In the jungle

This photo shows my helmet after a low speed crash today. The head impact was pretty big. It wasn't a glancing blow.

Without this helmet I would certainly have facial injuries and possibly a serious head injury. As it was I walked away with no obvious injuries..

Look at the damage to the helmet and imagine the same scenario with no helmet or a cheap open face helmet.

For a period of about 20 minutes after the crash I had significant memory loss. I called my wife but could not remember that she was working 500 km away as opposed to being at home.

My last crash was over 30 years ago.

This happened at night. In this crash I was forced to the side of the road by an oncoming truck that, I guess, was avoiding potholes on his side of the road. The result was that I went through a huge puddle that had within it a big pothole around 8 inches deep. I was doing less than 40 kph at the time.

I am not sure what happened next but the locals rushed out and pushed a bamboo pole with a plastic bag attached to it into the pothole so it's super safe now :-)

People around here laugh at me for always wearing a helmet. In some cases they die laughing.

The Scrambler has an engine that can trace its lineage back to the 1970s.and I think therein lies their problem with meeting modern emissions laws.

It's a big two pot, two valve per head air cooled engine.

Ducati can make it run right but they can't do that and meet Thai emissions laws.

.

Surely this calls for a reenactment of the crime.

They could dress him up in a bullet proof vest and helmet like the Koh Tao patsies. Much pointing and photos.

In extremis the helmet could be used as a receptacle.

As an aside the original battery in my Wave 110i recently died after four years.

Out of curiosity I kicked it over without the battery and it fired up and ran exactly as normal.

The only thing that did not work correctly with the battery out was the indicators.

Fuel injection every time..

In my opinion the adoption of fuel injection and engine management systems is the most significant improvement in motorcycles in recent times.

Ride the same bike back to back one with carburettor and the other with fuel injection and you will quickly understand that even a well set up carburettor is an approximation device in terms of fuelling.

Fuel injection bikes give a more linear response to throttle than a carburetted bike which means better control, safety and a more enjoyable ride.

The girl's story is that when she was 17 years old her employer tried to coerce her into going to work in Hong Kong. A place where the employer has only been twice in her life.

The employer states that Hong Kong is a source of her wealth but the detail given about a gambling win in HK and payment of taxes is suspect given that legal gambling there is heavily restricted.

I hazard a guess that the girl's employment would have been in Wan Chai.

Of course you could just put 550 psi in the tyres like Somchai at the village bike shop does.

I have an old Kubota tractor with tubed tyres.

The front tubes are made in Thailand. The rear tubes are made in Japan.

The fronts lose pressure fast whereas the rear pressures hardly vary.

It just seems to be a characteristic of Thai manufactured tubes that, in my experience, is common to all brands.

Surely a case for the Great Man to use the infinite power of Section 44 to make it all go away.except for the compensation.

Over the years I have seen many reports where the guys are charged with trying to bribe the police on top of the original charges.

Which, in essence, is because the bribe was too small.

15K maybe.

Price would vary a little depending on disc or drum front brake.

So sufficiency economy and OTOP are pulling in opposite directions yet they peddle both at the same time.

The problem with youth is its wasted on the young.

Sounds like a modified quote from The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

I am not sure it is word perfect but Oscar Wilde.

Our whole team feel completely drained after three months of intense undercover work said a police spokesman.

According to The Guardian today Thai police have discovered a tiger slaughter house linked to the temple about 50 km away.

If it is a standard Thai bike (Wave, Spark or whatever) a new chain is cheaper than a can of chain lube or cleaner.

If it's a big bike with an O ring chain then probably worth being more particular about how you look after it.

DOT3 is the most common type of brake fluid here but I don't use DOT3 in anything as it is not really up to the job..

Use DOT4 which is a higher specification. Not so common but you will find it, for example, at Esso stations (Mobil DOT4).

There is a very useful website called Irrigation Tutorials. Google will take you to it.

It will help you a lot with pump sizing and system design issues.

That is a fatuous argument.

If he had got up five minutes earlier he would still be alive.

If he had stopped at the Seven for cigarettes he would still be alive.

If had ridden a little bit faster/slower he would still be alive.

And so on.

The simple fact is he was run down by a drunk driver who lost control of his vehicle.

The motorcyclists use of the underpass pales into insignificance against that fact.

Judging by this article logic and basic arithmetic are not strengths of the Ministry of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives.

Change the Doraemon sticker to a picture of a chocolate log?

But only yesterday afternoon a police spokesman was insisting the villains were fake coppers.

Confused.

My advice is to check the simple stuff first before looking at more complex and expensive things.

Firstly check in this order, spark plug, air filter, battery condition, fuel filter and, if it has done more than about 20,000 km, valve clearances. Problems with one or more of these components can cause the stalling and difficult starting you describe.

A light tan colour is normal spark plug. A black spark plug indicates running rich = too much fuel.

If those items all check out good then my next suspects would be the lambda sensor or the engine temperature sensor. The reason I suggest looking at these two components is because you say fuel consumption is way too high which suggests the bike is running rich. If a lambda sensor fails most engine computers default to running rich in the absence of data from the sensor. The engine temp sensor is, in these simple bikes, used as the equivalent of a cold start device. Cold start device = old school choke = throw more fuel into the engine. In the absence of data from the temp sensor the engine computer most likely defaults to a rich setting. Another reason for looking at the engine temp sensor and lambda sensor is because these can be diagnosed using a multimeter (a common electrical test tool).

Beyond that would be throttle position sensor, engine computer and other stuff.

For now I would not attempt to mechanically alter the idle. You can bet it was right out of the factory and in messing with it you would most likely be seeking to compensate for a problem elsewhere. Fiddling with it would require re-calibrating the throttle position sensor and I hazard a guess that most mechanics don't know this.

It could be numerous other things but the key is to have someone work through the steps logically without a bias towards selling you expensive bits such as engine computers and sensors.

"Oh, I imagine it's a language barrier thing, but I really don't think the lights they are talking about are neon lights. Neon lights are a lot more complicated. I think what they are talking about is what we would call in American, "flourescent lights."

Thai people call them neon lights because they are not neon lights.

What's hard to understand about that?

A Honda Dream or Wave would probably be the default choice.

Very simple and tough and excellent parts support from Honda at reasonable prices.

Yamaha make great bikes too but I cannot comment on parts support for them as I have not owned one in Thailand.