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Upt'North ¹ said :-
Been out for a day ride with Er'Indoors.
We got up to North Berwick in the glorious Autumnal sunshine but it was just about warm enough at between 13 to 15 c's. Coffee £4 a cup Ed.
It's ready for an oil and filter change and the valves and sparkplugs are overdue.
Pffffffftttttt.
Upt.
07/10/2026 16:54:03 UTC
Ren - The Ed¹ said :-
Ooh valves on a V-twin, that'll be fun. Will you be doing it yourself or will you give it to a professional? At £4 for a coffee I'd suggest doing it yourself.
Ian how old is your nitro helmet and do you subscribe to the "replace your helmet every 5 years" thinking?
07/10/2026 19:18:09 UTC
Upt'North ¹ said :-
You may have a point Ed, but it won't be until the spring, or at least I don't think it will.
Cold garages are for kids. Oil and filter will get done though, before the "you can't leave old oil in the bike over winter" crowd chirp in. I don't think old oil left in over winter causes issues anyway, especially when you're talking small bike change intervals. The oils probably done around 4000 miles of open road miles and still looks like new.
But for 12 cups of coffee, I'll do it.
Upt.
08/10/2026 09:07:40 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
My helmet (not the one in the pic) is about 5 years old but hasn't had that much use. The inner foam - which I think is probably the main reason for changing - is still firm and it still fits well. It hasn't been dropped or involved in a crash(!) Given the ratty old things I used to wear - including a genuine Cromwell pudding basin for some years - I think it's good enough. I occasionally have a look to see what else is out there and nothing catches my eye.
I work on the principle that comfort is a big part of safety. If you can't breathe, are too hot / cold, are struggling with tight overtrousers etc your mind won't be completely on your riding. Prevention better than cure and all that.
I agree with Upt' - old oil - unless very high mileage - is fine left in the bike. How many people have had genuine problems? I also change the oil when it's cold and been left at least a day as it will have drained down from the valve gear etc whereas if it's just been running quite a lot will stay up there. I do leave it draining for 24 hours at least. Probably best not to do it in sub-zero temperatures though.
08/10/2026 10:17:55 UTC
Upt'North ¹ said :-
Your views on oil are interesting Ian with regards oil draining to the sump.
It seems a fairly constant theme on forums "on how to check oil levels". Just let the damn thing settle overnight and check it. Some twonk on the site I can't mention for legal reasons stated, "my bikes burning oil". Why? "I go out, come back, check the oil and top it up". How long before you top it up? "Ten minutes"......that'll be why then!
Why is oil so hard? Yes I know it isn't hard, it's oily.....you know what I mean.
Pffffffftttttt.
Regarding changing helmets, they'll let you know when they're ready, they start falling apart. Ask me how I know? My helmets probably get used for a month a year and are stored clean and in the original helmet bag in a wardrobe out of sunlight. If you're using it every day then it must make a difference to longevity. It's probably physics.
Upt.
08/10/2026 10:38:01 UTC
Upt'North ¹ said :-
Oh yes, I think my Shoei is about 6 years old. Quite disappointed that an expensive lid needs all the interior replacing in that time, the cheek pads were replaced FOC about 2 years ago. So that's only 6 months wear time approximately. It's a very nice helmet but surely it should last longer than that.
It doesn't even get wet that often, just the odd day on tour.
Upt.
08/10/2026 10:44:13 UTC
ROD¹ said :-
My Caberg helmet is 11 or possibly 12 years old. It is showing its age now, and it has had minor repairs. My wife has been telling me to change it for the last two years, but it's a very comfortable helmet, and new helmets have kept up with inflation where my income hasn't.
My wife also has a Caberg helmet but has found it uncomfortable, and purchased another helmet last year.
The helmet she purchased was only £99 and I had never heard of the brand. It has all of the safety specs and she finds it comfortable.
Looking around the fittings visor ect it all looks good. I am starting to question if expensive helmets are really worth the extra money?
08/10/2026 12:09:57 UTC
Upt'North ¹ said :-
This could go on Chit Chat or repairs. Or Dyson repairs.com. Here goes.
Vacuum cleaner is intermittent she says.
Give it ere I says.
BANG! What the!
Another blummin job.
I need a cup of tea first to steady me nerves, the flame came out of a pin hole in the flex. There'll be a broken wire in there. At least I'm not paying £4 for a cup of tea.
Upt and shakey.....6 sugars please.
10/10/2026 13:25:15 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
That's OK, Mr Dyson's taken his profit and skedaddled off to Monaco or wherever with it. He'll expect you to buy a new one. I did see a report somewhere that Dysons were appliance repairers' favourites as people thought that as they'd already spent a fortune on them they were worth spending more repairing them.
How on earth did you manage to break a wire in the cable?
11/10/2026 12:34:58 UTC
Upt'North ¹ said :-
Old age I'm afraid Ian, not me, well OK me too. It's where the flex turns through 90° to enter the handle. The vacuum is over 20 years old and Er'Indoors does like to vacuum. I renewed the motor and seals in the spring, a cable is £15 so it'll have a new one, I'll ring "Manchester Vacs" in the morning. I noticed a clip has lost a lug too, so hopefully they'll have one handy off an old machine. They're very good. I can verify that Dyson's are a pain to take apart, they're obviously meant for a visiting engineer to visit but then they don't offer support for older machines. Their service/recondition visits were well priced but is irrelevant if they don't fix the old stuff.
