Capt Sisko

I went on one couple of years ago. It was a good mixture of police advice on, well not on riding techniques as such, but on the causes of accidents, why drivers don't see us and what we can learn from that, as well as the practical stuff of what to do at the scene of an accident. They even gave out mini first aid kits, heater pads, buffs and other useful free stuff. Reading the above the content does vary, but if you've got one on locally I do urge you to go on one. They really are worth it.

I don't know if the situation is the same with motorcycle winter tyres, but car winter tyres are not recommended for summer use. They both will wear very quickly and provide less grip (i.e. a longer braking distance) than summer tyres. Obviously the reverse, in particular the grip bit is true in the winter. I've never had winter tyres on any of my motorbikes, but I've used them on cars for years. They really do make a huge difference in the snow & cold weather carpared to summer tyres.

New tyres day Pair of Michelin* PR6 GT. Bikes always feel better with new tyres don't they. *Currently with a £30 cash back deal. EDIT:- Just checked on the invoice of the last set of 6GTs I bought and I've got a wopping 9,500 miles out of them, and they were still legal, albeit quite squared off. Considering that's on a R1250RT which is a big old bird making 136bhp and more torque than the Queen Mary, I think that's pretty good. I also checked the front brake pads whilst the wheels were of and after 30,450 mile the OEM pads look good for more. And no, I'm not Capt Slow, more like Capt Learned to read the road and maybe don't brake as much as others.

Is it a squeak like a small rodent makes. If so, as it's a Chinese bike it could be that's it a reincarnation of mousy tongue.

Dunlop Mutants are billed as crossover type tyre. I think they're aimed at bigger bike than a Hymalain though, but worth a look anyway. https://www.dunlop.eu/en_gb/motorcycle/tires/mutant--mutant.html

Slightly bigger in terms of cc, but the 650 Royal Enfield Interceptor might tick a lot of boxes. Loads of fair weather & low miles used examples are out there as well.

Welcome, and whilst I had a F800GT they were never the most popular of models BMW sold and there aren't many active owner of then on this forum.. I hope you enjoy yours as they're a good bike, they just never sold in the numbers they deserved. For your exhaust you'll probably be better off asking on one of the specialist F800 forums. Try:- https://www.f800riders.org/forums/f800gt-modification-nation.269/ When I had my F800GT I found them, like this lot, a friendly bunch.

It's worth looking at the availability of spares. https://www.motor-x.com/oem/v-c1002v-2 I haven't clicked on every category, but 99% of what they list just isn't available. That would worry me. A simple spill could take you off the road for a long time if you have to wait for spares to come from China (assuming they genuinely are available).

And that's the problem with that RD400. Looking at the photos it's in better condition than when it came out of the factory. It's now a show bike, probably be trailered everywhere and never turn a wheel in anger again. Shame, one ride on a wet road and . . . . .

Following on from the comment from @bud in the thread about EU exhaust regs "All the bikes we sold for peanuts. Going for crazy money now." What did you once have that you sold for peanuts that nowadays does indeed go for crazy money? By that I don't mean the mundane that people ask inflated prices for just because it survived to a ripe old old age, the ‘it's rare’ (as in, no one bought them at the time), the it’s been got at and now has a brown seat on it and certainly not the exotica of the day that was always going to be something special, but a bike that time has proven to be worth more than it’s sum of parts. I’ll start the ball rolling. I had a '78 White & Red RD400E https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1762272 £20k FFS - Who are they kidding!

Like Throttled, the village where I live has a miles worth of dead straight coming out of it and both riders & drivers go for it. You occassional hear a car, you frequently hear motorbikes. As Simon Davey effectivly said, call me a hypocrit, I'm that as well. In my youth it was an RD400 with Micron expansion chambers on followed by a Z650 4 into 1 Harris that would have woken up Rip Van Winkle from his deepest of slumbers. If I was twenty again I'd probably be out there thinking how good it sounded along with the best of them. Do I blame youngsters for wanting their loud exhaust? No. Would they take any notice of a grumpy old git like me if I challenged them about it? No, (just as I wouldn't have done forty years ago either). Do I wish they chose some other straight to gun it at 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning? Absolutely yes!

