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A bathtub would make a great steampunk sidecar! 😄 Oh, wait! - the Americans have beaten you! 😄

Back in the early 70's I had a 741 Indian. I also had a Dusting sidecar I intended to put on it but sold them both before that happened. Sold the Indian for $50 and the sidecar for $30. Not one of my wiser decisions.

It would be good to have an English wheel, but I've never used one. A bit of skill involved with them I think.

Love the idea of the copper tank, maybe hunt for a bigger version? Or you could modify the shape with some fillets of copper or even stainless to make it more oval shaped. I once had a Stieb Zeppelin sidecar, a thing of beauty. With a bit of imagination you could make the tank like that style as a chair. If you got a hold of another tank or two, you would have plenty to make as you desire and also the 3 wheel guards from the copper. Old copper pipes are also very useful for hand hold rails etc. Metal shaping copper is extremely easy compared to steel , alloy or god damned hard stainless. Would be very cool 😎 with a hand formed copper tank. Any worries on shaping me Metal with simple home tools and I can help, it's not rocket science- guards are surprisingly easy. I would favour a registered motorbike to heavily mod, then you can ride it to the pub etc and have the fun of riding beyond the farm. Pick a BMW k1000 from 1984-1986 and it's club rego, sidecars are common so no rego hassles and they are extremely tough with shaft drive and car strong dry clutch. Pick up a ratty looking one cheap and you can easy modify to your hearts desire. The motor is called the brick and renowned as almost unkillable. Just some thoughts.

Big inch gas guzzlers. Heaps of Gleaming Chrome. Handle like a Pile of Jelly. A lot of their Cars (and trucks) were side valves which is very Inefficient. Fuel was so cheap it didn't matter. Leather seats because the people eat a lot of steak.. Crazy amount of mass to usually carry one person. The Pickup truck is the vehicle of choice Vehicles about 5 years old were Worth Nothing, even though most of them would still get you all over the USA without any trouble.. Nev

Trump and the MAGA nutters all claim there's no pollution, and no climate change problems, it's all just made up. Trump believes the Oil Age is going to undergo a renaissance under his leadership. I have news for him, he's flogging a dead horse, and there's no going back to the 1950's when America burnt oil like it was a totally unlimited, almost free, resource.

Geez you build a lot on a simple question. Most conflict is over Land ownership and who is entitled to what. Abrahamic doesn't cover the entire World either. Mostly based on the East Mediterranean and Middle East and except for OIL, wouldn't be THAT Important. Why did Bush attack Iraq Based on a Lie. Hussein had NO WMD's. . Murdoch said at the time. After this WAR is over, Petrol will be ALMOST FREE.. Nev

One would hope it's only a temporary thing and eventually the W.A. Police will go back to not carrying AR-15's. But the unspoken problem is - if those AR-15's were unleashed into a major crowd, what would the "friendly fire casualties" be? The Police assault on the Islamic nutter (Man Haron Monis) in Sydney, resulted in two unnecessary civilian deaths, and that was a close-range assault.

Randomx, sale of a property is best done by professionals, they know what they're about and have plenty of "leads" to buyers. Plus their local knowledge will give you a good idea of what sort of sale price you can achieve. Numbers of people always want "remote" properties, where they can "get away from it all" and set up "off-grid living". But the important part is figuring out where you'd like to move to - and more importantly, what you can afford.

Yes.. And that was over 900 years ago. Since then, there have been many wars in the name of religion, partiularly the Abrahamic ones - in Europe and the Middle-East, at least. Do any of those justify the same behviour today of the other side? With some exceptions, the global society could move on after WWII at an alarming rate - sometimes within the same generation, but after one or two generations - definitely. But is society not supposed to move on after 1,000 years (and religious wars peretrated by both sides of the Christian/Islam sides since)? The problems with the "they did it a thousand years ago, so we can't be the pot calling the ketttle black" mentality, particularly of events of around a millenia ago are two fold.. First, it sort of legitimises what is happening today bit and therefore emboldens those who use it to justify their stance to do it. That is never a good thing. Secondly, that legitimising of one side of the hate argument justifies and emboldens the other side of the hate argument as being persecuted for events long gone before they were twinkles in their parent's eyes. And the vicious circle intensifies and society polarises. Also on that logic, Jews have suffered at the hands of pertrators of religious wars for millenia, too. Therefore, they have many more wars to start before they sqaure the ledger. Do you agree that would be the right thing to do? I don't.

