Fozzie

I feel the ride does slightly improve with fresh oil, but sometimes wonder if that's just my mind playing tricks. My experience is that most bikes I've had look to never have had the fork oil done when I get into them, as the bolts securing the forks are very corroded and show no signs of spanners/sockets on them. So I've taken from that, and comments made by those around me, that most people don't regularly do their fork oil. I don't think there's an issue with your service schedule, as there are those who do it twice a year where the bikes yearly mileage is measured in hundreds of miles, rather than thousands, which you could argue is a bit wasteful. I only do 5000 miles a year on the bike, so I do the forks every 2-3 years. It's a topic that could cause argument for sure as there's so many different takes/strategies! Like the old "what oil do you use" type topics. Could your dampers have a bit of air in them when you swap the oil? I've had this with an old Blackbird where I pumped them and rechecked the level and it seemed fine, then later one of them was way off. No leaks, so I assumed I hadn't managed to get all the air out of the damper. That would cause the level to drop as soon as they bled themselves through properly with a few miles of Britain's best pot holed roads

I think most people leave it and get away with it. I however tend to lean towards doing things pre-emptively. Had some bikes where the fork seals were original to 20+ year old suspension that had clearly rarely, if ever had the oil changed. My SV650 is likely the same, and is 13 years old, although I'm planning on refreshing the suspension this year. I tend to avoid doing it unless I'm in the area for something else, like the head bearings, or the brakes. If you're bike is quite young, from experience you'll get away with it. But I wouldn't wait until it's a problem down the line, I'd draw a line in the sand like 5 years or 20k, which ever comes first. You'll know when you dump the old oil out whether you left it too long, as it will look pretty nasty.

Based on every bike I've ever done, no one else ever changes out their fork oil regularly. The stuff usually comes out looking like something from a swamp, and with a smell to boot sometimes.

I wanted to work on a farm as a kid. It's got a mix of engineering and practical acumen that suits me. But it's easy to idealise it when you sit behind a screen all day, and only have Clarksons farm for reference

I could do with a change of career! Being planned is a fairly recent thing, and mostly a credit to my girlfriend who has known since she was 18 roughly when she wanted kids I on the other hand just said I was a hard no to previous dates/partners as I was living in London with a plan to move back to Manchester when able, and knew there was a fair chance the partner wouldn't want to come, and that would be that. The only time I did agree, I asked for 5 years, but after 1 the partner reneged on the agreement. My girlfriend gave me a year when we got together to decide if I wanted kids, as if not, she was off. I agreed, but due to covid and the housing prices rocketing in 2022 (even in a nearly paid off flat, the area around me borders inaccessible for even a small house), followed by the recent interest rate hikes, it's been a triple whammy of shit. And this group that gossiped knew all this as I've had at least one ramble about it in front of them. But maybe they just ran out of things to go on about. Or were bored. My girlfriend thinks I shouldn't say anything, so to here I came!

Buying my grandma a chippy tea. She's just turned 99 and not showing any signs of slowing down.

Got a rant today, and it's about pressure to have kids. Recently, it feels like everyone I know is suddenly having them. Similar happened in my early 20s, with many of those kids now into their teen years. I'm guessing now in my mid-30's it's to be expected as the clock is ticking. But there's been this sudden uptick in pressure. Every time I go away on a holiday with my girlfriend, I usually get asked by at least one person if I'm popping the question, or squeezing in a holiday before trying for kids. And you'd think after 5 years, they'd get the hint. Which is, if I'm going to do it, I'll do it when I'm good and ready, and I probably won't tell them ahead of this point. My parents make comments as their friends get grandkids, which I understand more. Found out I was on the end of some gossip where someone suggested I might be stringing my good lady along with no real intention. Or that I could do what others they'd heard had done, run down the clock and change my mind last minute, and run back to single life. They just can't get their heads around why I don't want a screaming baby just yet. It didn't bother me too much being on the end of some gossip as most groups have some light form of it or another, but it made me cringe a lot as it's quickly reaching the level of conspiracy, and they know from my history that for a few years I declared I'd never have kids. I used to think it was just girls who got this kind of flack, but apparently having a plan to buy a house, get settled, have a couple more holidays before we go down that route is a highly suspicious move to some... Seems like it is mentioned every week or two. I've hidden the fact I moved from a Ford Fiesta ST to a Kia Xceed recently as when I told a co-worker, he seemed genuinely perplexed that no baby was imminent, so I'm trying to keep the heat off. Less of a rant, more of a ramble, does anyone else have this? Or has anyone else had this in the past?

