RantMachine

After the third time it becomes a habit in itself

It does look very pretty, I'm jealous of the scenery. But I can go outside and not die, and that's something I value

http://www.themotorbikeforum.co.uk/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=13208

Did you skip most of the thread there?

This stinks of a scam even worse than Charles Ponzi's gooch Just think about it... they stick an ad on eBay for your bike (similar to a "theft to order"), and while they wait for a buyer they tell you they're waiting for all 49 tickets to sell. All the while, they make a good few bob selling tickets to legit people, but pretty safely knowing that you aren't going to get 49 people who all want that bike and all think this sounds like a good idea. Once the bike sells on eBay, they use a fake account to enter the raffle on behalf of the eBay buyer, and use a number of other fake accounts to buy the remaining tickets. Then they rig the raffle so that the eBay buyer wins, and they deliver his bike. Maybe make a post with the fake profile saying how great the new bike is. Any legit tickets sold are profit. The difference between the value of the remaining tickets and the value of the eBay sale is all profit. And they haven't committed a theft, so the police aren't looking for the bike. In fact, they even have the keys and the logbook. All legit, apart from the fake raffle. And because the buyer is always a legit eBay buyer, the winners are all over the country and therefore it never looks suspicious. If the bike doesn't shift on eBay for the price they want to get for it? Just keep selling tickets and run this raffle for real, to get some genuine positive feedback on the Facebook page. The guy that genuinely wins a new bike goes and tells all his mates, and BAM, more punters/mugs. Nice little side earner with almost no risk of legal repercussions. I would never trust a blind raffle, whatever the odds on a favourable outcome might seem to be. Unless it's you running this Hadster, in which case... dude, this seriously looks like a scam from the outside

The pigeon that took a crap into my brake caliper while I was changing the pads!! Not amused! Flung the old pad at it to show my appreciation before cleaning the damn thing for a second time

NOTD goes to the peenarse in the red cage in front of me on the way home who slowed down to about 5mph while we were going through a flooded section of road. Cheers, dickwad

Could try sending BikerMooFromMars a message, I think she's somewhere in your neck of the woods and has clocked up a good many miles on a 125 around London, and can probably give tips on what works well for overcoming confidence problems. Not sure how often she's on here these days so could message Fozzie and get him to pass the message along. Don't take her advice on cornering, though

In the defense of my bike, it's finally behaved itself for long enough that I could actually spend money on things I wanted instead of things I needed Fitting my nice new crash bars tonight

f**k it, just got an email from HR saying that they've laid off the entire marketing department apart from me and the other graphic designer. I work in a different office to the rest of them so I didn't see it happen, but apparently they turned up for work yesterday and were sent straight home without any warning or time to even send any emails or make any calls

Didn't see you there the last two weeks, Al

I've tried to quit many times and have managed more than a year away from the things on a few occasions now, but the biggest downfall has never been the nicotine addiction - it's always breaking the associations that I struggle with. In my old retail job I would go for a cigarette when I needed a break and didn't want to be dragged back into the shop, so I developed a connection between being stressed and smoking. Once that job finally ended I managed to stay off them for a year, until something else stressful came along and got me back on them again. Sort of broke the stress association around that time, but only because it gradually transformed into an association with being apocalyptically angry So now every time the red mist comes down I suddenly have an absolutely overwhelming desire for a cigarette, irrespective of how long it's been since the last one. Normally I'm not too bad at keeping my temper at bay, but lately I've had certain things set me off more than usual and so I've been falling off the wagon with the odd cigarette every few days.

I'd probably make a post about it on a forum so that the whole world knew my bike would be really easy to steal for the next 8 weeks

Awesome, thanks all.

Can't make it, a dog ate my homework

Hiya all, Crash bars arrived, parts list is in German (which I've translated) and instructions are all of one sentence long and largely useless. Worked out all of it, except for one thing: I've got two internal locking washers (similar to image below but with 10 teeth on each) and I don't know where they go. http://po.b5z.net/i/u/10220233/i/Internal_Tooth_Lock_Washer.jpg I know from the parts list that they're part of the fastening for the bottom of the bars, so all I need to do is establish which two parts they go between. I'm sure it's common sense to anyone who has used locking washers before, but the only ones I have past experience with are the spring type and the curved type, never had the toothed type before. A quick diagram of how it attaches: The only threaded parts are the mount on the frame and the hex bolt itself. As noted on the diagram, there is a rubber washer on the inside of the skid plate to provide some cushioning between it and the frame. Any thoughts? Hoping to do this tonight while doing some other servicing bits.

There go my plans to nick your bike while I'm in Bristol on business this weekend

frustrates me that in these cash-strapped times, with everyone concerned about geen issues and recycling, that the police think its appropriate to just crush a perfectly good vehicle just because its owner was and idiot. Surely they could sell them and generate some much needed cash!! Or better yet, sell it and give the money to the driver of the car in lieu of an insurance payout!