Jerry, one bright spot that's turned the current position better - SWMBO came back from the operation very pleased, because the Doc had avoided a skin graft with a "flap" surgical removal process. This process is used quite commonly now, and many Docs are skilled at it. They make an incision and lift the skin back, then remove the cancerous bit, then pull the flap back and stitch it in place over the area of tumour removal. Done properly, it looks very good when healed. I had the flap procedure done on my face a few years ago, when I had to have a weeping cyst removed from one cheek. It's nearly impossible to see the scars and stitching on my face, so no-one can call me "Scarface"!. SWMBO is home now and resting, no bending over for three days, a need to keep her wound covered in the shower, and back to get the stitches taken out in a week. She's much happier than when she went in this morning.

Back onto this one if anyone feels like adding some thoughts. Bit of a problem though, a few. First thing is l'm still not liking it at the cabin ,mind you sometimes l do especially the block itself but the town just depresses me. Just not a nice way to feel especially as l wanna retire, was hoping for a bit better spot than this for crying out loud. On the upside, l could build on it was savings, it wouldn't be big and grand don't want that anyway, just say double the size of the cabin as is now. Trouble is, that is a great option as l can live here scott free, rates are tiny and l have solar and own water, could do what l want. But the town !!!!! Second problem is, l've had it up for sale a few mths, hasn't sold. Don't understand so many inquiries but it's not looking too good . l couldn't get in the door of something else now anyway unless l could sell this. l mean that's what l'd prefer and whoever it was said better of paying abit of a mortgage than rent yeah, damn good point. l'd need to sell the cabin though and it ain't looking good. Bloody hell, dk wth to do with the situation apart from go rent something or stay here and do my little build, looks like that's about the choices.

I was part owner of the Fairplay Gold Mine at Higginsville, W.A. from 1972 to 1990, when the mine was sold to a large gold mining company. The brother, his wife and I mined and produced around 600 ozs of gold in that period, utilising the Norseman State Battery (a 10 head stamp mill, owned by the W.A. Govt). Gold was ignored and only worth around $35 oz when we purchased the mine from two old Slav prospectors. But U.S. President Richard Nixon had taken America off the Gold Standard in August 1971, in a staggering display of non-consultative, "executive" Presidential power. It was called the "Nixon shock", and it rattled the worlds financial markets - and led to a rapid rise in the price of gold, now the gold price was no longer controlled by the U.S. We knew this would happen, and purchased the gold mine accordingly. By 1975 the gold price was $160 oz and by 1980, it was over $800 oz, and there was another gold rush on. At that point, our strategy of utilising an under-utilised and cheap source of ore crushing went to hell in a handbasket, as scores of prospectors turned up at the State Battery to crush parcels of ore. A queueing system for crushing was initiated - but even worse - the Govt imposed a very sharp increase in crushing costs to reduce the State Batteries ever-increasing losses (the State Batteries were always subsidised to encourage local employment, bring in gold revenue, and to assist in prospecting work that might deliver new and profitable mines). At that point, we turned to the large (200,000 tonne) tailings dump on our mine, which still held an average of around 2 grams/tonne of tailings. We took on 3 business partners who had experience in heap leaching and cyanidation of tailings, and between all of us, we developed an improved design of tailings leach vats, which proved very effective and very profitable. The benefit of treating tailings was the ore was already crushed very fine, it just had to be set up with the correct pH levels, be able to contain a cyanide leach solution, and to have a simple circulatory pumping system. The addition of activated carbon in stainless steel tanks finished off the treatment process, and it was a very simple job to set up a small, single-cylinder Lister diesel pump to circulate the solution until the activated carbon was full of gold! Then the tanks would be taken into Kalgoorlie to be stripped of the gold, using a caustic solution, by professional carbon tank strippers. The final product, gold "dore" bars were taken into the Perth Mint, which refined the gold to the Internationally-accepted gold bar standard of 99.999 (%) fine gold. After we had re-treated all our gold tailings on the Fairplay lease, we re-treated many more tens of thousands of tonnes of tailings, from numerous other tailings dumps we had pegged. It was a very profitable period for us in the 1980's. Then, after we ran out of tailings dumps of our own to re-treat, we went on to build tailings vats on contract for other operators that needed to re-treat their tailings. We re-treated tailings and built leach vats for well over 2M tonnes of tailings in the 1980's, from as far East as Ejudina, 150kms E of Kalgoorlie, to Burtville, SE of Laverton, W.A. - right through the W.A. Goldfields, to even Marble Bar! It was a very interesting period, and one that was highly profitable, and not a period I'm likely to see again! The sheer pleasure of holding a large gold bar that you've produced and poured, is something that few people experience.

