Motorcycle and Scooter appreciation

There's a lot of cool machinery in that photo. Always wanted to have a go on one, although it looks tall, and I'm 6ft.

Nah, you'll be fine. I'm 5' 9 and never had a problem. I really, really like the bike - there's something a little bit special about them. I can't believe how fast you can hit rocky sections and whoops on it, it just crushes . About the only downside is that they're hard work to change direction off the throttle in the tight stuff.

My engine has the HRC cam in but even the stockers are powerful and make torque from nothing. The big heavy crank just plows over everything. We came back down the mountain on a loose, swoopy fire road... absolutely blissful 3rd gear, 50mph, sideways roost action.

I only really ride mine a tiny bit on the road to link up trails but it'd make a superb dual sport bike.

Fault finding for motorbike system:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5rMo73UpmHbbjlyMXNJNVpDZWM/edit

Totally get there's something special about them. Rewatching Long Way Round for the hundredth time so it's probably to blame but would love to give off-road riding a go. Gravel scares the willies out of me so think it needs to be conquered at some point.

Get a multi meter on the two or three wires out of the stator. I fought an issue with that ybr for months, turned out one winding was dead, so whilst it was producing the right voltage out to the battery and electrical system, it wasn't producing enough amps (the two wires were maxed out capacity to make up the voltage short fall it that makes sense). Made it really tricky and really expensive (genuine yam stat is over £250 I think)

First cold morning today, my ‘warm’ gloves were giving up after 30 mins in the wind. Are heated grips the answer? They’re cheaper than I thought...

Try heated gloves. Heated grips only warm the palm whilst heated gloves warm the whole hand.

It's the outside of your hand which takes the brunt of the wind chill...

I loved long way round - my sister bought it for me when I broke my leg ages ago and I binged on it. The beemers were such a perverse choice for it but they made for great TV.
If you can look past a cheesy soundtrack, this is a great movie. Almost a rolling advert for XR650s too!

https://www.amazon.com/Dust-Glory-Mario-Andretti/dp/B001LQZQO2

They'll help, but you really need them in conjunction with hand guards/similar. The Internet concensus is heated grips + hand guards = comfort throughout 99% of UK winter.

Good 3 season gloves then hand muffs. Look bad on most bikes but hands I can feel > looks

Hand muffs & heated grips. As BrickMan noted, looks shit but it's very comfy.

Yeah it's a great watch, sounds like it got you through the pain. Will check out Dust to Glory, although will probably only compound my 'need' for one. Obvious comment is obvious etc but Mondo Enduro is great if you haven't seen that.

Anybody got good experience with any alarms?

Somebody was unsatisfied with my choice of parking space and chose to write their thoughts on my MC cover.
I thought a noizy alarm going off might prevent them from extending their idiocy.

The beemers were such a perverse choice for it

... because KTM didn't want to give them free bikes, but BMW were happy to.

Same. Looking for a disc lock type job (or larger) that's alarmed, prefer with a remote or a sim card in it so it can tell e it's being moved. For a cargo bike, worth many times more than my mc lol.

we sell the Monimoto tracker thing at work, and fitted one the other week. On the whole we were pretty impressed, can be easily hidden and stuff. No alarm sound though.

disc lock type job

Something controllable would be good as one of the problems with disc alarms and bike covers is the wind often sets them off.

The hell you got in the back mate?

Where?

On my Suzuki GSR, is anything stored in the dash/dials themselves or does it fetch mileage etc from elsewhere on start up?
Basically is it possible to switch the clocks with another from a GSR whilst keeping the correct mileage?

Edit: not actually a problem I think. My written off bike has lower mileage than one I might go and look at but this one has some grim custom dials. I’d wanna swap over from my old one which would bring the mileage down. But I’d just take photos of both and tell the next buyer that the mileage is actually higher than it reads. As I understand it, changing the mileage is an offence. Not sure if changing the dials and as a consequence having different mileage is.

The car. The bikes!

The MOT's are usually enough to show this has been done. I've done it before and just let the MOT station know. Think its just an offence to try and pass it off as authentic mileage but I'm not a lawyer.

Pulled my battery this morning and noticed straight away that one cell (?) was a bit low, like, a good bit below the minimum level.

Topped that up and took it up to the flat to charge, the 'charging' light litr up straight away but after about 30 seconds the 'fully charged' light also came on and within the minute the 'charging' light was off and only the 'fully charged' one was on. Thought that was a bit strange but took it down to the bike again.

Checked it with the meter and got 12.5v across the terminals on the bench so all seemed good but bunged it in the bike and it wouldn't start. Bump started it and was getting 13.7v across the terminals at tickover so seems like the charging system is working? @Brickman, I can't find any wires coming from the area of the stator, will the be under covers and stuff?

So at this point I'm thinking, battery seems to be charged so what else? I checked all the connections around the battery and everything seemed ok so I started thinking, could it be the starter? Figured I'd try jump start it from the car and that'll tell me...something?

Jump leads on, car running, bike fires right up. So, not the starter motor then.

Back to thinking it's the battery. Process of elimination says that when I had an alternate source of power it was ok so probably the battery.

I've had the bike since May so I'm thinking that if the charging system was bad I'd have been having issues before now. Hence, bung a new battery in and it should fix my problem and not just get buggered by a dodgy charging system?

How KTM fucked up, and BMW even with poor reliability, showed customer service.

Nope, alarms mean nothing. Only works when you here your alarm is going off.