DuRavary

I’ve dropped my Pan European a couple of times but only when it’s standing still on grass. The OE crash bars have kept all the delicate bits off the ground and there’s been no actual damage. I’m not sure what level of protection they would offer the bike at even medium speed on tarmac but they would obviously help someone from getting their leg trapped under the bike. My CB500X has SW Mototech engine guards but that’s because it’s more likely to get dropped as it’s ridden a lot on slippery surfaces.

Character is subjective. Early on I had a Honda CD175. Friends who had other bikes, often similar sized 2-strokes, claimed that it was bland and characterless but at that stage of my life it gave me a lot of riding pleasure and experiences. More recently I’ve done a lot of my riding on a Pan European. For a lot of journeys it could be called bland and characterless because it just gets on with it and gets the job done with no fuss and no drama. On those journeys it tends to be the roads themselves that are actually the bland and boring part. On other roads it comes alive when it’s torque and handling qualities come into play. One bike more than one character. If I was commuting I’d be happy to use what appeared to be a bland bike when what was actually important was reliability, economy and weather protection. For the riding I do by choice I’m not particularly worried about what a bike looks like as long as it gives me the feed back I’m looking for. The bike I’ve had most fun from in recent years was a DR175. I doubt it had a 0-60 time because it didn’t go particularly fast, it would never have won a beauty competition but, boy, was it good to ride.

Getting the wrong information from your Google search really doesn’t help.

Digs and insults? I’m just replying to people who seem to think that they’re making clever points which don’t actually do or prove anything. If it helps my comments about F1 and petrol was in response to a smart as comment suggesting that by adding ethanol the product somehow wasn’t petrol. That was incorrect.

I really think you’ve missed the point. I’m sure Google can be your friend but there again I doubt you can be bothered just to discover you don’t know what you’re talking about. Just because you haven’t bought the same ‘petrol’ that some F1 teams were using doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist. That’s the point despite being so unlike the petrol we know it was still petrol. Petrol with additives in, including E10 is still petrol.

Petrol engines were designed to run on petrol funny enough, And what is petrol? That was a problem in F1 in, I believe, the ‘80s when the rules stated simply that the engines had to run on petrol but there was no definition of what petrol meant. Some of the ‘petrol’ being used wouldn’t burn if a lighted match eas dropped on it. The refined petroleum products mixed with many additives including ethanol sold as petrol is as much petrol as the five star leaded used in the dim and distant past.

Oh dear you are touchy. Nobody has ever suggested that you don’t have a choice. My point is an£ al2ays was that your bike will run perfectly on E10 despite your protestations.

OK as you don’t seem to appreciate thread drift even when it’s relevant; in 12 years of using E10 none of my vehicles have ever suffered from paintwork problems because of spillage. It’s simply scaremongering.

I keep a record of all my full tank to full tank fill ups and the effect of using 95 E10 over 95 E5 or 98 is insignificant. The roads used make a much bigger difference as does riding style. With the car the biggest mpg killers are, (as you would expect) having anything on the roof rack but more surprisingly carrying a mountain bike on a rear mounted carrier. Aerodynamics are important. It’s also worth pointing out that over the years E10 sold in Germany and France, and probably other places, has been significantly cheaper than 95 E5. Another bonus.

Oh dear the doom merchants can’t give up. I’ve been using E10 in all of my petrol engines since 2009 when it was introduced into Germany. As all the cars, motorcycles, lawn mowers, chainsaws, strimmers and outboard motors are E10 compliant there have been no problems, none at all. Even my 1931 Ford loves it! I’ve spilled a fair bit of E10 on paintwork an£ there has never been a problem. Get over it, Britain is more than 10 years behind in the case of introducing E10 and there’s a huge amount of data out there about which engines are affected if you are really concerned ask the manufacturer if not ignore the uninformed idiots and move forward. From the outside this sort of thread looks sad, very sad.

Buy one, get out on it, have a lot of fun and learn. One step at a time.