willedoo

A 1958 model BMW. I can see where they get the Zeppelin name from.

You don't get the reverse gear or the 2WD of a Ural Gear Up, but a new Gear Up would set you back a minimum of $36,000 on the road. Considering the work done on the Guzzi, you could buy it and be $23,500 better off than buying a new Ural. I've been from just north of Brisbane to Cains and back, and Melbourne to Adelaide and back on a Guzzi and I was impressed with it's comfort and touring qualities. On my old Commando Fastback you'd get a sore arse and back just riding down to the shops.

I had an old Dusting in the early 70's. The plan was to bolt it to my 741 Indian but I ended up selling both before they were mated up. The sidecar was in good condition, good enough to bolt on and ride away. All it needed was a seat. I shudder when I think what I sold them both for. In today's money it would be the equivalent of $3,000.

250mm since Sunday night and still raining non stop. It's starting to resemble an ocean down on the floodplain.

Pete, you can have all of our thunderstorms if you want them. I hate the things. Flooding, erosion, power outages and infrastructure damage is all we get from them. Some summers we get hammered by them from October through to April. Half the year we're on almost constant disaster watch. I've had big killer bolts smashing trees 30 metres from the house, and sheet lightning making it's way inside the house with pretty blue streaks flashing around the stainless kitchen sink. I once had a blue bolt arc out between the saucepan I was holding and the stove I was about to put it on. Part of my aversion also relates to the traumatic experience of having our house smashed up in a tornado when I was a little kid. My mother and older siblings had to hold down the legs of the table we were sheltering under. I can remember stuff flying everywhere and getting sucked out where the roof once was. It was a struggle for them to hold the table down, the uplift force was that bad. I was too young to help out, all I could do is sit there and howl. So no, I don't like storms. I think another thing that encourages the sheet lightning is a tin roof. It hits the roof and the metal cyclone rods are only 6" below that and the lightning travels down the rods and arcs on any metal it can find.

A reasonable price as well considering the sidecar and leading link setup. You'd be hard pressed to find a second hand Ural outfit for that price. Looks like a Dusting sidecar.

That Guzzi's quite a rig, would be good for a bit of comfortable cruising. From what I remember of the Guzzi's, they were always a comfortable bike to ride.

I wonder if he will stay on as opposition leader after the election.

At $10,000 it's a bit overpriced in that condition. The sidecar adds a bit of value. You can still get parts out of Ukraine but they're a bit pricey. China also makes some terrible quality knock-off parts for them , so I'm guessing they were exported to China at some stage.

This old outfit is on marketplace in Brisbane. The pride of Ukraine, a 1970 K750 Dnepr unfinished project.

A rat + cow bike. Somewhere in Poland going by the watermark on the photo.

We've been getting a bit here. 145mm since Sunday and another 180mm forecast for the week ahead. Up to 90mm of that is forecast for tommorrow.

Some businesses must be making good money from their mark up on products. I see Supercheap Auto is selling Penrite Valve Shield 250ml bottles for $31, and a Mini and Moke parts place in S.A. is selling the exact same thing for $17. You would think Supercheap would be offering the cheaper price with their size and buying power. Maybe they should change their name to Superdear.

I guess as time goes on, more might be revealed about whether the perpetrator was influenced by one particular group or another. The article mentioned his online posts had changed in recent times from local environmental activism to those of a more political nature, mainly anti U.S. and anti Israel comments over the Gaza war, accusing the government of being US lap dogs and stuff like that. So far his profile places him more on the left side of politics but there's nothing mentioned post 2024, so there could be more to the story. Reading that article it seems that he had mental health issues, but what turned him against a politician that he had previously supported is unknown at this stage.

That's drawing a very broad sword Jerry. There's divisive rhetoric spouted across all sections of the political spectrum, from the the left to the right. Best to reserve judgement until more facts are known. Here's an article with a bit of background on the bloke. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/suspect-in-helen-haines-attack-named-20261020-p616zq.html

Interesting use of a WW2 Type G-1 low pressure oxygen tank as a fuel tank. The photo looks AI generated but it's not; I enhanced it as the original was fairly low quality.

