innamincka Petroleum. Third line the drilling contractor - Oil Drilling and Exploration Rig 30. Fourth line, the date drilling commenced. Spud is short for spudded, the term for when the bit first bites into the ground. Fifth line, the date it was plugged and abandoned. Last line, the total depth reached.

I miss working in this sort of country. It's the type of scenery where you almost expect Clint Eastwood to roll up with his poncho and mule. This was the last job I worked on out there. It was a small prospect for Innamincka Petroleum around the field they had north of Innamincka. The camera was a little Panasonic Lumix compact. It took reasonable photos and was around that time period when digital cameras were starting to produce reasonable quality images. I've still got the camera but rarely use it. If I want to take a non phone photo these days I use the old Canon 700D.

Marty, this was my favourite for leaning into corners back in the day, but it probably wouldn't hold up against the modern bikes these days. A bloke I knew back then had a Dominator SS and he let me take it for a ride one day. As far as handling goes, it ran rings around the Commando. The only issue with the SS was the annoying vibration coming through the seat right around the 60mph mark. The owner of it went on to own the world's fastest Velocette. He tried for 200 mph for a few years but the final record he set was just a bit short at 193 mph.

That was dad riding with a toddler on the tank, mum behind holding a baby and an older child hanging on behind her.

I wonder how many they would fit on them in Asia. I've seen a family of five on a small solo bike (like a 175cc) in places like Indonesia.

They're good for carrying groceries. And building arm muscles.

Just to qualify those sidecar details, here's the quote from the transport department regultions: 'Sidecars which bolt directly to the motorcycle’s frame without the need for any modifications to the motorcycles are acceptable without specific approval. Sidecars which require the motorcycle to be modified (for example, welding to the frame) must be approved by the Department of Transport and Main Roads. Before modifying your motorcycles so that a sidecar can be attached, you should engage the services of an Approved Person Engineer, who can submit an application on your behalf.' So a normal bolt on sidecar doesn't need approval. The park brake ruling is that a motorcycle manufactured after February 1976 fitted with a sidecar must have a mechanical parking brake. A bike can have a right hand side car only if it was built that way before 1 July 1988.

As far as I know Queensland is the only state that has the option of either single or dual seat registration. About a month ago I spotted this Royal Enfield Bullet 500 and sidecar in the shopping centre carpark. I got talking to the owner and he was saying that as long as you have two seat rego on a bike, you can fit a sidecar any time you like without any engineering certification or inspections. You can build a sidecar yourself and fit it, the only transport department stipulations on sidecars are that it must have four attachment points and a park brake. We don't have annual vehicle inspections here, only on trucks so for other vehicles they only need a roadworthy certificate to transfer registration from one owner to another. The owner of this Royal Enfield is a retired pilot and has quite a few classics from what he told me. Norton Commandos and single thumpers. This one is his daily driver although he said he sticks to the secondary roads and doesn't go near the highway on it.

I take my hat off to you ome for doing that job. I remember four years ago when I was in icu after an artery operation, the first night there was a lot of commotion in an adjoining room. I don't know what the story was, but it sounded like a druggie who had od'd on purpose to suicide and he was very angry that he'd been revived. He was off his head and the police had to be there to keep him under control.

I still haven't identified the drum brake wheels on this 1970 Ural frame yet, but the tyres on it bring back some memories. They're Dunlop Roadmaster K81/TT100 tyres the same as I had on my Norton Commando Fastback in 1972. In those days they were the latest big thing. They still make them now but market them as a classic vintage style tyre. It makes you feel a bit old hearing that.

That's a lot of money. In Queensland motorcycle rego is $140 plus a traffic improvement fee of $70. CTP for dual seat is around $425, so about $635 all up. If it's registered as a solo seat, the CTP is around 80 or 100 dollars less, not sure of the exact figure. The saving for single seat rego is hardly worth it. A solo seat needs to be fitted and the pillion footpeg brackets either cut off or welded up.

The only recent time I've walked into emergency entailed a five hour wait before being triaged, but I wasn't a critical case. It was more a formality; the stroke clinic phoned me and wanted me to do it. As I know now, that's what I should have done in the first place instead of going through the GP and then getting a referral to the hospital. A couple of years ago when I was stretchered in after running low on the red stuff, it wasn't too long to wait. Maybe ten minutes ramped in the ambulance, then another ten in the hallway. The paramedics stayed with me and kept an eye on blood pressure so it was all good. Our local public hospitals are good in my opinion. Not the case everywhere from what you hear.

There's also an electric prototype. https://www.imz-ural.com.au/

Ural are branching out this year with a very different format to be released in the U.S., called the Neo 500. It's based on the Chinese Yingang SUV 500 II sidecar rig, liquid cooled parallel twin with chain drive. It seems to be an attempt to provide a cheaper, more accessable model for the market and will be about 5,000 USD cheaper than the standard base model Ural available now. Pics are of the prototype: