willedoo

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:

I doubt they'd sell them to the Russian military due to sanctions risk. They're headquarted in the U.S. now and manufacturing has moved from Russia to Kazakhstan since the war between Russia and Ukraine began. The new ones are a big improvement on the old Soviet made bikes. I guess they'd want to be for the price of them. Sales are strong, they have a big following around the world.

Original side valve M72 from 1942.

That newer Ural in OD in that last post is an M70, ceased production 2018. A military look retro tribute to the old original M-72 that started it's career at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. Pictured from another angle:

It must be a case of the squeaky wheel getting the oil. My energy retailer has been giving me a run around for a week or more regarding an estimated bill. They've gone the way of a lot of companies with team leaders, working groups and all sorts of titles and jargon. The end result is that to fit all this stuff into their operation, something had to go, and that something is common sense. Emails have been bouncing back and forth for a while now, thanking me for my patience and promising that the working group will look into it. I emailed them last night and told them that patience was running out and I would start looking at changing retailers if their billing department couldn't resolve the issue. This morning I received a revised bill of $0, so they've waived the bill by crediting my account with the bill amount.

I agree there octave. People selling small items are probably not going to come under scrutiny. More likely if you sell a large valuable coin or jewellery collection in one lot. A bit like centrelink with applications for pension or income support. Technically you are supposed to list the value of personal items and I'd say most people undervalue or don't list them at all. That's accepted and I've never heard of anyone getting an audit of their personal items.

In my situation the majority of my aviation collection has come from overseas, so there has been a postage and freight component to the total cost. Also since the government scrapped the $1,000 exemption on paying GST on imported goods, there's a 10% GST component in the total cost, which is 10% of the cost of the item + postage + any customs fees. When working out the cost of the item for determining a capital gain or loss, does the tax department go by the cost of the item only or that plus all other costs incurred.

I'm not joking, just asking a serious question. What is average if voting can flip either way on small margins? Does a 52/48 win represent what the average voter thinks, or would a figure of 70/30 better represent what the average voter thinks.

If they come to a peace deal where the regime is still in power, the Straits are open and oil prices back to normal, that's a big loss for the U.S. no matter how they dress it up. Iran lost a lot of military assets and a few top people, but any promises they make are not worth much, so I'd agree, a war comprehensively lost.

octave, I'm not sure what average means when applied to voting. I'm not good at mathematics, so hopefully someone can explain it to me. Most elections, even what they term landslide elections, have very little in vote percentage between the winners and losers. If the Democrats have a 52% vs 48% win, does that mean that 52% are average voters and 48% are not average voters.

ome, you only need to feel sorry for the approximate half of them that voted Democrat. For the rest that voted Republican, some might have some regrets but the majority are glad to be rid of Democrat government. I've had some personal experience with it as I have friends who are American, and my stepfather's two sons by his first marriage live in the U.S. and are married to Americans. Their views all vary a bit. A mate who was out here last year just before he passed away had been a Republican voter until he lost the right to vote, so he didn't vote in the Trump election. He broadly supported the Republicans and was fairly neutral on Trump. On the other hand, his older brother is a Republican and absolutely hates Trump but will still vote Republican over Democrat.

The M-63 Ural frame is off the ute, oiled up and living in the shed. I'll park it up until I decide what to do with it. Some would probably suggest using it as a boat anchor. As I mentioned previously, the bloke I bought it from had only just bought it, so knew nothing of it's past history. He kept the single 500 Yamaha motor that was in it and sold the rest. Whoever installed the Yamaha motor had to butcher the frame to fit it in vertically. I'll most likely de-modify the frame back to original as the motot I'd put in it is a much lower height than the Yamaha 500 engine. In the attached photo the red dotted line is where the top brace was cut out. The red arrows point to where the down tubes have been cut and extended with sleeve inserts. That wont be too hard to fix; I'll just jig it, cut the top welds and pull the two sections back to the original position leaving the sleeves inside. Then it's just a matter of grinding a V and welding, then grinding flush. For strength and appearance, there's the option of welding a chevron over each of them, and possibly incorporate a cross brace in that area. The swing arm is also upside down but it fits both ways. The older Ural swing arm setup looks a bit like a plunger rear end from a distance and has that bobber look with the rake of the frame. It's got some really solid sidecar mounts. The top mounts are substantial size 10mm plate. The second attached photo is a model Ural offered only a few years ago and is now discontinued; I forget the name of it. It was a retro look model that offered the old style telescopic forks and similar rear end to the M-63.

I had a closer look at the old headlight that was bolted to that Ural frame. A small trademark on the lens identified it as an Everwing brand which was the brand of headlights supplied to Datsun. Googling Datsun photos pins the age down to anywhere between the early thirties and early fifties, either from a Datsun car or Datsun light truck. It's a nice old headlight and quite big, about 200mm wide across the front and around 180mm centre of lens to the rear.

Yes, John Howard found that out the hard way. He finally got a majority in the Senate allowing them to pass legislation at will, brought in work choices and got walloped for it. At least that's the way I remember it if someone can correct me.

It seems like most of the political journos are writing and saying that the rise of One Nation has meant the end of the two party system as we've known it. It might come to that, where we have three main parties for a period of time. Or One Nation could flame out, the coalition eventually rebuilds, and we're back to the old two party system. I don't follow European politics much, but some of those countries seem to have multi parties and they try to cobble together a coalition of parties after the election to get a governing majority. It makes me wonder if that's the direction we're heading here in Australia.