Meldrew wrote:At any bikers café or meeting I've noticed they can't just get on their bikes and ride away...

I thought you never darkened the door of such establishments? Have the Harley lot taken to turning up at Betty's now??

The Silver Wing is second on my shopping list, a new Burgman 400 is top, if I can get one for £5k.

Loud pipes have saved my neck a few times .and my wife always new when to put the kettle on due to the dog hearing me leave work a few miles away "bonus". The tractors round here make more noise than open piped HD`s as do the "BOOM BOOM" stereos in the youngsters cars ,then there`s the rattling Ducati engines . Imho these newer bikes are just too quite and you dont normally here them until they are upon you especially if your in a tin top . Meldrew i agree totally 2 strokes "ring a ding ding " is joy to my ears and i often get my fix at an MZ race meeting .

Meldrew wrote:It was nice of you to refer to me on another forum as "a chap who used to tour Europe on a Helix in the mid-90’s". Not quite true, it was 1997 to 2004

My apologies. I should have said I bought the screen from a miserable old sod who gets banned from forums for his constant moaning and negativity. That would have been more accurate

Meldrew wrote:So if it's OK with you I'll carry on, and you can keep on pretending you're Ed Otto!

Ed Otto's bike was a Helix, I ride a Fusion. Hey, I can do pedantry too!

In any event, you seem to have missed my original point, which was this: if you never go to greasy spoons, how do you know what Harley riders do or don't do with their noisy exhausts? Anyone would think you were just having a moan for the sake of it.

Come on guys - FB08 asked for some advice on a Burgman. - play nice, or play outside!

Meldrew wrote:You were Black Sheep Radical on here until you slunk off ... never to return

Half right. I stopped posting here because I felt the forum was going down the nick. By the time I decided to give it another go I'd lost access to the email addy my account was registered to, hence the new name.

In my quest to find a Honda SH 125 manual a google link took me to a Thai Visa forum where there was another moaning Meldrew with same avatare hows that for a coincidence

Jaz is the UK version of Ed Otto

a 650 Burgman will give you grin factor if your nor to bothered about fuel comsuption,
400 Burgman will give even more storage with more milage less grunt and power but more miles