Pedro

maybe a full cut off switch for the winter when it’s stopped for a few days at a time?

Turns out my bikes service was moved to monday, there's a 1600 scattered in parts all over the place . Suits me fine, saturday is the day when punters show up for a chat and a coffee, and then never go away. Also it's probably going to be raining a lot.

It's a big engine, with maybe more compression than a Harley. Maybe you need a more powerful battery.

They say gloves ruin boxers. With no gloves, back in the day, there were hardly any head punches as that would break your hand. It’s amazing how one can endure that.

Having trouble realising if I’m being bated or if that’s two honest opinions, so won’t bite. One is honest, because of halfwit, the other must be baiting

I’m not usually baited by political things, but that’s moronic, in a roundabout sort of way. Homeless people, that do it by choice go out walking and seeing the world, people that live like that in a city have something breaking them inside. Getting a homeless alcoholic to stop drinking is not easy.

China is often used by today’s manufacturers to make specific engine parts with higher quality coatings than what is allowed to be produced in europe or america. Good quality stuff is not nice to the environment to produce.

In my opinion that is one of the issues with anything chinese. The confidence they inspire so far is pretty poor when it comes to parts availability or long term support. Similar to buying an Aprilia

Bit of a pointless test though, what are the chances you have the same bike in May as you do now?

Oven baked codfish, plenty of onions and olive oil. Love it, it's comfort food for a cold rainy day for me. Take away grilled chicken IOM Kippers bap, my favourite UK food so far.

I think that BMW's clutch isn't that bad. You take the rear off or lift it up, and it does look dramatic but a mechanic used to do that job will do it with little fuss. Somethings on other bikes take forever, like just checking the valves on an Africa Twin or a Super Tenere for example. The engine stays in but it's labour intensive to get to it.

You don't need to get it to that state, though, that's looking too dramatic there

Alcohol free beer used to be crap, but now I do enjoy it as some brands can make it taste like normal beer. Some food just goes along with a cold beer, and if you have one sometimes you end up having two or three if it's nice weather, so on the bike it's very rare that I have a proper beer. Try it again though, things have moved on, plus it's quite a healthy drink to have too.

Back to it, mint and basil pesto, fresh and lovely: Portuguese mum's cooking to the extreme, fried mackerels and tomato rice. Leftover roast in a sandwich, and mozzarella salad. Serra da Estrela, local specialty cheese sandwich, buttery and strong. It's the ideal snack on a cold day on the bike. @Marcel and @Buckster's favourite: Grilled aubergine sandwich, with pesto, mozzarella, and spinach. Way better than it should be. Eggs and farinheira, with healthy things to compensate. Farinheira is a very interesting kind of sausage, I don't like it unless in eggs like this. Leftover rags from making something else, now with pasta. Good stuff. Homecooked pizza, with non conventional dark flour mix. Not delicate and crispy like normal pizza, but way more flavor. Middle eastern style carrot salad with an amazing orange juice based dressing, canned mackerels and a typical Rissol. Which is fried with shrimp filling. Steak: "hotdogs" my way, with cheese and tomato, plus peach dessert as this was in summertime. Tras os Montes food. Must have posted this in a ride report. Again, pizza with Sofia. Grouper rice, portuguese style. It's lovely, very hard to get right regarding the rice's cooking point and the right amount of sauce density. I love it, and am getting better at it. Sofia's lamb meatballs with the carrot salad. Delicious dinner this was.

Forgot about this thread. @boboneleg, did you ever try those peas?

If they're charging you 50 or 70€ an hour and invoicing you from BMW's scheduled maintenance times, maybe, but that's not the reality of things in a good specialized mechanic. Granted, if having a very cheap bike to fix is a priority, don't get a BMW boxer of any generation, I think they're inexpensive to run according to plan but breakdowns are sometimes costly.

No, on mine there's a cover in front of the engine, behind the front wheel, and behind that is where the clutch is. Similar to how you take the side cover from a normal bike to access it only bigger. Now all you need is to compress the front suspension a little bit with a strap and you access the clutch. The old way was better though, I like that the gearbox and clutch don't contaminate the engine oil like they do now and on almost all bikes. On an old one fit a ceramic clutch and it'll last a really long time.

Weather is depressing outside. Tomorrow I might take the GS to my mechanic for a service, spark plugs and valve check. Also going to be taking the clutch apart to measure a certain shaft for play, the clutch has been acting weird in a way that makes it feel like it never completely disengages so makes it harder to find neutral, and makes it clunky (more than the usual clunky) from first to second gear, this is usually a symptom of a worn clutch on these bikes but that isn't the case. If it comes out with a clean bill of health I'll maybe go for a proper ride in a few days. Apart from that, nothing planned.

Nothing like a nice long bike ride by yourself to help cope with emotions.

Easily done by taking a few pictures when out on the bike, that most people take anyway, and then post them around with three words.

Too much nitpicking and criticising and judging from people that post absolutely nothing at all about bikes or riding bikes or whatever. If it’s not to someone’s tastes then move on, but negativity and sucking the life and joy out of the place isn’t cool. By not making the slight effort to even post outside of the usual diatribe that’s what one does, makes it less alive.

Watching Star Trek with my best buddy. He’s fallen asleep, can’t cope with Kirk’s dramas!

Don’t mock him. He’s an athlete.

Got to give them time, they eventually will. They have something on their side, which is old school build quality. China currently hasn't caught up with a lot of environmental restrictions that affect builders in Europe and Japan, so they can make things in a way that other manufacturers already can't. For example, a few coatings used on delicate Ducati, KTM and BMW valve trains are now being made in China because they can still make them to a higher quality. Yes, eventually it´ll be US and China making good quality bikes!

I like that the 450cc chinese trail/travel bike has tubeless spoked wheels, they must have been listening on my phone!