Land Wind just called, they want their big photocopier back…..

Oh yeah, isaid you can only have one Suck & one Amazeballs, but i’m breaking my own rule and adding “steep,slippy or off camber, non bermed downhill turns” to my “suck” section.

I’d just fogotten how bad i am at these, but i keep grabbing the front brake in a panic and then wondering where my bike has gone as i slide down the slope on my ass…… ;-)

ok, possibly stupid post, but surely this suggests there is an untapped requirement for a modern bike park ie a managed one, somewhere in the area? I’m not trying to suggest it’s a good idea to build features in/on you don’t own, but realistically, the UK is “owned” by the few and ridden by the masses.

Travel is not what it used to be, in terms of importance i think?

Modern “travel” is light, composed and really little penalty in-itself (if you can afford to buy it, on a budget, short travel is a winner!)

I’d buy a bike by Geo first and travel second tbh

What about an early Elise? Far far safer to drive on the road, a lot of fun, and buy one that needs a bit of TLC and i suspect that with some minor tarting up and an bit of love, you’ll have a fairly depreciation resistant purchase?

(I was passenger in an Elise that got hit by a LWB transit van, bang, straight into the passenger door at about 25 mpg (we were doing about 40), we bounced off, spun, knocked down about 35 yards of railing, and i walked away without a scratch. If that had been a Caterham, urgh, i dread think, the Elise with it’s chunky sills that forms the chassis on the outside of the passenger cell protected me well! Interestingly, the Van drivers insurance paided out, the owner of the elise bought the wreck back, and completely rebuilt it (chassis was ok, but needed clams and rear s/frame) and it now lives with him over in Peth, Australia, making it a very rare car over there!

Despite me posting a “Dust” photo from yesterday ride at Woburn,it’s done no more than really gently mist down today, enough to lay the fine dust and that’s it. We could do with a decent couple of days rain tbh…..

Don’t write off getting a second hand suit off ebay or similar! You can get some good quality stuff, perhaps with the odd nick or two (easily fixed with some wetsuit glue + Patch) and if you are not using it that often, save a lot of money compared to the new RRP!

Ok, sizing is obvs. a bit more of a gamble, but ime you can fairly easily sell any suit you buy on for what you got it for if it doesn’t fit (just don’t get into bidding wars and pay over the top for it and try to buy the odd auctions that finish at 11.37pm on a thursday eve rather than the weekend ending stuff !

Horse burger??

Blind dogs for the Guides

That’s right ladies and Gentlemen, it’s officially dust-o-clock round here!

Looks like you’ve got a bit too little damping wound on to those forks as well………

Didn’t actually ride anywhere today, well if you exclude a bit of trackstand/endo turn practice on the patio, but found an hour to catch up with a bit of bike maintainance on my old fathful Zesty. Couple of new bearings, new gearcable, cleaned / bled the brakes and even found time to give her a quick wash, and she still scrubs up ok for an 8yo bike :-)

Given how difficult it is to fix such holes, i’d suggest making them into some sort of feature? Perhaps create a small diorama, using lego people, put some water in the hole so it looks like a lake, set up some nice deckchairs, make it a “day out in the country” type scene? Or hows about putting lego “workmen” working at fixing the hole, complete with “men at work” and “men fighting with umbrella” signs?

First time back on the bike for a while for me, and Woburn Sands was definitely living up to it’s name today!

I want to do a dual tesla motor classic milk float

Can you imagine the amusement on taking on say a Ferrari at the lights in a milkfloat that’ll crack 60 in about 3 seconds! It’d be a total deathtrap of course, but you’d be grinning like a maniac on your way to those pearly gates!

Hugely expensive for an off-the-self motor nailed (fairly badly) to an off-the-shelf gearbox and for just 80kW (and they dont’ say if that’s the motors continuous or peak rating)

And they don’t seem to offer the hardest bit to get right, namely the matching energy storage system (ie batteries and BMS/charger etc).

I guess if you a “SINGER” of this world and can charge £200k for a restomod car, then a £25k powertrain (which is what this will cost by the time you’ve added in everything you need and enough batteries to be able to do more than drive it just once round the block) is not so bad, but for everyone else just buy a s/h leaf,zoe or a crashed Tesla and use the bits from that, most of which have already been reverse engieered to allow there use outside of their normal host vehicles :-)

And of course, as the sales of EVs increase, the supply of s/h and crash damaged parts is going to increase, and unlike for ICE cars, buying an electric motor with 100kmiles on the clock is no deficit, at worst you could put a couple of new bearings in it (cost about £20) and it’ll be good for another 500k miles….

If you don’t “need” the money, then now is a really good time to start a long term investment plan (>10 years) as you get a lot of stocks n shares for your money!

It’s only a manner of weeks before someone has to remind us not to drink Bleech surely……

So Brexit means Brexit but Stay at home means drive 300 miles to see your folkes, and then another 30 for a nice day out at the castle. Right, got it.

My fav is watching those MTB FAIL vids and the (inevitable) spectators shouting “you alright mate” often before mate has even finished crashing, so that’s probably the same thing!

Don’t not install when foggy warning label?

Welcome! Plenty of life left in 26 don’t worry!

A second hand Mondy that’s around 3 years old would fit the bill. I’m 6.1 and ride a 2016 L sized Dune, and the reach is spot on

kayak23

Inevitable Ellsworth

Yeah, came here to say Ellsworth.

Absolutely zero aesthetic consideration. Well, maybe they slightly considered the front end, but then got bored and just used a load of discarded farm machinery for the back end

Especially as the it was originally discarded for being to ugly!!

How many m^2 is your array, Says 12 panels in total?

