In the jungle

I had a 795 for a bit over a year and the more I rode it the more I disliked it.

1. Cheap and nasty mirrors

2. Cheap and nasty suspension

3. Stupidly tall gearing

4. Mediocre engine mapping

5. Plastic fuel tank that deforms if you use gasohol

6. Shoddy dealer servicing and attitude (Thonglor)

I was so glad to see the back of the thing.

Sure Ducati make some good bikes but the 795 is not one of them.

That said the Focus is no Golf.

Back in Blighty I bought a Mk II Golf with just over 100,000 miles on it. Ex company car. It looked like new.

I put more than another 100,000 trouble free miles on it and it still looked like new.

Had to sell as my wife could not be insured on the Golf.

When I looked at a Ford Focus a few years back the dealer told me it was manufactured in the Phillipines.

To echo what others have said you cannot judge the quality of the Focus by this one car whose history is unknown.

Properly maintained I would expect just about any modern car from a reputable manufacturer to go on and on. It is not going to self destruct at 150,000 km.

My guess is that their target market is owners of Thai manufactured bikes outside Thailand.

Perhaps worth considering if you own a Grom in the USA or an Innova in Europe.

I tried their parts search out on Honda part numbers and got a one in three hit rate. On the one part number where I got a result they were not competitive. US$54 for a headlamp bulb (including post). No way!

Missed that.

And BTW, 40.88% does not constitute "most".

They mis-state it all the time in these "polls".

BTW, bearing in mind that 40.88% was a higher percentage than all the other answers, it does constitute "most".

Wrong.

54.56% either said they would or that they would consider it depending upon the circumstances.

If you do not have experience working on bikes and the right tools removing the lock falls into the difficult category.

Problems with putting the bike on its side?

To a degree this depends on how far over you have to lean the bike to transport it. Try and keep it as near to upright as you can.

I was going to go into more detail but after re-reading your earlier posts I doubt you want to get into draining the fuel tank and removing a battery from under a locked seat to transport the bike.

The other option is to replace the lock. The new lock will come with new keys.

I did this for a friend with a Honda LS125 and, from memory, the new lock was about THB 900.

Not a hard job to do. The lock may be fixed to the bike with 'tamper proof' screws but they are easily defeated.

Is there a seat lock and does it use the same key?

The Thai public is "nodding." Thais nod and sign, they don't articulate.

Thais do not sign. They "ink".

Get with the programme.

It appears now that what they signed was a Memorandum Of No Understanding.

All brake pads are a compromise.

The one you choose depends where in the spectrum of compromise you wish to be.

For the vast majority of applications I use stock pads as they will work well in a wide range of circumstances and will be benign in character.

On one bike I use a non standard compound as it gives better initial bite but I do so in the knowledge that the discs will wear faster.

At the extreme with a brake pad formulated for competition use you may well find that when cold they have limited effectiveness and are noisy. They may also have a high wear rate, chew up the discs and require high pedal pressures. But even with competition pads you cannot simply define a best as driver preference in terms of brake characteristics is an important consideration.

IMO in looking for a better brake pad the first step is to consider what you mean by better.

I am glad that the EBC man is expanding the choice readily available to consumers in this marketplace and I wish him success.

I have been through this.

For some reason the rats ignored the Vigos and went for the expensive imported car with the leather interior.

The pink 'rat poison' is a waste of time. The rats literally munch it up like breakfast cereal.

The only solution was to get our cat involved. Her food bowl was moved to the car and the problem went away.

What they did is approve a 30 Billion budget for the usual suspects to buy and distribute drugs (less the usual skim of course).

I think the OP did not deserve the abuse he received.

His problem is that he is being caught by the time related element of the Toyota service schedule.

I have a Toyota and under the time related service schedule if I did, say, 10 kilometres in the last six months it would require another oil and filter change despite the fact that it had one only ten km ago.

That is manifestly stupid, wasteful and shows limited respect for a finite resource but it is nonetheless what the service schedule requires. So far as I can see these matters are not subject to dealer discretion.

If you do a low mileage but you want to keep your Toyota warranty in Thailand you have to accept that you are going to be paying a Toyota dealer for work that is unnecessary and watching perfectly good parts go in the bin.

The situation with Toyota in Europe is different and better.

The main problem with white leather is that it's going to look like Huggy Bear's lounge.

Other considerations fade into insignificance against that.

Honda UMK435T

Thais tend to say that it is heavy but provided you are not working more than 45 minutes at a time I don't find it a problem.

Avoid the ones with a Honda engine but where the rest is made by whatever Thai or Chinese company. They tend to have steel shafts which adds to the weight and screws up the balance of the tool.

The Honda UMK435T runs on gasohol 91 so no need to mess about with 2T oil. It starts easily. It has excellent reliability and good availability of reasonably cheap genuine parts.

No way I would go back to a two stroke.

For small capacity locally manufactured bike parts I would try around Poonsub market in Rangsit.

Poonsub market is mostly bling parts for scooters but there are at least half a dozen used parts dealers in the area.

Some of the better ones are on the road from Rangsit to Poonsub market perhaps a kilometre or two before you reach the market.

Distributed solar power generation is the way to do it.

I want power generated at my house where I will use it without anyone other than me profiting from the power generation process.

The General does not want distributed power generation. He wants a system where his mates can set up solar farms in Issan or wherever and the power companies are bound to buy the power from them at inflated prices. All electricity consumers will pay for the subsidies in their tarrifs.

Most of the world's top ten solar panel manufacturers are Chinese. It is wrong to suggest that all Chinese panels are sub standard.

Google "Orange Tractor Talks".

It is a forum on Kubota tractors.

Lots of information and help available there.

Here is my dissenting view on the SR 400.

While I can understand why some experienced riders like it based on their preferences in terms of style and rider experience for me it is just slow and expensive.

You only have to look at the SR's power to weight ratio of around 137 bhp per tonne to see that you are going to have a hard time at the traffic light drag with enthusiastically driven scooters. You are going to get axe murdered by the modded scooters and old two strokes.

New SRs are very expensive in today's market and secondhand SRs are pretty much guaranteed to have unsound registration papers.

Having read the OP's original post and considered the stated budget I would look at a secondhand ER6N or a CB500.

The CB500 is no rocketship but it has a power to weight ratio that is 75% better than the SR, there is better dealer support and it is a modern design that is well reviewed worldwide.

That photograph is quite something.

The Thai press grovelling before the Dear Leader.

Yes the Austin Healey Sprite Mk I aka frog eye was quite a bit earlier.

I owned one and it was a 1959 model.

At a guess I would say production of the frog eye ended around 1961.

I think the ball hitch is probably 50mm as that is the most common size.

You could try Respo Trailers in Hua Hin or possibly Upbeat Trailers who are somewhere in or near Bangkok for the ball receiver (although the URL I have for the latter is now dead).

The only ball receivers I have seen in Thailand are the pressed steel type, invariably imported, and cost way more than back in wherever.

I would be happy to help but I am some 450 km south of Bangkok.

I have just had a look around the web and there is plenty of good information out there on lock wiring with illustrations and photographs.

Enjoy your track day.

And yes I have done a bit of lock wiring in my time. Including on bikes running in the British Superbike Championship and on championship winning race cars.