Pulled out on at the same roundabout twice. Going to shops, old man pulls out from the left and I slam on to avoid. I could see him looking to the left until I honked... He was giving way to the wrong side I'm thinking. Was lucky I saw him looking the wrong way. Old nob. Coming back from the shops. A van pulled out, but this driver was just in a rush and didn't care. Bashed up gardening service. Just tutted and said "typical". Other contender this week was a former colleague who moved to a different part of the business. She narrowly dodged redundancy, and I had complaints about her as she said a lot, did nothing, and she was in charge of standardising approaches to projects that in the end I had to sort out. I suspect I found out why today when she e-mailed everyone to support her Etsy home made jewellery business. Just found it a mix of infuriating and inappropriate, as it's fairly obvious she's investing a lot of time into this thing... Heard someone else remark "wage thief". Don't disagree.

Got my bike MOT'd first thing this morning. Confirmed I need to spend some money on it. Only the one advisory on fluctuating braking, but I know the pads are low and the calipers could do with a refresh... The rubber lines are now 13 years old, and I doubt it's just the brake disc bobbins causing the issue. Only 30k miles, but it's a 2011 bike. There's other bits I may as well do at the same time, but it's going to be a good £500 bill. Was hoping to get more done on the project bike, but I need to prevent my main bike becoming a project

It is, and it’s going to be a huge job untangling the mess that a lot of small, quick start up companies are leaving in their wake by using either foreign design houses or inexperienced designers. As the companies relying on these don’t have the in house expertise to check their work. I’m no where near the competency of a consultant against my own internal measure, but I’m routinely picking apart messes left behind by them. And it’s less to do with me trying to up skill, and more the void being left behind by older engineers retiring and taking their knowledge with them. And as companies have slimmed down for years to high performance small teams, there was no talent pool beneath these engineers learning from them. The big one at the moment is there’s very little awareness of what problems we face going forward with a decentralised grid and a lot of renewables. So no one is putting in any resilience now.

With what I’ve seen this week, you’re overqualified for this role

Cambridgeshire has some of the highest incidences of lightning strikes. I know as every time I do a project that way the protection needs to be more robust!

Good evening, Been giving interviews for a job at my place today. I was told the market was red hot at the moment, but we can’t seem to get someone with the right experience through the door. It doesn’t seem that big an ask, just someone with design experience who is used to going on site. Thought it was fairly common! Any electrical engineers here looking for a job?

I've said it before, but it seems there is a real uptick in small businesses in the past year or two. It's like after covid when the cost of living started rising, people began supplementing their income. Loads of cleaners, gardeners, dog walker, dog groomer, and baby/house sitter jobs have sprung up. And I consistently encounter these people on the road, in stickered up estate cars or old vans, and they are some of the worst drivers on the road. They are quickly approaching the "Addison Lee" London taxi driver level of incompetence. The most recent 2, had a lady in a stickered up old van for a cleaning business pull out on me at a roundabout and then go into a rage at me for beeping at her, after causing me to brake hard enough to trigger the ABS in dry conditions. And another in a old Kia Minivan called "Pedros pals", who sat in the right hand lane for 3 miles of a dual carriageway, and got upset/floored it whenever I, on cruise control the entire time, got close to passing up the inside. Due to a patch of traffic I got ahead, but she then followed me and yelled at me at a set of lights. She was "turning right ahead" after I said "I was on cruise control, and you were lane hogging under the speed limit". In the time she'd sat in the lane, the lanes had gone from 2 to 1, and back to 2 again, and she was still more than a mile from turning right. What I find a bit nuts about it, is they have their social media plastered on the side of their vans. The two I encountered would have you believe they were patron saints, which I guess isn't that unusual these days. I messaged one to say "I was the blue Kia you yelled at, I was on cruise control and you kept slowing down, I wasn't messing with you so I don't know why you took it so personally. Calm down in future as if you do that with dogs in the back, you'll end up either in an accident or on the wrong side of a bad person, and you're easy to trace due to your vans stickers". Didn't even get a scathing reply, just got blocked, which spoke volumes.

... I may have enjoyed the Buzz Lightyear shooting game Nah, I do like the rollercoasters. A lot of nostalgia there for me as I grew up with the stuff. Got Bali later this year where I'll be on the bike and doing very adult tours, so it's nice to break it up with something a bit more childish. And thanks, career is something I've always had my foot hard to the floor on even if I'm still nowhere near the top of a company. Probably because I pop on here and post too much

Good afternoon, Was over in Disney Paris last week with my partner, she definitely was in her element there. I had the drive back, which leaving Paris at 4pm to get to the ferry, only to then end up delayed, and then head first into a closed M1 once we were on the other side, meant I wasn't through the door home until 3am the following morning. With the time difference with France, a 12 hour journey door to door, should have been more like 10. Work is getting increasingly stressful, just more and more being piled on. I have a job interview this Friday with a competitor who is arguably doing worse, but they are building a new team to pursue different types of projects, so I'm keen to stick my head in and see if I can get involved with building up a part of the business. Prove one way or the other that the strategy in my head, that often differs from upper management is right/wrong.

