Scooter

Theo Bekkers said:

Zoom said:

I saved about $10 on fuel yesterday. I did a 140km ride.

If the imaginary car you didn't drive had been a V8 Commodore you could have
saved $20.

Theo

Theo I couldn't afford an imaginary V8 Commodore, even in my dreams.

Zoom

Lotte wrote

I was in Italy in 1985 and all I can remember is that some little [censored] stole my new ball.

I nearly wet myself after reading that. Its funnier when you realise how [censored] Lotte is today since her light has stuffed up. The shottie has been blazing since about 6:45 this morning...... and she can still joke around.

Paulie wrote:

I nearly wet myself after reading that.

I hate when you laugh at me when I'm angry!

Its funnier when you realise how [censored] Lotte is today since her light has stuffed up. The shottie has been blazing since about 6:45 this morning...... and she can still joke around.

You think I'm joking around, do you?

LotteBastard

hippy wrote -

Quoted message said:

What's wrong with a bicycle from A to B?
No fuel used. No fscking annoying buzzing noise. Scooters are still
petrol-burning buzz boxes and you can't carry anything in/on them, like
you can with a car. They are annoying as hell in NL, screaming through
otherwise lovely town square sunsets or using the bike paths. Only good
thing about them is when I get to draft a slow one..

Nothing at all wrong with the bike - but there are times when a scooter is
surprisingly useful.

Mine has storage under the seat, a top box, carry a small folded back pack
and when that's all full, you can still put half the weeks shopping in bags
on the hook under the steering column.

Went looking for a 'classic' motorcycle to restore a few months back and
couldn't find anything I really liked to ride in city traffic (LNS Sydney -
often a crawl), and a big bike with a heavy clutch like a Ducati is a pig in
those conditions.

And I tried a scooter - (Aprilia 150cc 4str) - and it was (and still is) a
huge hit with everyone that tries it.

Gonna sell the car because its no longer needed - would much rather take the
scooter than a car round the city and 'burbs - and the running costs of the
scooter are tiny - how about paying for petrol every 2 weeks from your loose
change?

No good on a freeway but up to 80kph its sweet and can leave porsches at the
lights (much to their angst!)

If your comfortable on a push bike in traffic, a scooter is a breeze and
well worth a trial if you want to have some fun.

There's a great story of how the scooter came to get invented in 1946 at

http://www.uk.vespa.com/_vti_g2_81.asp?brand=VESPA&country=GB&language=EN

Try it - if its got 2 wheels, love it - best Andrew

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

>> "Zoom" == Zoom <[email hidden]> writes:

Zoom> I saved about $10 on fuel yesterday. I did a 140km ride.
Zoom> Actually, in thinking about it, I probably spent less on Mars
Zoom> Bars then I did on petrol. I wonder if I can convert my car to
Zoom> run on Mars Bars?

I had a moment of surrealness a few weeks ago, I'd stuffed up with my
eating and was really hungry ten minutes in to my ride home so I pulled
in to a fuel station to get some food. It felt really weird, there I
was with all the car drivers buying my fuel to get home.

My bill was a smidgen cheaper than theirs ;-)
--
Cheers | ~~ __@
Euan | ~~ _-\<,
Melbourne, Australia | ~ (*)/ (*)

Kim said:

dave said:

LotteBum said:

Adam85 wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

have you seen those big ass 650cc suzuki burgman scooters? They are
massive....

And ugly!

Quoted message said:

All scooters r ugly.. Some are cute tho

you gotta remember that "cute" means, interesting but not practical =D

a scooter can be cute and ugly at the same time 😉

cheers,

kim

Yup

Also true of some women

And me 🙂

Jules said:

Quoted message said:

They're pretty slow. Honda do a gorgeous retro looking thing, but they
reckon it's really gutless. Apparently the two stroke engines are
easier to maintain/rebuild as well. The mechanic at the place where we
got this one reckons we should get 40,000km out of it before it needs a
rebuild. He's biased, but I'd be happy with 20,000km.

Well... yeah... but... 2 strokes:
Use much more fuel... say 1.5 - 2 times for a bike of the same capacity
in normal usage.
Need rebuilding nearly as often as 4-strokes need basic topend servicing
Pollute orders of magnitude more than 4 strokes.
Have a very unfriendly torque distribution across the rev range.
Make that gawd awful lawnmower noise (still having nightmares from the
incessant drone in northern Italy)
Need oil as a consumable. Expensive 2 stroke oil, and quite a lot of it.
Are generally less reliable.