Inyourfacebook. I use it on a daily basis with just the one account. Mainly for Marketplace and accessing special interest groups; one of which I'm the founder and co-administrator of. The other main use is FB Messenger for keeping in contact with people. I'm in almost daily contact on Messenger with a best mate I've known since we were kids playing in the mud with our toy soldiers. Messenger gets an extra workout during football season. We were both captain and co-captain of the school football team, and usually are both watching the same games on TV every week so there's a lot of running commentary going back and forth on messenger during games. Nothing beats a good old fashioned phone call for keeping in touch, but Messenger is good for more regular low key contact. There's plenty of special interest stuff on Facebook. A couple of Indonesians I follow, one in Java and the other in Borneo, are classic and vintage motorcycle enthusiasts and it's interesting seeing the photos and videos they post on an almost daily basis. They're mainly old British bikes, Ariel, AJS, Matchless, Velocette and BSA with the odd German bike as well. I think most of the old Harleys that were in Indonesia have been hoovered up by the Americans over the years. They were on to them back when I was there in the 1980's.

Yes, I know it's not an old car, it's an old bulldozer. A machinery mob in Oakey have this Vickers Vikon Dozer on marketplace, not selling it, just looking for information. Until now I didn't know Vickers made dozers. According to the owners there were only twenty one Vikons made and only two running examples left in the world, this one and one in New Zealand. It's powered by a supercharged four cylinder Rolls Royce diesel engine and is built on the track system of a Tetrarch light tank, which were built by Vickers Armstrongs Limited in the 1930’s and used in WW2. The Vikon was build in the 1950's. The video is of the New Zealand example at Wanaka. Not the prettiest bulldozer I've seen.

Just waiting for Australia vs New Zealand to kick off the World Cup in Sydney and listening to one of the organisers on the radio talking about the growth of Rugby League, and he was saying League is played in sixty countries worldwide now. The match in Sydney tonight is sold out, biggest crowd in fifty years.

Royal Enfield Musket V-twin: https://www.musketvtwin.com/

Here's a before photo of my old Howard Eight. It's a crusty old motor but I'd like to get it running again. It hasn't run for a lot of years, but there's still oil residue in the crankcase and timing chest and it still turns. Just the usual stuck valves and stuff like that. The Howard Eights are getting rare now but one good thing is that they share the same barrel, piston and rings as the single cylinder Howard Junior engine. Howard Juniors are fairly plentiful and a there's a lot of restorers doing them up, so new rings should be fairly easy to track down. If I can get it running ok, it might be a rat bike contender. People put them in road bikes but they need a bit of serious work and some mods to fill that role. For what I want, it would probably do the job. This contraption I'm trying to build will never be registered on the road and unlikely to ever go beyond second gear. A couple of cooling fans would help it a lot. The Howard carburettor can go to a rotary hoe restorer and be replaced with a 38mm round slide Mikuni. The other issue is it's missing the magneto and you'd probably have to mortgage the house to buy one if you could ever track one down. The other alternative is set up a battery, coil and distributer ignition. VW distributors are cheap and it would be an interesting side project to convert one. Just a matter of remanufacturing the drive and making a custom cam ring with the bumps at 205° and 155° instead of 180° to suit the 50° V angle.

I found this exploded view image that gives another look at the Howard cams. The image was named Howard Twelve, which could be right as I think the water cooled Howard Twelve and the air cooled Howard Eight shared very similar if not the same bottom ends. Second photo is a Howard Twelve.

I reckon they would have gone cross-eyed trying to design them. A simple construction requiring a complicated cam shape. This is the parts manual drawing; it seems to exaggerate the shape a bit.

Crazy cams

It would be a tricky one. They've been talking about a split since the 1890's but nothing has ever come of it. If Queensland had a referendum to split and the yes vote won, it would still have to be approved at a federal level. Because north Queensland is not a legal entity, any referendum would involve all Queenslanders, the majority of whom live south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Also, not all those north of it would vote yes, so a referendum would not have much chance of carrying. The best thing that ever happened to us was independence from NSW in 1859. If that didn't happen, we'd have no State of Origin series.