Upt.
11/10/2026 13:21:15 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
Sounds like pretty poor design from an "engineer led" company. If there's flexure there should be some support like a sleeve or it should be constrained so the flex moves further away from a pinch point.
We still have a Miele that we bought about 30 years go and it still works fine although neither of us is very keen on using it........
12/10/2026 14:37:15 UTC
nab301 said :-
I've found Miele to be excellent also. A while back I had a new electric hedge trimmer with 10 minutes use go boom with a ball of blue flame coming out of the motor, I prefer two stroke hedge trimmers now !
Years ago I remember a neighbour recalling how their young child thought they would help their mother who had been vacuuming , the child managed to switch on the vacuum cleaner and placed the nozzle in the toilet bowl... It wasn't a composting toilet , luckily the child was unharmed but the vacuum didn't survive!.
Nigel
13/10/2026 11:51:47 UTC
Upt'North ¹ said :-
Was the child's name "Henry"?
I'm here all week.
14/10/2026 16:11:21 UTC
nab301 said :-
Very Drole Upt !
Nigel
15/10/2026 13:56:54 UTC
Upt'North ¹ said :-
I resemble that remark.
Did you know that "Drôle" is a French adjective. I bet Ian did.
Pffffffftttttt.
Upt and drôle'ish apparently.
15/10/2026 14:47:47 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
I did Upt' except for your apparent confusion between umlauts and circumflex......
This side of the channel we usually spell it droll of course.
16/10/2026 10:00:39 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
On a completely different topic (and probably of little interest to many).
Ren was recently talking about his future employment options following his sad redundancy. It's probably worse than he thought (although good for lots). I discovered the other day that someone has used Claude AI to build fully working replicas of Adobe's software, eg Photoshop (which is all eye-wateringly expensive to rent - you can't buy it). Apparently this was done in a "clean room" environment ie didn't reengineer the compiled machine code but just examined the behaviour of the software. It took a small team a week. Adobe has spent decades employing hundreds of softawre engineers to do more or less the same thing. They'va also started producing Microsoft Office doppelganger apps (Word, Excel etc) although I haven't checked these out yet.
So the jobs of software engineers, system analysts, programmers etc will very shortly effectively be about as relevant as flint-knappers. I didn't see this coming but I suppose it was inevitable. What next I wonder. The link is to the home of this new stuff. I have tried out the pdf and photoshop applications and have to say they're faster than Adobe and as far as I can see pretty much complte. And as open source anyone can tweak and enhance them. I have no doubt this is already happening.
https://getartcraft.com/apps...
17/10/2026 14:33:47 UTC
Ren - The Ed¹ said :-
I've seen this Ian. It crossed my mind many times over the years to create a piece of software that I then sell and make my fortune. It seems that horse has left the stable. There's still plenty of developer jobs being listed but in the long term I believe these will greatly dwindle.
I don't yet know what's next. Back to development for the last hurrah? IT support? I looked at a medical motorcycle courier position part time this week. Go work for Uber eats for pocket money?
I'll think of something. I am open to ridiculous suggestions as long as they are hilarious ?
17/10/2026 22:51:13 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
I have an acquaintance who makes a decent living fixing people's PCs etc at their homes (and over the phone). Mostly pretty trivial stuff, and I can't see AI taking that over - unless of course they use Claude or similar and ask it the questions! May be worth a thought? It would probably take a while to build up though.
Of course we should never trust a programmer with a screwdriver......
This isn't him but that's the sort of thing.
https://reddipc.co.uk/...
18/10/2026 17:06:52 UTC
Ren - The Ed¹ said :-
Back in 2005 I started my own little one man IT Support business Ian. The first 5-6 years was mostly setting printers up, connecting "aged" folks to that new fangled interweb thingy, updating software for small business, and rebuilding Mr X's computer because "someone" had been looking at scantily clad females on virused up websites. I started to get asked for websites and that's where it slowly moved over to coding.
It's an option. The landscape has changed somewhat in that most users are now on mobile devices that we no longer fix, just replace every 2-3 years. There's still plenty of small business and home users with questions, and some of them have the spare cash to just pay someone to figure things out rather than do it themselves.
Right now I'm asking the question - do I want more of the same? On the one hand I've 26 years in the trade and it'd be a shame to not leverage that experience. On the other hand - been there done that and now I'm sick to bleeding death of having to learn a new protocol, connection, coding language, software package etc etc etc. I'm reaching that age where Sharon's new fangled TV streaming thingy just bloody annoys me when it won't do what I want it to do. I know I'm more than capable of working it out, watching a video about it, asking AI for help, or just playing with it till it makes sense. I can't be arsed that's the point. I find it's easier to call Sharon's daughter and she'll make it all better, and then you realise you've become like your parents and grandparents were when I was young.
19/10/2026 23:23:09 UTC
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