But they are simple, cheap, light and powerful, I'll admit ;-)

Jules

I must say in general I dont like 2 strokes.

Rode a couple or RG 500s and an RZ 500, scarey things now apparently
extint. Tho whether its cos they blew up (really hard to blow em up.. I
guess I mean wore out) or the riders have all died is hard to guess.

I couldnt stand the noise. And the 5 rpm or so wide powerband. And the
6 hour or so life of the engines

Mind you they did warp 9 back in the 80s and even the state of the art
superbikes only do about warp 8

LotteBum said:

Hippy wrote:

You didn't answer my question..

Ok, my commute is 35km each way. I'm a big fat [censored] and can't do that
more than 3 days per week at the moment. Paulie and I share a car, but
on days that I use the car, I'm required to travel to the train
station, then catch the train for 30 minutes to work. I don't get a
seat often and remember, I'm a fat [censored] - my legs don't like holding
my fat ass up, and I'm surrounded by dodgy people (this is Queensland
afterall). Parking in the city is upwards of $14 per day and frankly,
my job as a fat [censored] secretary isn't worth that.

We'd have bought a second car, but you don't get much car for $3000.

Does that answer your question??

LotteHOSTILEBum

You can get a pretty good car for 3000 Not that I would encourage you
to do so
My question about Bolwell was becouse Bolwellused to make ´great´ cars

Admittedly not for $3000. Dont listen to Hippy. At least a scooter is
a motorbike and so is not alltogether evil. And it has the right no of
wheels for balanced people. Shame its a stroker tho.. Still better than
many things

Zebee Johnstone said:

In aus.bicycle on Wed, 24 Aug 2005 10:42:09 +1000

hippy said:

What's wrong with a bicycle from A to B?

depends on how far A is from B.

For example, a previous commute was 50km, with some big hills. Took an
hour each way by motorcycle, be a lot more by pushbike.

Quoted message said:

No fuel used. No fscking annoying buzzing noise. Scooters are still
petrol-burning buzz boxes and you can't carry anything in/on them, like
you can with a car. They are annoying as hell in NL, screaming through

can't you? damn! Been doing it wrong all these years.

OK, I'm not the one who carried the fullsize wardrobe, but I have
carried a fridge, does that count?

I moved a lounge suite on the CX
Not all at once tho.

dave said:

Jules said:

Quoted message said:

They're pretty slow. Honda do a gorgeous retro looking thing, but they
reckon it's really gutless. Apparently the two stroke engines are
easier to maintain/rebuild as well. The mechanic at the place where we
got this one reckons we should get 40,000km out of it before it needs a
rebuild. He's biased, but I'd be happy with 20,000km.

Well... yeah... but... 2 strokes:
Use much more fuel... say 1.5 - 2 times for a bike of the same
capacity in normal usage.
Need rebuilding nearly as often as 4-strokes need basic topend servicing
Pollute orders of magnitude more than 4 strokes.
Have a very unfriendly torque distribution across the rev range.
Make that gawd awful lawnmower noise (still having nightmares from the
incessant drone in northern Italy)
Need oil as a consumable. Expensive 2 stroke oil, and quite a lot of it.
Are generally less reliable.

But they are simple, cheap, light and powerful, I'll admit ;-)

Jules

I must say in general I dont like 2 strokes.

Rode a couple or RG 500s and an RZ 500, scarey things now apparently
extint. Tho whether its cos they blew up (really hard to blow em up.. I
guess I mean wore out) or the riders have all died is hard to guess.

I couldnt stand the noise. And the 5 rpm or so wide powerband. And the
6 hour or so life of the engines

Mind you they did warp 9 back in the 80s and even the state of the art
superbikes only do about warp 8

I think they stopped bringing in the RG500s because they couldn't get
past the newer emissions laws.

Zoom

Zoom said:

dave said:

Jules said:

> They're pretty slow. Honda do a gorgeous retro looking thing, but they
> reckon it's really gutless. Apparently the two stroke engines are
> easier to maintain/rebuild as well. The mechanic at the place where we
> got this one reckons we should get 40,000km out of it before it needs a
> rebuild. He's biased, but I'd be happy with 20,000km.