Iiiiit might be a little different Will quite probably take you up on that offer.

Still a fair way to go yet before I've caught up with where the bike is now When I catch up to the present day I have a pretty little picture I made in Photoshop of how I want to make the bike look once I'm done with the cosmetic stuff

BMW design strikes again! You have to remove the rear subframe (or at least raise it a fair bit) in order to remove the shock. You have to remove the silencers to remove the subframe. You can't remove the silencers if you can't remove the clamp. You can't remove the clamp if it turns out that underneath all that rust the previous owner has welded the clamp shut, and spot welded the silencers on. At the recommendation of the F650 forum, I tried the following items: The chisel proved to be weaker than the clamp, and although the saw was getting through it gradually I just couldn't get the leverage while reaching in under the tail of the bike. Tango and Bonniebird to the rescue! I'm told that Bob will take any excuse to use the angle grinder... With the cans finally off, the tail went up... And old shock came out and the new one went in. That was the easy bit ...actually, I lie. Getting the old preload adjuster out and the new one in was an absolute bast*rd. Took advantage of the subframe being off the bike and fitted that new speedo sensor, too. Bit of a bugger to route through the bike even with the thing split open, hand to use a bit of a coathanger to pull it through one tricky spot. Stuck it all back together, no more creaking now. Took the time to set the sag properly and now it behaves like a completely different bike. I even know how fast I'm going, too. Lovely stuff!

Eight months down. Remember how I said that my rear shock was on the way out? Yeah, riding to the rally and back with all my camping crap and then doing a 1500 mile trip around the country with even more weight was probably the last straw. Day two of the big ride, it started creaking every time I sat on the bike And my GOD could I feel every single bump in the Peak District and Lake District. Every time I got off the bike I was giving the swingarm pivots a blast with some lithium grease to try and shut up the creaking - like hell I was going to cancel the trip By the time I got back the shock wasn't really doing anything any more. Spent a large portion of the final day riding it standing up to keep as much weight as possible over the forks instead of the now-dead shock. Bike was then garaged for a month while I waited until I had money for a new one. The Hagon shock was cheaper but I'd heard bad things about it and it didn't have the remote preload adjuster. Good thing I did a lot of overtime in August...

Six months in now, birthday happened and my parents bought me a Givi rack! Thought it'd be years before I'd be able to afford to get some luggage sorted, what with the repair costs. Sadly the F650 has a bit of a rep for melting soft panniers. Looked into some guides to building my own hard panniers but concluded I had neither the tools nor the skills at this stage to have panniers ready in time for the 2014 rally (only a week to go). Instead I got a pair of "universal" panniers and a "universal" pannier mounting kit. Universal is apparently also a word for "kind of fits everything but doesn't fit anything without a struggle". Some drilling, filing, sealing and swearing later, I'm all set to carry half a ton of camping gear.

Next up, coolant needed a change. I knew the bike had been standing for a fair while, and as far as I can tell from the patchy service history it had been a good few years since it had any fresh stuff. Plus the blue stuff in there was nigh on impossible to see through the almost-opaque sight glass, so I found some bright red stuff that should be suitable for my bike. Flushed the whole system out, thankfully no sign of any bits of metal in the old coolant so at least the inside of the cooling system is probably in good nick While I had the plastics off, I took the headlight unit off too. My hands are a little bit too big to reach in behind the clocks and reach the adjuster. Checked the condition of all the wiring in the back of the clocks just to be safe. Maybe getting a little bit paranoid about the bike at this point All looks good, though. Also gave me a chance to see how the headlight and indicator brackets are held on, which will be handy for some of the future modifications I'm thinking about. Got carried away and proceeded to strip most of the exterior from the bike so that I could get a better feel for what goes where, how it all works together, and what else might break soon. No immediate worries right now, but the ECU was filthy Also, that particularly dirty part with all the frayed bits is the speedo sensor cable. This... wasn't really a surprise.

Four months in, still hadn't got that damn speedo working - been relying on a GPS speedo the whole time. Tried cleaning the sensor as advised by the previous owner and that did exactly jack shit. Oh, and the sensor isn't on the front wheel like he said. Really reassuring that he didn't even know where it was Here it is, sat on the rear wheel and looking a little bit tired. Got a multimeter on the sensor and established that it was the sensor that was shot, and not the clocks. Not sure why the garage didn't bother doing that. Anyway, phew. Sensors cost £20, clocks cost £200. On the down side, the sensor cable is routed very inconveniently and is nigh on impossible to remove without taking off the fuel tank and rear subframe I've since discovered that this kind of thing is fairly typical of BMW. At this point my finances were still reeling from those initial repairs, so I couldn't afford a torque wrench. And I certainly wasn't going to remove the subframe if I couldn't torque it back up properly afterwards. Ordered a speedo sensor and shoved it in a drawer for now.