klingelton

interns. now that's slave labour. "come and do work for us for 6 months unpaid and we'll think about giving you a job." then at the end of it. "oh look, we can get this other person in to do that job that you were doing for no money at all. sorry, you didn't get the job. bye." amazing!

get the opinion we're not seeing nick again...

January 2013? does not the Mod1 run out after 2 years if you fail to complete mod 2?

air filter getting damp?

By choosing not to vote, you have made a choice. I'll be voting Conservative. I think they deserve more time to complete the job they started. although some of the things they've said have been worrying (about the whole law to not raise taxes). i think it binds the hands a little of Georgie and may lead to some losing faith in the UK. I would hope we don't return to the days of boom and bust. I would hope that if the parliament is hung, the lib dems form the majority government once more as they were a bunch of ineffective wind bags anyway, so it may as well have been a conservative government! I'm also not ashamed to say I'm conservative!

You only get a very small contact patch with the road. make it the best you can afford. I'm a big advocate of road pilot 2's. i replaced the battleaxes with these and they were confidence inspiring. It felt like a whole new bike.

I saw a bloke driving up the main street with 3 flats, 2 of which had disintegrated (seemingly oblivious). I also offered to help a lady in a car park whom had a flat, but the AA were going to arrive any minute (good luck with that!). I changed my mates tyre because he didn't know how. self proclaimed petrol head who can't change a tyre. The wife waits until something is destroyed before telling me about it and having me do something! It really doesn't surprise me that people can't do basic maintenance on their cars. Most of them can hardly drive them!

white smoke = water blue smoke = oil black smoke = panic.

An absolutely stunning car! I will say though that there were MANY worker bee cars that were produced, and the occasional gem. I think what happens now is that rather than producing a car that is a thoroughbred sports car, they tend to put a slightly larger tuned up engine in a regular saloon. I'm off to sit in my VRS

i'm a big fan of delboy's garage. his youtube handle is moonfleet41. Looking forward to see what he does with his tiger! I loved where he took his old bandit!

I got a drift HD 720 from action cameras. i used the code baron10 to get 10 percent off. i'm pretty sure the current code is spicy10 for a similar deal. it was sub £100 when i bought it. the quality and battery life is decent - enough for general use. This was about 2 years ago i bought this thing, so they will be cheaper now, i'd imagine.

section of road on my commute where people like to queue. I don't - so use the free lane every morning. Most the time people allow you to merge. sometimes people don't. They're just butt hurt. I allow them to get on with their life in the knowledge their blood pressure is now higher. People need to take a chill pill and calm the f**k down when driving (says me, about the most angry person ever behind a wheel, but trying to reel it in!)

99.9% of drivers are nice people. 10% are incompetent but nice. 0.1% are dickheads. unfortunately, it's the 0.1% that ruin it for everyone. I met one this morning who was adamant that i shouldn't merge in and closed the gap with the car in front. After a couple of tries of merging as safely as i could, i gave up and merged in behind - where the chap behind had left a nice large gap (because he wasn't a dick). But then I'm a filthy cager at the moment until I can get the finances together for my SV1000 . Just one more debt to pay off and a couple of grand to save up before I buy one - will probably wait until the weather turns a bit yacky at the end of summer.

I swapped out bt's for rp2's a few years ago. I'd have no difficulty fully recommending Michelin. It felt like an entirely different bike afterwards (for the better).

A friend bought a motorcycle from a trader with a poorly adjusted and probably quite poorly chain. It broke a few minutes down the road causing him to lose control and bin it. He had no trouble pointing out to the trader that a bad chain was the cause of the crash and got all his pennies back for the bike! A new chain should cost you around £60 fitted.