I didn't know whether to give a sad or like or a thanks to the post; I went with the thanks in the end because of the gist of the post, but hope SWMBO's op goes well and she gets better soon. Also, hope you have your hearing aid back by the time you read this! (And I usually find a new engine solves all my old engine issues - hope Perkins pistons come out soon).

Well, don't really wanna rehash this ugliness but apparently in Perth, cops are now carrying assault rifles . Exactly what l said they have to do except l toned in down and said just keep one in the cop car and as they usually work in pairs make one of them a well trained marksmen. Perth's gone one further literally walking round carrying rifles. God almighty, what have we become ? Not saying l wanted any of it, l hate it with a passion and l hate what they've done to our once peaceful safe country. Dunno if this is going on in any of the other capitals, a friend in WA just told me about there though and she's so upset about it.

Combined with those high narrow handlebars it would be very interesting.

Jeez, how do you corner with a square section tyre like that?

As far as I can tell a lot (in agricultural areas) is shared between a few families - fields, animals, equipment etc. We met an old lady who has the machine which separates the rice grains from the husks. Each farmer pays her according to the weight of rice processed - at 700 dong (about 4 cents) per kilo. To give some comparison, street food like bahn mi (salad roll) is around 20,000 dong ($1.10). Poor old thing had lost the fingers on her right hand to the machine, and was about 80, but still working all day. Fortunately now the tour company pays her a bit to show foreigners how the rice is processed. As far as looking after equipment, I reckon they're a country of motor mechanics - they must be good to keep the millions of scooters on the road! We've been here for 2 weeks today, and fly back Tuesday (arriving Wednesday).

The fun part is hunting around the place for the components. This afternoon I did a trip down to the bottom shed in the hope that I might have kept a full set of 16" lugged skinny tyres that were originally part of the Suzuki LJ 80 gear that I once had. Fortunately I'd kept them and one of them would make a good front tyre on a spoked rim. The second attached photo is a pic from the net showing one on a front wheel. It gives it a chunky, military look. These two photos are of an old copper hot water system tank that I was hoping to use as the main body section of the sidecar. At this stage I'm not so sure about it. If it was 20% bigger in dimension it would be perfect. It's a bit small, around 600mm at it's widest point and at the point where the opening would be cut, it would have an opening of around 500mm.

I think that was Under Campbell Newmans reign . HE didn't last Long. Joh was famous for "Feeding the Chooks" and taking bribes (paper bag over there) and the Joh and Flo Push for PM AND He was a Man of God.. That helps to get the Blue Rinse Ladies in. HE also had a Female Pilot to fly his Plane. Nev

Anywhere other than USA, maybe. However there are a lot of US cities where the missus won't duck down to the shops for a bottle of milk without making sure her handgun is in her purse. Carrying a gun is so normalised over there. The fact he (legally) carried a gun is not unusual. Nor is it relevent to what happened. Nor is it justification for ANYBODY to put ten bullets into a person's back (unless that person was directly threatening someone with the gun). The victim was face down on the ground, pinned down by several men, and actually his gun had been removed from him before the first shot was fired. Back in Joh Bjelkie Peterson's day, things got perilously bad in Queensland with regard to protesters, but at least nobody got shot. At the time, it was illegal for 3 or more people to gather in the streets, as that constituted "a mob of uncontrolled protesters", and warranted a sound roughing up by the coppers.

I don't know IF there's Much GOLD in writing Books? .I would keep Digging at Today's Prices. Nev

Ever heard of the Crusades? Nev

When are You returning? Communal Tractor? I wonder WHO looks after it? Nev

Talking of tractors, we went on a bicycle tour a couple of days ago, the local guide was very informative. Apparently here the water buffalo were traditionally used to work the rice paddles. Now however there's a communal tractor in each area. The locals refer to them as "Chinese buffalo".