Motorcycle and Scooter appreciation

With fork gaiters:

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Forks look better with gaiters, but instrument panel looks better without Sainsbo carrier bag

Definitely an improvement - next job is to bin those twin howitzers on the side...allow yourself a modicum of rort and save about 10kg!

@DethBeard - I thought the orange accented nicely with the black. Unfortunately it's my current method of waterproofing the speedo. MUST get back on ebay to see if I can get a cheap tacho to steal bits from.

@Jung - I'm swinging back and forth on this.

First off, right now it's too much of an outlay when teh £££s should go on the boots and trousers budget. Second, I do like the standard pipes and asides from under-slung ones haven't seen any I think look good. Defo don't understand the fascination for those after-thought Arrow ones.

Tecbikeparts desert is up there as the main consideration:

But I think I'd need to fabricate different heat shields... I had wondered about just cutting them out and sticking mesh under.

I also really like the BC slashed TT pipes, but I think the first section flares too far out from the bike, and they too much money - for something which I don't think is spot on.

Out of curiosity does anyone know why that sort of cone shape is the most popular for exhaust mufflers?

Baffling isn't it?

i lol'd

I wouldn't put TT pipes on a scrambler, the original TT pipes were just straight through under the frame rails too, not that weird side exit. They're obnoxiously loud.

Really like the first one though. I'd buy a pipe over boots and trou any day. Much as I like the stealth mode option of super quiet, standard pipes, they're a genuine liability in the city.

Muted response?

https://irvingvincent.com/pages/motorcycles

That's lovely. Reminiscent of the Sundance Harleys

Even the stock scrambler pipes sound bloody lovely though.
I agree it's a question of weight. The stock silencer off my Griso weighed almost as much as one off a car. The aftermarket one is like a pringles tin.

A lot of their used stuff is proper quality. Oldschool Britool, unior and that other one, but hard to get them interested enough to bother ratching out more than a few trays worth at once.

When I was in the NE of england there was a properly amazing tool shop in Sunderland, was just based out of a shop front that then spilled over into the house behind and flats upstairs, crazy huge, crazy cheap (if you found what you wanted on your own) and mostly very high quality gear from a previous era, shipbuilding town and all, when yards shut folks sold their tools off, this shop had the last stash of any size and when the guy finally packed in he filled two 40' shipping containers with what he had left and sent them to Africa, shame but also useful, as at least folk on the receiving end would have been grateful for them here he couldn't even give them away toward the end!

In other news, WERA joker ratchet spanners are the absolute almond croissants. Nearly £20 each and they only come in 10/13/15/17/19mm sizes, straight, with no crank/offset or anything, but incredibly solid, the ratchet mechanism is at the chris king end of the spectrum and has a handy nut holding feature which actually works. Got a seized bolt off an almost totally unreachable part of the car the other day, one of these was the only tool short of having to gas cut it off.

Ratchet spanners - defo got their uses but I canny stand them. They're like usb plugs, always the wrong way round.

A bad workman always blames his tools...

Had a look at the Jokers recently but already have a snap on set that are longer for more torques and have the special 12 point shizzle that holds a nut, a bit of clean grease helps. You also don't have to reverse them as they have a little lever on the back that changes the direction which you eventually learn to operate in your sleep. The jokers did seem alright for the price though.

Damned Craigslist tool section browsing has caught me out again...picked up this little lot in Venice yesterday. I only wanted a couple of little bits but $200 for the lot was too good to pass up and I can swap meet out the other stuff. Nearly all snap-on, mac, matco or proto, with a couple of bits of old made in US Craftsman. To paraphrase Hunter S, not that I need all that, but once you get locked into a serious tool collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can...

U R wrong,

They are brilliant.

Halfords professional i think are made by craftsman as the tools look very similar.

Garages usually get a van come round and sell stuff and you can get credit to buy the tools.

I guess I should think about the thread I'm posting in.

I can see that they'd be more use to a motorcycle mech than they would to me, a bicycle mech. For u doing wheel nuts, you I really don't need a ratchet spanner.

Yeah you're right on the Van / Credit thing....SnapOn, Mac and Matco at least are terrible for it. YTS trainees with 40k of shiny packed roll cabs on the never never.

No idea where Craftsman are made these days. Poor old Sears (the parent company) is languishing on the ropes; I wouldn't be surprised to see them spin off the Craftsman brand at some point. I've not got any new Craftsman tools but the old US made stuff seems pretty good. At the bottom of the pile, I've got a few things from Harbor Freight. Harbor Freight is the epitome of made in China...you can buy just about anything you can think up there for very little money. Some is actually good, a lot is unusable rubbish. I try and avoid it for the most part..

Have you ever had one of those 15mm socket clacker things that Park and var make? They make axle nuts a pleasure. More useful to folk working where shit bikes that use nutted axle freewheel wheels and your building dozens of the bastards every day.

Yeah they're pretty good.

Remember for me it's all 15mm nuts, apart from those american classics that take the allen keys.

Loads of folk bring me their bike and a ratchet 15mm and ask me to sort their chain tension/check the torque on their nuts (ooh matron!) and that's the only time I use the ratchet spanners and like I say, always wrong way around.

I was a skeptic to, but after using a set similar to these I think they are great. If you haven't got the space for a ratchet and socket the rachet spanners are brilliant. Beats normal spanners.

I saw one of the bmw scooter things with the roof the other day.
Painted all fluro yellow, with blue and yellow squares across the middle and POLITE plastered all over it.
I shook my head and filtered by him.
TBF you could see him a mile away.