TOPIC:

US exchange rate, think about us poor Aussies and the exchange rate , the way I look at doing stuff on my 13 is that the parts have lasted 30 odd years so if you do have to replace them at least you'll get 30 odd years out of them also, and a blast on a 13 is all worth it believe me, keep at it mate, heck a little thing like brakes never stopped me (well they do stop me)

True enough. You guys lose another 5-6 cents on top of what we lose.

The only thing keeping me going is the sound if it winding up to 8000 rpm

I'm driving it around with no rear brakes right now and don't really care. I've driven bikes with worse. I once had a car with next to no brakes, blown manifold gaskets and no first or second gear.

If you want an experience try a 13 with a sidecar on it, heaps of grunt to get it going, I find that it gets bogged down at 160kph, seems like the sidecar works like a big wind dam, either that or i'm having trouble getting enough fuel to the carbs, oh well i'm pulling the head off over my xmas break to do the valve seals, she burns a bit of oil, and i'll put in the metal cam chain cog at the same time and look at maybe putting a hi flow pingel petcock in it, if I don't procrastinate too much , oh yeh I got replacement cups for the rear master from the English place, www.zed-parts.com/ back when I did a bit of a re-build, nice people and very helpful, cheers

That must be an interesting ride. A bike with a sidecar is a whole different experience. There is no doubt in my mind that it is causing a ton of wind resistance. I'm surprised it can do 160Km/h at all to be honest. These bikes have a rated HP of 120 at the crank and in the real world they have around 100 at the wheel if all is well. A doubling of speed quadruples the HP required to overcome the drag. So, if 40 HP is required to overcome the drag at 80km/h, at 160 kmh you'd need 160 HP to overcome the drag. Your bike better be working perfectly in order get higher speeds. You'd need to calculate the drag coefficient of the bike+sidecare to figure it out for sure, plus a dyno run to measure the actual HP.

Nah, I think a few "ponies" have escaped over the years, she goes well, it's not like the sidecar is a brick wall but you know it's on there, I usually "putter" around the place at 120 to 140, just thought i'd give it a gut full the other day, it just felt like it wanted to pull more but was being held back, cheers

No doubt. As they get older they do lose a bit of juice. I had an old van that was so tapped out it could barely climb a steep grade.