Let's be real careful out there people...

[Motu]

Done the oil over everything on my Honda,let alone my British bikes - checking the oil on the XLV is a mission...2 dip sticks,idle for 3 minutes,check both sticks - then I took it for a real hard cane around the Titirangi back streets to test a fading front brake,as I'm flying down to Titirangi beach I look down and see my right leg saturated,and oh yeah,the leg feels hot too! I found the dipstick in the drive,the other was sitting on the seat.It's the most oil I've ever seen on my rear wheel (synthetic too!) but never felt a thing wrong for 5 km.

There was a wooden rail bridge on Eltham road that used to always ice up,it was set at an angle on the straight road.We used to hit it at speed (90mph) and slide corner to corner,fun with ape hangers,at that speed we were off the bridge before it got too out of shape.Bridge is gone now,so have the rails.

[merv]

Must have been where I started my habit of falling off without hurting myself

That's the thing if we can have experiences and live to tell the tale all the better. Great you were OK this time too Celtic as my mad days of biking we were never in crowds like you are these days on the motorway.

Now I tend to ride for fun only, never commute so hopefully I'm minimising the risks.

[merv]

Done the oil over everything on my Honda,let alone my British bikes - checking the oil on the XLV is a mission...2 dip sticks,idle for 3 minutes,check both sticks - then I took it for a real hard cane around the Titirangi back streets to test a fading front brake,as I'm flying down to Titirangi beach I look down and see my right leg saturated,and oh yeah,the leg feels hot too! I found the dipstick in the drive,the other was sitting on the seat.It's the most oil I've ever seen on my rear wheel (synthetic too!) but never felt a thing wrong for 5 km.

Bugger, human error comes into play too.

This Yamaha I've bought has a weird dry sump arrangement in that its wet until the motor is started and it pumps the stuff into the frame tube where the dispstick is. Is that what the XLV is like. I had thought the oil would normally be in there and you'd check it cold.

[Motu]

The XT400 is the same as your Yamaha Merv,a dry sump - so you check the oil in the frame after it has run for a while.But the XLV750 is sort of semi dry sump - 1.5 litres in the engine,1.5 in the frame...the oil seems to move around,sometimes low in the engine and full in the frame,other times the other way round,so the proceedure is to let it idle for 3 mins so it stabilises then check both.Been doing it for years and am still confused - ask Brian and he'll waste your lunch time with a detailed descripton.

[LB]

Off we go, me on my XL, him on his 5TA and another guy on a Taka (remember them - we called it the Powersaw because it sounded like a chainsaw).

In the 70s the bikes we were riding weren't R1s or anything so the speeds weren't that risky and we could laugh at things like this. It was lucky that no-one I knew actually ever hit a car head on.

Merv: what's a Taka? I've never heard of it.

I think we bounced easier when we were young too......

[brit_vtr]

Aw - tell us another story, Merv!
On second thoughts, maybe you shouldn't. It'll doubtless be about somewhere in Canterbury and make me miss Christchurch, or about biking in the 70s and make me sorrowful for my lost youth.
S'funny, the bikes we had back then were pretty crap compared to nowadays, but somehow it was a lot easier and more fun. Or maybe it just seems that way in retrospect.

Things just got a little faster in the 80's, but we still had 70's handling !!, one very odd moment in time me and a mate found a boot with a foot in it on the road between Dyers Pass & Mount Pleasant, never found anymore and never heard anymore about it. Used to have an XR500 with "coby" silencer and Avon road tyres....went like , well it just went round those hills.

[riffer]

Merv: what's a Taka? I've never heard of it.

I think we bounced easier when we were young too......

Take it from someone who's had 20 years between bins - you bounce exactly the same.

It just hurts for longer at 37 then at 17

[merv]

Merv: what's a Taka? I've never heard of it.

I think we bounced easier when we were young too......

Lynda have a look at this http://www.off-road.com/dirtbike/mac...ordtaka100.jpg

In NZ the Taka had something to do with Tas chainsaws I think. The thing made a strange raspy sound more like a saw. It sounded nothing like the Suz or Yam 2 strokes of the day which sounded lower pitched and more manly eh.

Where this guy I went to Uni with got it from I'm buggered if I remember. I think he bought it new.

There's even one here on a Silver Bullet story still running in NZ http://www.silver-bullet.co.nz/featu...p3?reportid=39

[Motu]

Dalgetey's (sp?) were the agent for awhile,a mate got one when he worked there for cheap cause they couldn't shift them - he stripped it down and made a racer out of it,the whole bit and it had those triangular racing tyres on it.He went past me on the sweeper at Puke in the wet like I was standing still and when I got to the back straight he was nowhere in sight - mind you that could be more to do with me than him.

[vifferman]

I remember the Taka - the TAS Taka they were marketed as here. I thought they were pretty cool back then (I was into dirtbikes), and they were a real good price. Ended up buying a secondhand Elsinore 250 though, for around the same money as a new Taka.