.....and in case anyone wondered; I was not logged on all night, but the cordless mouse went AWOL after my last post so I couldn't log off!

Might be a name thing matey.


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/WURTH-TIME-SERT-M ... 1980wt_941


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFSyfY1VLtU

ALT + F4

Hate to make you paranoid, but they use so much of the stuff these days that it is often still around in dry powdered form on some country roads having been washed across the tarmac out of the verges until well into the summer. Your best bet is to stick to cities, newer towns, kerbed highways, and motorways where rain will most certainly wash it into well designed drains before the road dries fully. (smilies not featuring from this PC, lol!)

Or never ride your bike at all. Just put it in the house and when you feel the need sit on it and make potato-potato noises if air cooled or vrooom-vrooom if helicon.
Advantage to this course of action is finish will be maintained but you may miss out some what on the thrills of motorcycling.

ALT + F4

Docca.
Its fine if you want to spanner your own bike. But if you have not done anything like it before try this. Get someone that does, get them to show you what to do as you are doing it and make then tell you the reasons why. Also have the right/good tools to do it. You can get many things off the Net but spannering is not one of them. It just dos not work that way. It is a hands on thing and cant be taught with a keyboard IMO. An example is you can get the wiring diagram for the bike but its of no use if you dont understand it. Or if you dont know the diff from a R/H or L/H thread.

Best of luck Gents

There is an uncomfortable, underlying (and sometimes not so) eliteness that exists amongst the genuine replies here. Most people i'm sure turn to specialist sites when they've got a problem or a query about their product. Here it is a bike. This ensures that a large proportion of the posts are going to be repetitive; and the same or similar questions are going to be asked time and time and time again by people just like me who aren't members of bike clubs or who don't have throngs of bike riding friends/neighbours to rely upon for 'hands on' advice. I bet this gets frustrating to those who are more specialist and more capable with a spanner.

It is here that the internet is its own worst enemy sometimes. It is now far easier to get a 'little knowledge' (and we know how dangerous that can be..) online. There are youtbube clips, downloadable guides and forum experts etc, etc who are there to walk us n00bs through the limitations of our understanding. Non of it really replaces taking your bike to a good mechanic, of course not, but how many of us can afford to do that for what the internet tells us is only a 5 minute job? I'm not blaming the internet entirely btw, it is a tool and what is it we say about bad workmen?

I've been working in my area of interest (mental health) for 15 years now. I graduated from Cambridge, have a list of letters after my surname that makes it look as though i'm from Poland and get work published on a semi-regular basis. This does not mean I know all there is to know about mental health, this does not mean that I invented mental illness and this does not mean that my opinion about said topic is to be taken as absolute fact. Do I get a bit frustrated by the scores of people nowadays who have the lexicon of mental health drip fed to them by lazy contemporary lifestyles? Yes, of course I do. I get massively fucked off that people can't just be a bit depressed every now and again anymore, they have to suffer with 'depression'. They can't be arsed to put in some thinking time and ground work to help themselves, they just want tablets and a diagnosis and a magic wand and a quick fix and thanks very much I can have a month of work now etc, etc. It does irk, and sometimes I do let them know as much. Not much of a comparison I know, but its all I can compare it too. I don't want to get burnt out, but it is easy to understand how people can become so readily fucked off with perceived displays of incompetence. I'd like to learn more about spannering. I don't intend to give up, far from it, but you can tell I need a lot of help. Some people are good with numbers, or with the written word or with patting their head whilst rubbing their tummy. Some people make spannering look like a piece of piss.

I wasn't aware that I'd bought the wrong Buell either. They should have told me at the shop or at least put a sticker on the tank:

"Buell is a small, specialist brand and their bikes have a devout, partisan following. Well, all of their bikes apart from the newer ones. They're a bit shit by comparison to the old-school and you'll get sniggered at and looked down upon by those who don't really want you to be part of their identity. Should have got a Honda"

My Buell was purchased after the price crash. This was not the main reason I got the bike; I'd actually always wanted a Buell but now I could afford one. I'm sure there are plenty who were in the same situation, and the temptation of getting something that is (putting it politely) quirky becomes more so when the price is right.

Having said all that, what do I know? I'm the dildo that shoved a screwdriver through an oil filter and posted pictures on the internet about it. Maybe some other n00bs will look to the internet for advice and take my little (lack of ) knowledge and not make the same mistakes