Forum

[LanesExplorer]

Good morning /afternoon /evening,folks. Now, I've posted stuff like this before with a little bit of interest so here goes .
I am extremely satisfied with my Meteor, for the sort of riding I like doing (here's one of my latest rides if you are at all interested.. https://youtu.be/iC3ZQ75LdKY) and I really enjoy seeking out the sort of country lanes hereabouts that are very little used - originally farm tracks but now surfaced. Generally they have grass down the centre of them. Which takes me back to my original thoughts when returning to motorcycling. What to get..
Toyed with the idea of a BSA unit 350 or 440, RE Crusader Trials etc but eventually decided to buy new. However, that doesn't stop me from thinking of what those other machines might be like on those rides and to actually strip down. And they'd need that being rather old now - which, given I've not a lot of years available to me now, I didn't really want to be doing overmuch. I want to be out exploring...
So instead I have the workshop manuals for those machines. So as I have an overactive imagination I can spend the odd hour in the evening or when it's chucking it down with rain, poring over the exploded view drawings. The most recent one is - I may shock you now - is the Yamaha XT 500. A bike I admired back in the mid '70s but was well out of my pocket. It still is as they seem to fetch around £8000. So a good workshop manual is quite affordable and probably more enjoyable (to me) than the actual reality of having one.
So I continue to enjoy my lovely smoooth Meteor (now with slightly lowered tyre pressures for better ride experience over those grassy bits) and enjoy the engineering designs of those other machines.

[Boxerman]

Enjoyed the videos, watched 5 of them, when will you be uploading the next one? they certainly brought back some memories. Barbondale is one of my favourite places although I've never approached it via the road you used. Always from the Dent end or the Devil's bridge / Sedburgh road.

Frank

[Bullet Whisperer]

I owned an XT 500 briefly in the late 80's. It was very tidy, but an over rated piece of junk if ever there was which I only kept for a few months. Overweight and under powered, my Trials Cub could leave it for dead on the rough and, as the XT ran out of puff around 85 mph, my CB500T did most of the road work. I did manage to make a small profit when I sold the XT for about £450, though. For the current prices they seem to fetch, I would spend it on a BSA B50 - now there's a proper job!

[Boxerman]

Enjoyed the videos, watched 5 of them, when will you be uploading the next one? they certainly brought back some memories. Barbondale is one of my favourite places although I've never approached it via the road you used. Always from the Dent end or the Devil's bridge / Sedburgh road.

Frank

OK! found it - Thanks!

[LanesExplorer]

Hello, Frank. Good to hear from you again - I wondered how you were. Glad you like the videos - with much better sound . Akaso Brave 7 with internal microphone works OK.
I agree Bullet Whisperer that the b 50 would be my ideal - but I have the workshop manual for that too so I'm a happy chap .

[stinkwheel]

I think I get a similar thing from Michael Wallers youtube channel. He's constantly tinkering with old Brit Iron. Mrs stinkwheel and I sit down with a chippy every Sunday evening to see what he's been up to.

Mrs stinkwheel also now considers me to be an insufferable nerd when I make comments like "That's not going to work Michael, you'll need to remove the parping couplet before you can get at the thrumble grommet.", before he does it on screen.