19 kWh today, but it’s been a perfect cloudless day :-)

A quick estimate, and we used something like 75 litres of hot water a day, on average. Assuming water coming in to house at 15 degC and 65degC in the tank, (50 degC upheat) that’s 4.5 kWh of energy required per day.

So how big a solar array do i need to gather 4.5 kWh of energy on average, per day, over a year? (obviously insolation is highly seasonal, and a 4.5 kWh system in summer is not much in winter)

I guess, taking an approx solar panel efficiency of say 20%, that means we need 22.5 kWh of solar insolation, at the panels, we’ve got a south facing roof, completely unshaded so that’s an advantage.

Solar insolation looks to average around 900 kWh/m^2 over a UK year (365 days) in the midlands (horizontal), So that’s 2.5 kWh/m^2 per day, so that looks like we need pretty much 9 m^2 of pannels just to heat our water over an average year? Sounds quite high?

An external immersion heater driven by energy from solar panels and replacing the boiler loop (ie plumbed into the normal indirect coils in the tank) solves the “heater too high in the tank issue” does it not?

I’m a power electronics engineer, so i can actualy whip up an MPP controller to sit between the solar panels and that heater from the bits i’ve got laying around in my home lab ;-)

In fact, thinking about it, given that what we want is heat, then a simple variable DC load actually could connect the solar panels and simply be arranged to turn their DC electricity straight into heat. If we want lets say 65 degC water, then that load would want to sit at say 85degC, which is an ideal running temp for power silcon! Controller just adjusts the effective resistance to keep the input voltage at the optimum voltage for the panels.

2 in family, no kids, and neither of us are really the HIPO type to spend hours in the shower ;-)

I’ll take a look at your data thanks, that’s really useful!

It did strike me that i could get an indirect cylinder, initially connect it to the boiler loop, then when the boiler goes, simply disconnect it, and fit an inline thermosyphon immersion element right next to the tank, driven from either the solar array or from the mains for boost heating off-peak?

As we have to move the cylinder (about 10M, across from the bathroom where it currently lives) not having to extend the boiler loop does make that job a little easier too.

Doesn’t a “you’ve been near someone” app really just tell you that EVERYONE needs to stay away from EVERYONE else?

I mean, I’ve just been to the supermarket, i’d guess i’ve been resonably close to something like 100 people over th3 45min i shopped for. And those 100 people, have each been in contact with another 100 people. Before long, everyones phone will bing up a message saying “isolate” won’t it?

(Which is why the “full” lockdown type actions work to slow (and perhaps halt but maybe not) the spread of the virus)

What am i missing?

oh yeah, thirdly (sorry) how “good” actually is your mates 200?

I’ve seen plenty of “yeah, it’s perfect mate, little bit of smoke on start and she’s a beaut” engines over the years that are best described as “totally %$££^’d”…..

IME, often it’s worth just completely replacing the bulkhead with a decent s/h one (which will probably be stolen, but that’s another story) rather than attempting to weld to rust. Once the water is in, the bulkheads quickly become waaay more trouble than they are worth! So budget for that to be safe

(swapping over is a bit of a PITA, but actually very easy, as you can leave all the drivetrain in place, and most of the body work too, but you’ll probably have to cut the wing to bulkhead bolts out because they will be rusted to heck although you might find they are so rusty they just pull straight out btw…..)

I’d suggets looking at the cost of working models of the same age and condition.

Go with “completed listing” to see what they actually went for.

Then consider what your time is worth!

If you read the letter Trumps doctor wrote, do you notice something? At no point does it actually say the Doctor prescibed hydroxychloroquine or that Trump is actually taking hydroxychloroquine!

It’s a carefully weasle worded letter, designed to make stupid people who can’t read assume things they shouldn’t assume.

It mentioned that the Doctor and Trump “discussed” the drug, but that’s it.

Direct Quote:

“After numerous discussions he and I had regarding the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine, we concluded the potential benefit from the treatment outweighed the relative risks”

The “Wall of buttons” above my electronics work bench:

And “my” Aston:

What ever you think about the accuracy or otherwise of that portrail of our Universes future, you have to admit it’s nicely done from a creative perspective :-)

That “Trumps head on a scene from a movie” just demonstrates one thing, and that is that there is no real Trump speach he can link to which makes him seem “Presidential”. The fact he has to rely on “made up” glory really tells us everything we need to know……

Ah, good old Rust Dragons! The world is a more interesting, if slightly untidier place thanks to them hording all sort of old, rusty metal :-)

On a similar theme, this “Smith and Sniff” video showing the cars at an “unloved classics” car auction i found strangely captivating:

You’re only meant to blow the bloody doors off…… ;-)

CD:

LP:

Chances are, unless you are a good cook, the real fish meal actually doesn’t taste that good, and takes 10 times as long to make, but you’ll remember what you had for dinner the next day… ;-)

The fact remains, for us humans, we get back what we put in, and our memories are generally fuller when we have had to make an effort to do something. Hitting “shuffle” on your ipod or spotify is easy, convinient and allows you to listen to a wide range of music with very low effort. Chances are, that convenience, also probably means you are listening in a lower fidelity, on PC speakers, through headphones, listening to a more compressed format. Chances are, you’ve forgotten all you have listened too 5 min after hitting pause.

The opposite is actually going to a gig! Massive phaff for just an hours music, but the memories of that hour are likely to stay with you for some time.

By listening to LP’s you are forgoing some of the convience for more of an experience. Yes, pompous perhaps, but that’s the trade off. Chances are, the sort of people with room for a turntable and LP’s also has a decent amplifier and speaker set up, something able to much better render music than the typically streaming setup. Again, more of an event in itself.

We often ride bikes not to actually get somewhere, but for the act of the journey itself. I’m suggesting the turntables & LP’s are just a natural extension of that, the human characteristic to want to be furfilled by what we do :-)