Weirdly enough the only times I’ve enjoyed camping are at the two extremes. Either glamping where, well let’s be honest here, the only bit remotely related to proper camping is that your accommodation might be constructed from some type of textile material. Or backpacking in the hills when I’ve been carrying just the bare minimum and it’s the end of a long or hard day. Then, even the packeted camping meals taste good.

The first closure was the A625 in the late 70s, the most recent, though not yet closed is Snake Pass

As far as a site for a cafe goes it has a lot going for it. It's not just us bikers that used it, car clubs, walkers, cyclists as well as just general tourist used it. On a sunny Sunday people were litterally queueing up to get in. Maybe the problem was the owners didn't know how to extract the money out of peoples pockets efficiently, but there was no shortage of punters.

I'm struggling to get my head around this. Bikes are more powerful, faster, get better MPG and Euro regs mean they'll be producing lower emissions that they did ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Despite that bikes are pretty bad when it comes to emissions, even new models. GSX-S1000GX - CO2 144g/km / Kawasaki's Ninja ZX-10RR 143 and many others are as bad. Some for the big twins are better the BMW 1300GS is 110 and the facelift NT1100 116g/km, but I've never read one road test that mentions emissions anywhere in the review, whereas in car reviews it's all important. I might be wrong, but my perception is most bikers don't give a stuff about what comes out of the back as long as when you twist the trottle it goes like stink.

What road closures? The pass and all the other road's have always been open when I've gone through there.

For us simple rural country bumpkins London is a different country. I'd be quite happy if I never went to London ever again, let alone drive in it.

Have you also noticed how the entrances to tents have both got lower and smaller in the last twenty or so years!

I've been using one of their Core Moto locks for about 2 or3 years and so far so good. Okay nobody's had a go at it, but it's easy to use and looks the part as meaty bit of kit. I'll admit it doesn't roll up that small and I don't carry around with me if I'm just going out for a ride that just involves a cafe stop, but if I'm going somewhere and I know the bike is going to out of sight for a while, it gives me the confidence that at least I've used something that'll make the scrotes work hard if they have go at it.

Try this lot. They seem to sell everything else for them. https://www.racing-planet.co.uk/generic-trigger-exhaust-c-3046_19266-1.html?newcPathco=155

Given she was wearing a full face lid I can only assume that to have got that much eye & nose damage she must have been riding visor up and just damned unlucky the pigeon went into the open gap. If it was beak first she was lucky she didn't loose an eye. A closed visor ought to have stopped it. "New for 22.06 is the impact testing of visors to ensure they can resist penetration. In this test, a 6mm steel ball is fired at 80m/s or 180mph at the visor. It must stop the ball going through the visor, and if the visor breaks, it shouldn’t shatter into shards." The news article say she also lost three litres of blood. We've only got five. A 40% loss and it starts to gets dodgy as to whether you'll survive, at 50% your heart usually stops and other organs shut down. She lost more than that. She's very lucky to be alive and owes the NHS a big thank you.

Don't underestimate the robustness of a Wood Pigeon. I've shot hundreds, no thousands of the buggers over the years, you hit one, you see feathers come off and the bugger keep on flying. There's not much meat on a pigeon, two small breast and whilst they're no fillet steak they do make a decent enough stew. Mixed in with the dog food though and the farm dogs loved it.

990 euro for the jacket / 890 for trousers adds up to 1880 euro, or about £1580. You can pay almost that for the top of the range Rukka jacket on it's own, so yes, very expensive but not the worst of example.

I know exactly what you mean, even the 'street' models look like something out of Transformers. That type of styling does nothing for me. The closest I think we have to a UJM is one if the bikes that started it, a Kawasaki 900!

Couldn’t agree more. Bikes are full of nooks & crannies that hold muc and if you're riding in all weathers will corrode. If you're going to use it every day you want something that takes the minimal amount of cleaning & maintenance and that has a reputation for reliability. The Forza gives you all that along with a bit of oomph for the traffic light Grand Prix. £2.5k buys an good one from a dealer so there will be similar but cheaper privately. https://www.gumtree.com/p/honda-motorbikes/2016-honda-nss300-forza-300-19897-miles/1487082999