willedoo

I only ever rode an old Bonneville once and only for a few k's down the road. I remember the vibration was very noticeable after being used to the isolastic setup on the Commando. I also had a ride on a Norton SS and it was a beautiful handling bike. The only issue was that it had a very annoying vibration that kicked in around 55 to 60mph, right where you would want to sit on the speed limit. To have a comfortable ride, you had to slow down or go over the speed limit.

Not in the footage I saw, there were heaps of women and very few wearing head coverings. But that was footage taken by citizens and posted on social media, so it might have been from a prodominately anti-government suburb and maybe not representative of what you see in other areas.

Maybe you don't have Specsavers in the UK.

Jerry, I'm curious, what's the deal with those roadsign sized numberplates on bikes in the UK. Here in Queensland we have plates 7&1/2" x 4".

There is a slight difference. Putin controls the world's biggest nuclear force and Iran probably doesn't have one to their name. Nobody really knows how many of Putin's crackers will actually work when the time comes, but I don't think anyone wants to find out.

I see that the home of former Iranian President I'madinnerjacket was blown up.

You're right about the resale price Nev. You see a lot on marketplace with relatively low prices.

This is a bit off topic, but I suppose it's slightly related to a previous discussion we had about noisy Harleys with straight through pipes. A mate received his new Verex slash cut drag pipes in the mail on Friday to fit to his two month old Bonneville Speedmaster. They make them in brushed, polished (bright chrome) and black ceramic finishes. He went for the polished finish as it will fit in with the existing chrome on the bike. I think they will get fitted on Monday. The photos show the drag pipes unpacked and the bike with the standard Triumph mufflers. It will be interesting to hear how loud it is; with the Triumph mufflers it sounds like a sewing machine. It's been a long journey. Me and the mate started out making mud pies and playing with plastic toy soldiers, graduated on to slot cars and now we all have bigger toys. Maybe we'll finish off with wheelchair races in the nursing home.

It will be interesting to see how it pans out. The regime has never been weaker than at present. If the US/Israel alliance has good enough intelligence on the ground, they might be able to get a fair bit done in the short term with air power striking military infrastructure and the ongoing takeout of command. If the regime survives that, the next logical step would be some breathing space at the negotiating table. Both sides know that's never going to work but it gives them time.

Hopefully the job will be finished and not left to fester again. The turning point will be how to get the military to swing and I don't know how that will go with the revolutionary guard. They seem to be a fairly dedicated bunch.

The Patriot crews will be getting some practice.

Sometimes I think I'd like to be off grid, but with the amount of mains power I use it's still the cheapest option by far. When I got the power on in 1994, it only cost me $5,000. The power company will run the power free of charge a maximum of 30 metres into the property (owner supplies the pole). From there I have 100 metres overhead which was $2,000, and from there about 250 metres of underground cable which was $3,000. With the three phases, that's four 35mm underground cables, so I'd hate to guess what the cost would be these days. If it was all overhead I probably could have got away with single phase, but over that distance it's good to share the load over two phases. It didn't cost much extra for the third phase cable so I got it put in for a couple of reasons. At the time I thought it was good to have in case I ever decided to run any three phase equipment, and even though I'll probably never use it for that purpose, the fourth underground cable is good insurance in case one of the two I use is ever knocked out by lightning or some other reason. Half the underground section runs up the centre of the driveway, so wiring in the unused fourth cable is a cheap fix if I lose a cable. Touch wood it hasn't happened but when the old underground copper phone line was in use, I had to get Telstra out a few times to replace phone cable from lightning strikes. It hits trees and travels down the roots to zap the cable.

Jerry, 95% of Iranians are followers of Islam. They are Persians not Arabs, is the more correct way to describe them.

