Turning The TW200 Into A Street Bike (Mostly)

Not convinced. Hash is certainly retailed by the part-ounce, but so's a
nine bar which has to be nudging into wholesale territory. Conversely,
speed, coke and MDMA are generally retailed by the gram (or kilo if
you're a city trader or A&R man, natch)

 

<sigh> Whatever happened to "lids"?

 

Fuel. Bike tanks are dinky, there's no point measuring the capacity in
gallons, and fuel's sold in litres these days anyway.

 

Yes, that's a good point. We sell in litres, reckon tank capacity in
litres, but calculate consumption in miles per gallon.

 

Check, check, check, check, check.

 

As per most of the replies, just about everything is in metric;
bolt sizes, spanner/socket sizes, wear limits, plug gap, ride height,
etc, etc. The only things that are imperial are those which go
back too far to change, so things like speed limits and speedo
readings (mph), fuel economy (mpg) although we still measure fuel
and fuel tanks sizes in litres[1].

The other interesting one is wheels - 120/70x17 is a common
measurement for a front tyre [tire] but it means 120mm wide
with a 70% aspect ratio on a 17" wheel rim. Go figure.

[1] I think the switch from selling petrol in (imperial)
gallons to litres was more of a marketing ploy, as the
man on the forecourt instantly saw a drop from £1.60 per
gallon to 35p per litre. Unless you were sharp with the
mental arithmetic, it was difficult to convert back to
gallons and know how much (equivalent) you were paying
to the day before in gallons. This happened during my
first few years of driving and was well before any
such directives from the EU, iirc.

 

It's not peculiar, it's just a perfect example of sticking to the letter
of the law but not the spirit.

 

At this point it seems fair to introduce you to the Sheddi. They have
some excellent measurements.

http://www.uk-rec-sheds.org.uk/faq60.txt

 

YMYA. I've been known to cut a pice of wood to eg. 130mm by 10 inches
if that's what it takes to make the measurements round figures.

 

The same conventions, or some of them, still exist in many places in
mainland europe, some of which have been officially metric for more
than 200 years.

Pounds is the one that's perhaps most universal, such that if you
asked for a half-ppound of chees in France, Germany or Switzerland
they'd often have no problem realising that you meant 25g. These
weights have existed for a lot longer than anyone thought of
standardising them, so in a very real sense, a continental pound _is_
500g.

Also worth considering units like the inch, which has it's own name in
both French and German.

Oh, hporsepower's another one - officially bike engines are quoted in
Kw, but we know full well that the only meaningful measure for
comparison is horsepower. We also know that the "imperial" horsepower
is not exactly the same as the German one, but again, all three of the
above languages have their own words for it, and it tends to be the
main used one, whereas the "metric" unit is only rarely used.

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (b.rogers at ifrance.com)
\`\ | /`/
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2, IBB#10
`\|/`
`

 

"desperate measures"

 

Bloody small cheese portions, then. Expensive, too ;-)

Oh, yes, the Germans call it PS, don't they? The difference is very
small, IIRC.

 

So the Continental Metric Half is actually equivalent to an Imperial
Twentieth?

 

Damn that sticky zero key!

Pferdestarke, lit. horsepower. Also an "Official" SI unit, IIRC.
Certainly a DIN one.

1 bhp = 1.014 PS
--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (b.rogers at ifrance.com)
\`\ | /`/
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2, IBB#10
`\|/`
`

 

platypus said:

I've got a barn, and I'm not afraid to use it.

Mutually Assured Decifortnights ?

 

Italian, Spanish and German machines are all metric - it's just the US
and ancient British stuff that's non metric.

 

I don't - I still 'visualise' the capacity in gallons. The tank on the
Guzzi is 5 and the MZ just under 4.

 

Aye, for some reason I completely forgot that any country other than US,
UK and Japan made bikes, despite have two Italians in the garage.

I suspect the early onset of senility.

 

The UK railway regularly uses chains. Locations are still identified by
miles and chains.

80 chains to the mile, 4 rods to the chain.

 

Conversely, I visualise the unit of a gallon as the contents of one of
the 5l petrol cans in the garage.

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (b.rogers at ifrance.com)
\`\ | /`/
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2, IBB#10
`\|/`
`