I like guy martin. Seems like a top bloke. From what i've heard, he amiable most the time. Would be nice to see a decent bloke on topgear. would also like to see Steve Coogan, who would be equally funny without the controversy and casual racism.

me and a friend have used the scala rider g4's bike to bike. they're excellent below 60mph (helmet dependant). can hear every word as clear as day. one minor gripe is if you're using a bluetooth source (such as maps from phone) the voice overrides it and you then could miss directions. very small gripe. oh and the software to update the G4 isn't available on the mac. aside from that, they're excellent.

the difference in weight between a 500 and a 650 is really very little. e.g. if a 500 is falling over and you're a little off balance, you're going over just the same as you would on a 650! it's all about balance. of course it's entirely up to you, but the power difference between a 500 and a 650 shouldn't be enough to put you off your full A license and going unrestricted. You have a wonderful speed governer in your right hand which will prevent you from going too quick! Please don't rule out getting your full license. you will spend £600 now to probably spend £600 in a couple of years time when all you need to do is spend £120 for a few hours with an instructor on a larger capacity motorcycle. you could also invest the money you save in a course to help you become a better rider. You might think you're doing this the right way by slowly stepping up. In my opinion, you're spuffing money into the wind.

you don't need a CBT for a moped. 50cc engine or less. you do need one for a 125cc. I'm certain of that - because just 3 or 4 years ago I had to do my CBT. i'm the same age and have similar driving experience. (passed in 1999). with regards to the test, if you've already had a little while of riding around, get yourself in for lessons and do the test. you will need the lessons because they have a specific way of doing things that you will need to know about. plus that, to be above board, you will need to borrow one of their 650cc machines to do your test on. it'll cost you about £500- £700 to do your test (depending on how you do it and who you do it with/retests). you should sail through if you're a half decent rider.

apple tv in the states is good. in the uk, it's a bit shit. if i was to buy everything on there (streaming services) i'd be charged hundreds of pounds every month. I feel like it's all very fragmented and nothing is particularly consumer friendly. the traditional subscription services are all cranking the prices and aren't particularly value for money any more. i'm tempted to not watch tv any more at all.

watch some videos on youtube as well. there should be plenty around of people taking their brakes to pieces. moonfleet41 is one guy that immediately springs to mine (delboy's garage). he's a home tinkerer and i know for a fact he has a video around brake servicing. your pads might just need a good clean!

What annoys me as much with the streaming ones is "if you want to watch programme x, you need netflix. (£7 a month). if you want programme y, you need amazon instant video (£70 a year) and if you want this programme, you need sky on demand". It irritates the snot out of me that i would need to spend the equivalent of a small country's GDP to watch all the shows i want to watch. not because i watch a lot of TV, but because all what i want to watch is on different services. I can't blame people for theft.

probably not right to say on an open forum...

Ok. bit of a rant/advice sought here. i know it's a car related question/rant on a bike forum, but i trust you guys! Wife dropped a sprog some 5 months ago and as a result, I grew up a little. I bought a Skoda from a reputable local franchised dealer (who shall remain nameless). During the test drive, I asked about the bluetooth connectivity of the car. to which i was told "yes sir, this car has bluetooth." The car doesn't have bluetooth which i discovered on collection. After several weeks of wrangling, i finally convinced them to fit a factory unit for a nominal fee (they offered a parrot kit for free, but I don't want someone smashing my windows to grab a bit of tech out my car). my car has been in the shop for the last week while they look at the bluetooth and another minor niggle. they've claimed to have fixed the niggle and on collection - they have fitted a 3rd party OEM bluetooth solution that doesn't interface fully with the car head unit, meaning any audio streamed through it sounds tinny and crap. The company have been trying at best. communication from them has been difficult and strained. they haven't particularly done a good job of making me want to recommend them to anyone. I'm one unhappy disgruntled customer! to the point where i felt i had to swear at the manager to take his smug face out of my car window. (High emotions and utterly embittered and frustrated with the whole situation). I'm thinking of taking the car back and asking them to remove the bluetooth entirely. To me, they've failed in basic communications. when i asked for a skoda bluetooth unit, i expect a skoda bluetooth unit, not a 3rd party barely adequate unit. it doesn't do what i expect it to. What would you guys do in this situation. Would you expect to pay the fee for the bluetooth? they have discounted it as they held up their hands with regards to saying it had bluetooth in. anyway, end rant.

As said, not point on mod2. save it for after the test!