Well... yeah... but... 2 strokes:
Use much more fuel... say 1.5 - 2 times for a bike of the same
capacity in normal usage.
Need rebuilding nearly as often as 4-strokes need basic topend servicing
Pollute orders of magnitude more than 4 strokes.
Have a very unfriendly torque distribution across the rev range.
Make that gawd awful lawnmower noise (still having nightmares from
the incessant drone in northern Italy)
Need oil as a consumable. Expensive 2 stroke oil, and quite a lot of it.
Are generally less reliable.

But they are simple, cheap, light and powerful, I'll admit ;-)

Jules

I must say in general I dont like 2 strokes.

Rode a couple or RG 500s and an RZ 500, scarey things now apparently
extint. Tho whether its cos they blew up (really hard to blow em up..
I guess I mean wore out) or the riders have all died is hard to guess.

I couldnt stand the noise. And the 5 rpm or so wide powerband. And
the 6 hour or so life of the engines

Mind you they did warp 9 back in the 80s and even the state of the
art superbikes only do about warp 8

I think they stopped bringing in the RG500s because they couldn't get
past the newer emissions laws.

Zoom

Yeah that was the reason.

But you could die really really quick on em They were scarily fast.
THe only thing I ever rode that was scareyer was a turbo GPZ750 and the
RG was faster. The RZ had a powerband about 10 RPM wide which made it
much nicer to ride. Nicer here is pretty relative..

dave said:

Kim said:

dave said:

LotteBum wrote:
> Adam85 wrote:
> And ugly!
All scooters r ugly.. Some are cute tho

you gotta remember that "cute" means, interesting but not practical =D
a scooter can be cute and ugly at the same time 😉

Also true of some women

hey, i wasn't going there.

Quoted message said:

And me 🙂

=O

kim

[quote="LotteBum"]Hippy wrote:
That's what I currently do. I dislike catching the train more than you'll ever know. Ever been to a Queensland train station? They're always littered with dodgy people.

Yeah, when I was 10. Now I'm the "dodgy people"..

How far is the train station from you?
11km.

Well that bites.

It's probably not that hard when you move house. Try buying a house for less than $300k in Brisbane that's not an old, falling apart [censored]. And when you do, let me know.

Qld? No thanks. I have seen the light. "Australia, the lucky country" is a myth.

You already have the machine so there's no point to this argument, but it doesn't stop me thinking that there are alternatives.

I don't *have* it as such. I don't get it until Saturday. Of course there are alternatives. Heaps! I could go out and spend $15k on a new small car and pay the copious amounts of registration, insurance, repayments etc. I could even just [censored] well walk, but I'd be walking all day. I could start whoring myself out at night instead of working during the day, but that would be boring considering the quality of men around. But don't worry, I'm going to buy a Prado instead. That way I can run all the bigot Aussie men around over.

Cool, so now you have the alternatives.. you just have to pick one.

hippy

Lotte - Fsck the wet blankets who are trying to rain on your parade.

Its a way-cool scooter. Nice purchase mate!!!

Abby

Absent Husband said:

Lotte - Fsck the wet blankets who are trying to rain on your parade.

Its a way-cool scooter. Nice purchase mate!!!

Abby

Yeah. We're all just jealous! :p
.
.
.
.
.
.
I'd still get a 4 stroke. 🙄

Abby wrote:

Lotte - Fsck the wet blankets who are trying to rain on your parade.

Agreed.

Lotte

LotteBum said:

Abby wrote:

Lotte - Fsck the wet blankets who are trying to rain on your parade.

Agreed.

Lotte

It must be way easier to mount the shotty on the scoot than on the treadlie 😄

And, yep, it is good to see someone with a new toy even if it makes us jealous.

SteveA

LotteBum said:

Abby wrote:
Lotte - Fsck the wet blankets who are trying to rain on your parade.
Agreed.

I didn't realise PT was so dire up north. Humble apologies for seeking alternatives.

Tetchy lot you QLDers without your sun.. :P

hippy
"What's wrong with Razor scooters anyway?"

hippy said:

hippy
"What's wrong with Razor scooters anyway?"

1) They fall part and somewhere on my property is a hidden symbol that
tells all the neighbourhood kids "sucker will help fix razor skooters".

2) some parts have uncommon allen keys sizes. <mutter, mutter>

Can you deload a shotty?