1968 American Eagle

No room for optimism in the Laverda fraternity ha ha!
Paul you are a black cloud sometimes, some you win and some you lose, the only engine I've ever had explode is my Nissan X-Trail and I must admit that did come as a bit of a surprise.
To me, if a bike is complete and unmessed with it is worth far more than one that is incomplete or modified even if it looks like crap. The mechanical side of things can usually be fixed but it's a complete ball ache paying through the nose for scarce cycle parts if you can actually find them.
Our perspectives are different that's all.
The bikes I use the most are my old Hinckley Triumphs, rock bottom cheap and will take you anywhere you want to go as fast as you like.
 
pf1 said:
No room for optimism in the Laverda fraternity ha ha!
Paul you are a black cloud sometimes, some you win and some you lose, the only engine I've ever had explode is my Nissan X-Trail and I must admit that did come as a bit of a surprise.
To me, if a bike is complete and unmessed with it is worth far more than one that is incomplete or modified even if it looks like crap. The mechanical side of things can usually be fixed but it's a complete ball ache paying through the nose for scarce cycle parts if you can actually find them.
Our perspectives are different that's all.
The bikes I use the most are my old Hinckley Triumphs, rock bottom cheap and will take you anywhere you want to go as fast as you like.
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Our perspectives are indeed different.
I just find some prices excessive and the fact that most bikes aren't ridden much does indeed make the mechanical side of things very secondary. High prices are not doing anything good for our fraternity.
The bikes I use most are my Laverda.

Paul
 
Begs the question, how do fuck an xtrail? I've had 2 and found them tough as old boots, first one I did over 100k miles on top of the 70k miles it had already done with every warning light on or not working. The ex wife needed a motor urgently so I gave it to her...she's had it another 6 years with who knows how many miles, it's only had a second hand turbo replacement in all that time.
 
Patrick said:
Begs the question, how do fuck an xtrail? I've had 2 and found them tough as old boots, first one I did over 100k miles on top of the 70k miles it had already done with every warning light on or not working. The ex wife needed a motor urgently so I gave it to her...she's had it another 6 years with who knows how many miles, it's only had a second hand turbo replacement in all that time.
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It was ambling along nicely along a main road and on slowing down for a turn off went bang and died with a hole in the block and oil forming a big pool underneath. It was running well and I know the oil was full because I'd only checked it the day before. I'd just put new tyres on it too :mad:
I've no idea why it blew up.
 
Any engine can blow up. In the last job I had where a car was provided by the employer, they gave me a brand new Holden Rodeo 4WD ute (3 litre 4 cylinder petrol engine). The crankshaft broke before its first service at 1000km. It actually broke through one of the big-end journals, so the engine was still capable of running because the bearing in the conrod was holding the broken ends of the shaft together. But it made a hell of a clatter. It sounded like a bunch of nuts and bolts being rattled around in a steel drum.
 
My job involves selling machinery. 30 years ago I worked for a company in Sydney that had been run by a Mech Engineer and was purchased by a bunch of accountants shortly before I started.

Long and short, the Engee kept really good records for the machines, every machine had a log of parts supplied to it, on what date.

The bean counters were wanting to know a few things:

Q1: How long before the machine needed to be replaced, for future sales possibilities
Q2: At what periods were the machines needing most parts, for spares sales expectancy
Q3: At what period were the machines most productive, to tell future customers

So, they set about going through as many machine data as they could, as left by the Engee.

A1: 7 - 10 years
A2: First 2 months, and 7-10 years
A3: 3 months to 7 years

So what did we learn from all this bean counting?
1: If something new is going to chuck it's guts, chances are it'll happen in the first couple of months of operation.
2: Buy one of our machines and it will be fucked in 7 - 10 years.
3: Never work for a machinery company run by bean counters. They budgeted on, and buggered, everything they pointed a pencil at.
 
Dellortoman said:
Any engine can blow up. In the last job I had where a car was provided by the employer, they gave me a brand new Holden Rodeo 4WD ute (3 litre 4 cylinder petrol engine). The crankshaft broke before its first service at 1000km. It actually broke through one of the big-end journals, so the engine was still capable of running because the bearing in the conrod was holding the broken ends of the shaft together. But it made a hell of a clatter. It sounded like a bunch of nuts and bolts being rattled around in a steel drum.
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Had exactly this happen on GPZ600 after 13 months- just out of warranty, very careful owner. Kawasaki paid for a crank out of good will. They had never seen or heard of it before.
 
chrisk said:
My job involves selling machinery. 30 years ago I worked for a company in Sydney that had been run by a Mech Engineer and was purchased by a bunch of accountants shortly before I started.

Long and short, the Engee kept really good records for the machines, every machine had a log of parts supplied to it, on what date.

The bean counters were wanting to know a few things:

Q1: How long before the machine needed to be replaced, for future sales possibilities
Q2: At what periods were the machines needing most parts, for spares sales expectancy
Q3: At what period were the machines most productive, to tell future customers

So, they set about going through as many machine data as they could, as left by the Engee.

A1: 7 - 10 years
A2: First 2 months, and 7-10 years
A3: 3 months to 7 years

So what did we learn from all this bean counting?
1: If something new is going to chuck it's guts, chances are it'll happen in the first couple of months of operation.
2: Buy one of our machines and it will be fucked in 7 - 10 years.
3: Never work for a machinery company run by bean counters. They budgeted on, and buggered, everything they pointed a pencil at.
Click to expand...
So Chris you just described a bathtub curve. Infant mortality then random failures followed by the end of life/wear out phase.
 
pf1 said:
It was ambling along nicely along a main road and on slowing down for a turn off went bang and died with a hole in the block and oil forming a big pool underneath. It was running well and I know the oil was full because I'd only checked it the day before. I'd just put new tyres on it too :mad:
I've no idea why it blew up.
Click to expand...
Sounds like a maintenance induced failure Pat!
 
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