The Ouzo

bike theft wont stop, but these F&$ers that attack cyclists need to be dealt with.

This would be the only reason I would consider one.

I'm actually glad to be off the bike, sick, this week, Gale has been dishing out blowjobs the entire week. No doubt bring the cold up to us.

thanks. i think it will be ok (it has been for 10 years). its under low stress at idle (which is how I leave it after emptying the fuel), plus its still lubricated until that last drop of fuel gets through the carb, so it should be ok. We used to do this with our 2 stroke outboard engines on the boat when storing the boat for winter. The problem with leaving the old fuel in there is that it goes off and then you struggle to start it after a few months. Have you ever tried to pull start a 500cc 2 stroke outboard ? Its hard work, and when you have 2 of them its a serious workout. I get what you're saying about the lubrication though.

The Stihl motor has been 1000 times better than the Ryobi and Homelite ones ive had in the past. But I make sure to run the thing dry after every use, otherwise you battle to start it the next week.

oh you have no idea. I would have in the past. Up until about 2 years back I had 3 weed eaters that I did not use hanging in the shed. Because even after stripping and cleaning out the carbs they would not start, I got frustrated and went a bought a new one everytime. This one is a Stihl. Its never given me any crap in the 10 years I've had it. That and the fact that I cant afford to just go out and buy a new one anymore is what made me persevere. With fresh energy and now knowing the correct way to assemble it, I will attempt to put it back together again before the weekend.

We launched the new Type R at our dealership over the weekend. Most of my pics I took with my DSLR, but these from Friday with my iPhone. Pity about the one drunk flag though.

Not bike related, but the lesson is. Always take note or better, pics, when disassembling something you have not taken apart before. After my ride yesterday I started cutting the grass. Back lawn done now heading to the front. Pull the cord on the weedeater and the thing snaps on the motor side. No problem, this is a quick fix, I'll just open up, feed the remaining cord in and I should be good to go. 15 minutes later I cant get the mechanism to engage the recoil spring. I start fiddling, the recoil spring pops out. OK, just coil it back and we should be good to go. Four and half hours of fighting with the spring later, I'm now cold, tired and irritated, out of frustration I'm watching a youtube video on how to do it. and notice that the first mistake I made was trying to install the wheel that the cord winds onto upside down. That is why it was not engaging the recoil spring. Had I taken note of how it came apart I would have been done in 20 minutes, instead, I wasted 4.5 hours and my weed eater is still lying in pieces on my work bench.

I've just thought of an idea for the below 5deg mornings. Instead of putting the nytril gloves UNDER the normal gloves, I'm going to try them OVER. My thinking is that the normal gloves have some sort of moisture wicking and should keep the hands dry, the nytril gloves should stop the wind.

In my teenage years I used to deliver the Star newspaper. Weekends the paper had to be delivered in the morning. I did not have cycling kit back then. so it was woolen balaclava, whatever warm clothing and jackets I could put on, sometimes with a newspaper tucked into the front. 2 pairs of the warmest gloves I could find. But those were the day where alberton would get to below freezing frequently on winter mornings. I'm talking frozen dog water bowls, ponds and bird baths. the screen on the cateye on the bike would go totally black from the wind chill factor

for me its the fingers that are a problem on these really cold days. I did the nitryl gloves under regular gloves thing once, landed up with soaked wrinkly prune fingers.

Versus buff over mouth, nose and ears long sleeve thermal sports vest (forget the name) anatomic CSA jacket. long fingered gloves (with one finger tip missing because my daughter was playing with scissors the one year) Vye shorts bib Anatomic thermal leg warmers And because its dark, reflective bracelet things around my ankles And recently pulled out an olllddd pair of D'Arcs with yellow lenses.

I have it in my calendar. If funds and fitness allow I'm in. Also hoping I'll have the energy at the end of the ride to add the extra few kms. (maybe I should just do a 3km "warmup" before the start)

also wondered why the fire truck was there so quickly in the vid posted here.

I dont know about that. I suspect its still doing the rounds, its just that with weaker strains, boosted immune systems etc. most are getting just mild symptoms and the body is pushing through like it would with any of the usual illnesses we get. I know a few people (my parents included) where they thought they had a cold, but after a few days when it would not get better they go to the doc, doc tests and they have Covid.

Bringing up an old thread, but its the first time I've used BHP. Had a bike advertised. A guy contacted me wanting to buy it. A couple of things had the spidey sensors tingling. While he was registered on the hub for a fair amount of time, he had no posts, no reviews, no ads. Then he was not going to collect in person but send someone to collect. The one thing that was positive is that he suggested using BHP. I contacted Matt, but he had as much info on the guy as what I could see. Since it was a low(ish) value item and the suggestion to use BHP came from him I decided to take the chance. I could not really afford to lose the money, but took the chance. The one thing I was concerned about was that the bike would be collected but the guy could turn around and say he never received the goods. For that I decided I'd take pics of his driver picking up the bike. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. The gent paid, and when the driver was delayed by a few days he went ahead and marked the goods as received, thereby releasing the money to me before his driver had collected the bike. But the point of this post was that without BHP I would have probably walked away from the deal as everything else pointed to it possibly being dodgy.

sheez, howz about a warning first. That look eina. and its in one of those places that just makes healing a bastard.

This is the crux of it. Immediate gratification has a price. Not many have the will to wait, and some the ability to collect the correct parts and assemble the bike.

EISH!!!!! May bad. I am indeed confusing you with someone else.

are you back in SA already ?

the problem with bicycles is that the frame (which is the major discription of the bike) only makes up a small % of the cost of it. Change the drive train from mechanical to electric and right away you've more than doubled the value of the bike. Perhaps the right way to value bikes would be to do some sort of "Sum of the components" value calculator / database

Autotrader has many many years of historical data. Plus, when a dealer has sold a used vehicle, that data is reported to Transunion. This data is meant to feed through to the M&M Trade and Retail (i.e. book values) . Being Autotrader, I'm sure they have some sort of access to this data too. And then at any given time there is normally a few cars that are the same age, make, model etc. that the data can be compared to.

with property is probably easier as there are a number of dedicated property websites locally, plus access to things like deeds etc. where selling price is listed makes data gathering a little easier. For bikes its rather adhoc. Bikehub can probably give a good indication of whats happening on this site, but for the rest I dont think there is any reliable uniform way of getting that data.

My expert arm chair economist prediction. On the new side you will see a wide divide between the lower end and higher end bikes. Mid to lower end stuff will be heavily discounted to move stock. This is the segment where people are suffering the most under the current economic climate. The higher end bikes will attract discount, but not as aggressively as at this end of the market people either have the disposable income or they finance. How this translates to used market. Initially your mid to lower end stuff will drop in price, the good stuff will be snapped up, for a while the "trade - ins" from the new bike market will filter through, but as prices fall these will stop as they will rather be kept as spare bikes or hand me downs. Once the current stock of new bikes is depleted and the newer stuff comes in at inflated R/$ exchange, the discounts will stop, the demand for used bikes will increase and this will drive up the prices again. This entire process will take some time, dont expect used prices to start going up again for another 24 - 36 months.

Someone is either very butt hurt that he cant get rid of stock he paid to much for, or we have a troll. But this thread has made it to friday, so lets have some fun.