I'd just like to thank...

....All the 12 police patrol cars and 4 police bikes I saw in North Wales
yesterday for making sure my ride was very safe indeed by planting speed
traps everywhere. I really do think it was very considerate of you. Perhaps
next time, though, you might want to put some in the occassional 30 limit,
and not just the NSL's. After all, I'm sure everyone knows how important
road safety is to you.

I'd also like to thank the rider on the Ducati for proving that it *is*
possible to crash on a perfectly straight piece of road. No idea how you
managed it mate, but GWS.

 

Turn in too hard/fast when doing an overtake and ride off the road?

 

[snip]

Breaking wildly for a speed trap?

 

In

and yet when I phoned them to complain/advise of a 200 yard
section of road covered in slimey pig shit and asked them to get
it cleaned or at least ask Farmer Palmer to put a warning sign up
.... they advised me there were no officers free at that time ...

--
Steve Parry

http://www.gwynfryn.co.uk

http://wrexhamseals.tripod.com

 

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 16:38:54 +0100, "Mr. Fantastic"

It's National Speed Awareness Week or something. Quite a few mobile
cameras operating in Glos at the moment as well.

 

"Yes I am aware I was doing 100mph"

Do you think that would work?

 

They stopped me twice in August to tell me just how dangerous motorcyling
is. You can't blame the nice men though, it's their inspector type that
sends them out. Having said that, I was annoyed to be told by the second
bloke that he wasn't going to take my particulars. Why the hell should he?
He only stopped me to tell me I was stupid to ride a motorcycle.

John

 

Heh. Not everyone does that y'know?

 

Steve Parry wrote

Fucking course not, it is the fire brigade's job to clear up toxic
spills.

 

Blow out? Wheelie, come down too hard, tankslapper.

I almost did once recently, joining A25 from sliproad off A21, looks
over bridge behind, nothing coming, looks forward, numpty (white
hatch, might have been a micra) stops to give way.... to the same
nothing (perhaps most of road is in his blind spot, like most of the
world). Never mind I go around him, he pulls out, never mind I go onto
diagonal lines, oh dear they didn't look this b-b-b-b-b-bumpy from
back there, ohhhhh shit!, tankslapper, close throttle, front end calms
down, phew!

 

Mr. Fantastic wrote

Then it is official then? Trevor is the know nothing ****.

That makes a pleasant change.

 

It's not a problem that occurs natrually, the exceptional circumstance
that time was the diagonal lines like corrugated iron. The only other
tankslapper I've had was back around '85 on a PowerValve on the
Mickleham bypass, my fault, daydreaming and hit a kerb about 90MPH
while leant over, got out of that upright as well

 

Trevor Best fascinated us all by saying...

I've told this story before, and no-one except the two who witnessed it
have ever believed it was true, I swear on my daughter's life that it is
gospel. If you doubt it is, all I can say is ask my old mate Stoney, if
you ever meet him.

Back in 1984, when the first of the RD350 LC11s[1], the ones with the
factory bikini fairing, were out, My mate Stoney, a complete and utter
fuckwit of a rider, bought a new one. He ran it in religiously and then
proceeded to cane the tits off it, as 18 year olds do. He threw it up the
road after a tankslapping incident and had just got it back after it's
insurance rebuild. I knew the early powervalves had a bit of a slappy
reputation, cos I'd experienced it first hand when they came out the year
before.

One day Stoney and I had to take a trip to my mothers house about 4 miles
from his, to pick up my GPZ1100B2. I didn't like Stoney's riding *at
all*, so after a few threats of extreme violence had been expressed, I
rode off with him on the pillion. I'd remembered that it was a bit
lively, but thought that a bit extra weight on the rear shock would help
matters. Apparently powervalves didn't tankslap for fat bastards, so I
thought we'd be ok. So I gave it the berries going down the A422 out of
Kempston towards the village my mum lives in, we hit about 90mph pretty
quckly and then all hell broke loose.

Tankslap, I'd fucking say so. I'd never experienced anything fucking like
it, and I'd owned some evil handling piles of monkey-shite in my time.
This was so bad that I made a split-second decision and bailed out at
about 65mph, and Stoney had no choice after I had. I hit the deck quite
hard, breaking a couple of bones in my hand and dislocating my right
shoulder. Stoney fared reasonably well, with a broken arm. Both of us
were still conscious and able to pick ourselves out of the field we'd
ended up in. What we saw when we reached the road haunted us both for
years, and I still to this day cannot understand how it happened.

The bike was sitting on its centre stand, ticking over nice and
regularly, with not a fucking mark on it anywhere apart from light
scrapes on the centre stand footlever. It was slap bang in the centre of
the road, facing down the white lines and in the opposite direction to
the one we were heading. How or why it had ended up in this position
after being abandoned at 65mph is a mystery, and no-one we know can come
up with a plausible explanation.

Somehow Stoney, being the fitter of the two of us, managed to ride us
slowly back to his house, from where we cadged a lift in a car to the
hospital for treatment. A week later, he sold the bike. 2 weeks later,
the new owner died on it. Apparently it had tankslapped its way into the
front of a car head-on.

I've not ridden an RD350 LC11 since, and I never want to again.


[1] Better known as the original 350 powervalve model

--
Lozzo
ZZR1100D, GPZ500S, CB250RS
BOTAFOT#57/70a, BOTAFOF#57, two#49, MIB#22, TCP#7, BONY#9,
ANORAK#9, DIAABTCOD#14, UKRMT5BB, IBW#013, MIRTTH#15a/16,
BotToS#8, GP#2, SBS#10, SH#3, DFV#14.
Url for ukrm newbies : http://www.ukrm.net/faq/ukrmscbt.html
www.mjkleathers.com

 

Woooo.....

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6? DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#16? FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19

 

Er, they're mobile. The Cheltenham ones have been in several locations
- for some reason the local radio station is helpfully broadcasting
the areas.

 

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 19:38:22 +0100 in uk.rec.motorcycles, Lozzo

[snip]

That's the one I had, got it cheap brand new as the full fairing model
had just come out.

I had a nice camping trip on it in Devon, what I remember most was the
nods, in Dorking (where I was based at the time) a few bikers nodded
back to me, as I went west, nearly all nodded and further still they
waved. I remember thinking good job there's a Lands End otherwise much
further they'd be jumping off their bikes and hugging me.

 

<snip>

Bloody hellfire. Haunted or what?

They had an appalling reputation, those things. A mate lost his leg
when one spat him off, and his leg got caught between the headstock
and the lamp-post that he hit. Niall, who was riding with him, pulled
the bike away from the lamp-post and the severed leg fell at his feet.

Harland survived, amazingly.

ISTR the little bar-mounted fairing was the chief villain. The early
Yamaha XJ900 had the same little fairing and that wobbled too. Under
certain conditions, the old BMW R90/S could be made to wobble like a
bastard as well, and I remember The Doctor fitted a bar fairing to her
CB250RS which made it uncontrollable over 70mph.

The effects of aerodynamic forces on steering heads and handlebars
were little understood in them days. And chassis technology wasn't
great either. So take a bike with slightly suspect geometry and weight
distribution, and bolt a bloody great lump of fibreglass onto the
handlebars (or even the frame), and you could have a recipe for
disaster.

In fact, I think there were only two bikes whose fairings had been
properly wind tunnel tested, and those were the BMW R100RS and the
Moto Guzzi Spada and on both those bikes the fairings were ace.

 

I had one of those.

I can only agree there, ace.

 

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 23:21:59 +0100, Bear

and also the safecam website (I forget the url) is carrying the
details.