I'm not sure whether smart meters are available down our road. In theory you would think it would be a much better, more efficient way of doing it. All in all over the years, I've had a fairly good run with meter reads. When Energex did it themselves it worked good. They had Energex employees in Suzuki 4wd vehicles that could access all the rural properties. When Cleanaway took over, they didn't want to tackle rural driveways so they'd leave a card in the letterbox saying they couldn't get access and would estimate it. The only irritating thing about it was the BS they'd put on the card as the reason they couldn't access the property, eg: weather when it was a perfectly sunny day, dog on premises when there is no dog etc.. I was glad when they eventually stopped leaving the cards with the fairy stories. Back when Energex used to read the meters, I had a visit one day from a bloke who had come to investigate if I was stealing power. What it was is that I have 3 phase power but the third phase is not connected to the meter as I don't have any 3 phase equipment and only use the outlets from the other two. Every meter read it would show up as two meters with a reading and one was always still on zero. Once I explained the situation, they were happy and I never heard any more about it again.

Nev, I've been with Origin for quite a few years now and have had a fairly good run with them. I swapped over from AGL back when they lost a lot of customers, mainly due to their billing department. They overcharged me on a bill and I think it took 9 months from the start of the process until they finally paid it. At one stage they got into a lot of trouble in this district and customers left them in doves. They got into trouble over fake local newspaper headlines. If a customer left, they would print a fake copy of the local paper, with the ex customer's name splashed across the headline. The printed story was designed to shame the customer with very disparaging headlines about why they left. Some old ladies received it in the mail and thought it was real and it caused them a lot of stress. I think from memory the head of the billing department was forced to resign over it. I'd already left AGL by then, but I remember their billing department at the time as being very arrogant and difficult in my dealings with them. What a way to do business. It took them a long time to recover any sort of reputation in this district after that. The way it works here, Energex (formerly government owned South East Queensland Electricity Board) is the supplier and you have to buy your power from a retailer of your choice. Origin in my case. The meter reading is all done by Energex sub-contractors and Energex passes the numbers on to the retailer. The Energex sub-contractor for the meter reding is Cleanaway and it's gone way downhill since they took that job over. When Energex did the meter reading themselves, it was faultless.

Beautiful sounding engine. I used to like listening to those hit and miss engines at the pioneer shows. Another favourite was watching the Lanz Bulldogs idling.

onetrack, I must admit part of the attraction to the YB, apart from nostalgia and being a good engine, is a bit of local pride. Back in the day the foundry was one of the biggest businesses in town.

I do understand your comments Nev, and appreciate them. One thing with this project is that it's about the journey, not the destination. In regard to adding to challenges, I do a lot of that on purpose. It's the challenge of projects that attracts me, not so much the end result. Yes, there's easier way of doing things and if I just wanted the end product I'd go out and buy it and save myself a lot of time. But that's not what this project is about. All good advice from you Nev, and starting off with something good would suit some. In this case, I'm neither starting with something good, nor am I resurrecting a pile of junk. It's a scratch build; I'm building a pile of junk from scratch. That's the basic idea of it at ths stage. It will be a good challenge. I've done a lot of restoration work, but always restoring something to original condition. There's a lot more freedom in this project.

My supplier, Origin, are doing the same thing now. Previously when they estimated it, it was based on my own average useage. Recently they changed it to an estimate based on average household use across the board which is about four times what I use. Most of the readings now are estimates, so every three monthly bill I receive a way too high bill, then submit a self read, then they reissue the correct bill. I guess it's the way it will be every three months from now on.

Now that I really think about it, that would have been the battery setup we had. I remember a lot of them so they were probably all 2 volt. We had a YB as well, it was a good old motor.

I can't remember if the battery bank was 4x8 volt or 5x6 volt + 1x2 volt. They were stuffed, just there for show. As soon as the genset died, the lights went out.

Nev, do you mean 32 volt? That's what all the properties ran when I was growing up. Still got the generator in the shed. I just wish I still had the Southern Cross diesel we ran it with.

For the same reason as with solo bikes, I can't ride horses any more unless I had a big platform to walk up an get on it's back. Probably a good idea I don't do it any more.

I think it's whatever floats people's boats. I think golfers are mad, but golfers don't.

It will have a sidecar on it. It's the only way I could ride it after the hip replacement, to mount something solid. You should have seen me trying to get on a mate's Deuce on the weekend, it was comical. Think of it this way Nev, when you look at a lot of those custom jobs, how many ever actually see a highway, or come anywhere near to using a lot of the power they've built into their motors. Most do it partially for a bit of show, but mainly as an engineering exercise combined with the fun of just doing it. It's all about fun.