Had someone go nuts at me this morning, white VW Toureg. Which I’ve noticed often houses a particularly entitled type of driver, in my area at least. He is sat in the right hand lane of a dual carriageway at the lights, left lane is clear until me and someone ahead of me comes alongside and stops. We set off on green and he’s below the speed limit so me and the car ahead are passing on the inside slowly. Traffic behind the VW tightens up as he’s holding them up, and I know in half a mile is a roundabout I want to turn right at. Seeing the queue behind this chap, and nearly being clear of him, I decide to keep going at the pace I am, and move over when clear. I do so with a few cars lengths between us about 400 yards from the roundabout, I do it smoothly and brush it off as him being another lane hogger. Immediately as I’d moved, he’d got on his accelerator, beeping at me, flashing at me. I hold my hand up like “what is your deal?” and he gestures back less politely. He follows me most of the way home, then as I turn off I see him in the rear view mirror giving me a caricature thumbs up. Best guess I have, he thinks I drove like a dick and didn’t make any meaningful progress for it. The idea that he left that situation thinking he was in the right is just a bit scary… The quality of driving in the last few years has really dropped, they just drive to their own invented rules, and get extremely emotional when someone does something they don’t like. I seem to encounter more and more people like this, who do things like sitting in the outside lane of a dual carriageway doing 55, no one else around but me, and when you go up the inside at 70 they suddenly go off on one. They chase you, ride on your bumper, cut in front with next to no gap. I just back off and leave them to it, but then find them a few miles later doing the same thing again. Lack of intelligence and poor emotional control, behind the wheel of 2 tonnes of metal… Not a good mix. Nobs.

Disneyland Paris

I have 3 motorbikes, I am only allowed 1 wife/girlfriend. I think I could easily have 5 motorbikes, limited by the amount of maintenance I am prepared to keep up with. For the same reason, I could only have 1 girlfriend Do the math. Get another bike.

I definitely forget it half the time I do it, and it's always on calipers with seized pin caps You should be fine, although worst case, if you can't manage it you can pop them in the post to me, I've done that for friends, family and a few forum members in years gone by

Big cans of brake cleaner are on offer at the moment from Toolstation. £3.99 a can. And the stuff is essential for jobs like this. I find caliper rebuilds quite therapeutic. It's delicate work on the internals. Removing them is easy, generally a couple of bolts. But I'd loosen the other bolts with it there, like the retaining pin/pins for the pads. When off pull the pin and remove the pads, also note there is often a retainer/shim at the top of the caliper that can fall out. Note it's position and make sure it gets a good clean. Remove the pistons with internal grip pliers, I find a slight twisting back and forth motion as I pull works them out easy enough. You can pump the brake with the line still attached to push the pistons out, but usually only one pops out a lot, and you end up using a piece of wood to jam one piston and get the other moving. Soft, but solid material is best so as not to damage the piston faces. Once apart, remove the seals. Clean their recesses well with either a pick (being very careful not to ) or I use a dremel with brass wire brushes that can't harm the bore. Cleans them out nicely. Thoroughly clean everything with brake cleaner and a tooth brush, with a final spray into the piston bores with the caliper held up so it all drains out. Reassemble with red rubber grease on the seals, and a very fine smear on the pistons, almost enough to not see. Brake fluid is fine for an alternative, but I like grease for its suspension properties. Bleeding is the bugger, you can be there for ages pumping and cracking the bleed nipple before it eventually comes through. I switched to using a vacuum pump that pulls it through from the nipple. Then I switch back to the usual one way valve, but as the seal is often imperfect around the nipple, I still tighten it after the last hold down of the lever. I usually pull it 4 times, and on the 5th hold it in and crack the nipple open, close, and repeat. Probably missed a few bits in here, but trying to keep it short.

Good morning! Money does weird things to people, I'm at a wedding later this month where half the family doesn't speak to the other half over the will of their still alive grandparents. One of the kids talked their parents into changing the will so she and her brother get 50% each, writing out all grandkids who previously had shares assigned. Doesn't help that the grandparents both have dementia, and were coached on what to say on the phone to the solicitor...

We live in odd times, if a beer company released an ad featuring a woman in lingerie today, you'd have to stop and ask if it was a man or a woman Good morning!

I've worked from home for 4 years now, I'd just appreciate the physical interaction to be honest

Is there a gym at least? Or facilities to keep you entertained? I always liked the idea of working on a boat, but more the engineering section (power generation).