Andymann

Are you guys sitting down: 5FL–W2838–00–0X - £7754.09 (When Available) (front fairing R7) 5FL–11650–00 - $3138 (set of 4 conrods) 5FL–11411–00 - Crankshaft - $7431.99 5FL–11631–00 ONE piston - $418.39 https://www.revzilla.com/oem/yamaha/1999-yamaha-yzf-r7/crankshaft-piston?submodel=yzfr7l Go mad and then let reality kick in and don't dream about owning an R7

Oops there goes painting the TRX to look like a 350 YPVS.......

2007?

You realise that 50 Shades of Grey was actually crap all along?

I must be honest, I am (and will always be) an avid VR fan. And I still fervently watch MotoGP every Sunday in the hope of a great comeback. But every Monday when I read Crash.net to get the lowdown and I see the VR report on what when wrong on the weekend it just sounds more and more like moaning. it's never anything positive. Even Aleix Espargaro on the Aprilia which is really struggling sounds more positive. I hope not, but I suspect Burgess might actually be onto something.

if you were a schoolboy again and you had that bike, with what I have seen teenage girls (and History teachers) get up to these days, it wouldn't just be your knee that was throbbing

And lube. And you'll only ever change a rear tyre once with the sprocket on top and the brake below....

I remember back in 1991 when I went to University in Durban - no car, barely been out of Newcastle where I grew up, riding around on my DT175 with a map in my backpack trying to negotiate Durban traffic and some guy pulled out in front of me going down the road past Durban Tech- I braked so hard that the tube moved on the front rim and tore the valve. Instant flat tyre in a strange town with no way of getting home. I rode the bike slowly down to Perry Yamaha (they were still in City center then), bought a tube and some tyre levers and repaired the wheel on their pavement! I still have those levers - proper 40cm ones - a real mans tyre lever ;-)

Oh and the recess is there so you can get a 7/16 socket onto the swingarm bolt without taking off the plate - it fits the OD of the socket perfectly :-)

The first plate I made had a nice hole in it, but it was very flexy....

It butts up against the frame rail so I would only be able to get it halfway stiffened unfortunately. I think once the exhaust is in place it won't look so bad - I'll probably have them sandblasted with Cement anyway, and then sealed with a polyurethane so they will look a lot like cast aluminium anyway - old trick!

On a nice well balanced Japanese bike it would be fine. But on a 1950's 360deg Twin there's quite a lot of vibration so I'm worried about cracking - also, you need quite a lot of torsional strength because the footpeg is at right angles to the plate and hung out quite far back with your whole weight it on them - so scared the plates are going to twist. And if I cut in a hollow you get to see this mess which someone has made behind them.....

Final mock-up with AutoCad print - we're go to go to the lasercutters

I painted my first DT green and blue - blue frame and green plastics to match the Delmas Chickens Kuiken MX bikes from the mid-80's....

Those XJR's are really awesome bikes - proper muscle bike. And they go forever too

I follow his SIL on twitter and she posted her wedding video...... I just had to see if he made an appearance......

04:22 - guess who makes an appearance.....

I played a bit with 3d printing on the scrambler, but that just took ages.

I might just - right now I do it old school - cardboard to aluminium which is then traced onto a piece of paper and scanned into pdf. Then I import that pdf into AutoCad 14(!) and trace over the pdf. I then print out the drawing, stick it back onto some cardboard and test it one last time before it goes to the laser guys! Very cumbersome!

Took a bit of leave last week and in between hanging up pictures and sorting crap in the new house, also managed to do a bit of work on that Norton race bike we bought some time back. You might recall we got it running, but since then, life happened and it's been standing. So the main issue was the front brake and the rear sets. The brake wasn't working at all and the rearsets were all wrong - the kickstarter was hitting the footpegs and the gear lever was all bent out of the way. I suppose the theory was on a race bike you don't need a kickstarter, but for us who plan to use it on the road you need one. The guy had also fitted what we think is an old Honda VFR400 steering head and forks which are lovely, but gave the bike about 5-degrees of lock! Would have been way to dangerous to try and ride it like that so out with the hacksaw and some sanding disks and that problem was solved. Also removed the ignition barrel holder. I then mocked up a new rear footpeg plate from an old piece of Aluminium I had lying around - got it pretty close the first time, but had to make a small adjustment to really get it comfortable. Then it was trace, scan and import into AutoCad so that we can have new ones lasercut out of Stainless. The next big job is to find some brake shoes - the pads are hopelessly worn and because they are aluminium, needs a specialist to reline them - so I am going to have to try and source new ones form the UK I think :-(

About R18k-30k - not cheap. Problem is the guys know what they have!

There's two WR250R's in South Africa somewhere - we brought them in to test. I rode one for a while. It wasn't bad, but the problem was that South African's wanted a street legal WR250F and the WR250R had a completely different engine and frame. It was more TTR than WR. And it was from the European factory so was R60k then. Would never have sold for that in 2011.

Yup - the ones the Durban cops use to patrol the beachfront. And also i saw last weekend in Cape Town. If the cops can't destroy them, no-one can! That was actually the only reason we brought them in - for the SAPS Tender. Every now and again a customer bought them, but if I recall they were close to R45k in 2010 where a WR250 was about R10k more. So everyone bought WR's.

"Dimension Data team principal Doug Ryder added that the team's technology partner, NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone), which owns Dimension Data, has found new ways to identify future talent, which he says is a "game changer". "We have employed a rider dashboard analysis system that takes all riders' points per race days and their win ratio over a time period across the whole UCI calendar, which resulted in Benjamin, Dylan and Andreas being identified," he explained. "We believe this approach will result in performances that greatly strengthen our team, and ultimately give us a competitive edge in one of the world's toughest sporting environments" Sounds a bit like what Billy Beane did for the Oakland A's. Hope it works for NTT

We had a bit of an off-road weekend a while back during my Yamaha days in the Newcastle area. Most of the guys were on XT660's (the Tenere and Super Tenere hadn't been launched yet). I chose to take a demo TT-250R. I was ragged from the start. Until about halfway through the Saturday when we had to ride next to a railway line covered in those small blue stones and people were dropping their bikes like flies. And suddenly riding a 250 wasn't such a bad idea at all. I got my revenge! On that note, if anyone is looking for an extremely competent street-legal off-road bike which can be used to commute with fairly comfortably keep an eye out for the TT-250R. They got a very bad rep because they were restricted when they came to SA and also very expensive because they were full Japanese imports and not cross-trade models. But once de-restricted they really fly. Proper suspension too.