I am such an IDIOT!

I cant tell the wife, and cant post on the bike forum... but I have a confession.

Today I sold an off road bike for £600, except I got to the guys house and despite it starting lovely, it kept bogging out when trying to pull away.

Much scratching of head...spark - yes it ticks over. Compression, yes - its a bitch to kick its that good. Fuel..hmmm, must be a blocked jet/valves tight/carb issues...??? No way I can fix there - no tools.

Having driven TWO hours to drop it off, TWO hours home - I was starring down the barrel of loosing £40 in fuel....

So I said to the bloke, make me an offer.

We haggled, £100 knocked off.

I'm happy-ish, he is happy-ish.

Just got a text.

the F*&KING fuel tank was empty.



Thankfully I can see the funny side.

So remember - don't over think stuff, sometimes its as simple as it seems

D'oh... Don't you just hate it when that happens

Only £95 if you'd put a fiver in for him!

[Edited on 1/4/11 by McLannahan]

quote:

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Originally posted by McLannahan
Only £95 if you'd put a fiver in for him!

[Edited on 1/4/11 by McLannahan]

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Not a belated april fool ?

It's amazing the simple things that don't get checked. Reminds me of a story I was once told by a passenger.

The scientific bods were testing out a new piece of kit, plug it in switch it on and nothing.
So they strip it, rebuild it and try again. Nothing
So they repeat the above process. Still nothing.
Turns out the top brains at Rolls-Royce neglected to check it was switched on at the plug.

if it makes you feel better.....
I once owned a 180sx. I started developing troubles with the turbo, mostly in higher gears, 4th and 5th, but basically kept cutting out on boost. Started happening in the lower gears as well.
So anyway, sounded like a turbo gasket so started the arduous feat of taking the turbo off the car and checking it out.
Anyway, a few days later and a lot of cut knuckles, found no problem and put it all back together with new gaskets.
Took it out for a spin, seemed to be ok, but then started cutting out again.

So took it back home and started looking again. It was only then i realise a very very faint light on my dash.
It was indeed the fuel light.
So down the garage, £10 in, car runs like a dream!

Most stupid mistake i ever made on a car!!

Damn-
I recently bought a greenlaning bike from a bloke locally
No haggling to be had, he started the bike after a few good kicks, telling me it requires a knack and I'll get used to it

paid his asking price and he rode the DR250 to mine to save me the hassle of trying to organise insurance over the phone there and then

It took some kicking over to get it going sometimes I felt I didn't have enough body weight to get it spinning, but I managed to ride it to work and back over the course of a week growing some pretty impressive right leg muscle tone along the way, engine was making a bit of a rattle and I put it down the the fact the guy probably hadn't adjusted the valves and did it the following weekend, which didn't make any difference to the noises, didn't really occur to me that it was damned strange the clearances had opened up, rather than tightened and put the slightly erratic idle down to the rusty tank, so stripped and cleaned the carbs and fitted an inline filter, which again didn't settle things a lot or do much for the hard starting

Only found out via a group I got hooked up with a few weeks later on my first greenlaning outing that he'd sheared the dry sump's oil line on its last outing and the engine had siezed before he knew it had dropped all its oil !
they had towed him to get the oil line repaired and get it re filled with oil and assisted getting it de siezed- they were all pretty miffed the guy I bought it from had neglected to tell me this or put it in his advert

opened the engine up after learning it had run without oil to the point it locked up as I was paranoid it would strand me a long and muddy push from home the next time I took it out





















The engine's top end had modified itself to a long duration low lift and randomly variable valve timing version with oval pistons.....racey...and explained some of the bikes noises and reluctance to start

The good news is I found another engine with a "good top end" and spent a further couple of hundred on gaskets and parts....and now have a bike that now sounds OK and starts a LOT easier without requiring as much weight behind it now (which counts for a lot when its a kicker only and your knee deep in mud and so knackared you can barely stand up!)


Pointless getting in contact with the seller- not as if he'd fess up and compensate
Swings and roundabouts - Caveat Emptor and all that jazz
(just let me know next time your selling a bike....I MUST be due some good karma)


Regards
Rob

Ooops!

If the bloke was decent, he would have let you have at least some of the cash back! Seems a bit mean to send you a text to let you know you fluffed up! If he had said nothing at least you wouldn't feel such a wally.

Know what you mean about simple things though, on my recent 'first start' of the 442, I was fannying around for a while trying to figure out why the engine wouldn't at least run for a couple of minutes without coughing and popping all the time. Spark was good, messed with the dizzy but timing bang-on as near as. Problem was, I just ran it on a funnel full of fuel connected to a pipe into the carb, I thought that it would be enough for a couple for minutes run and if anything went wrong there wasn't 1/2 a tank of fuel to worry about. I didn't think that it would use the whole lot just to fill up the float chamber so as soon as it started there was none left to back it up.

As soon as I put more in it fired straight up. As you say, don't over analyse

This one by any chance? - although it looks more like 500lb to me


[Edited on 2-4-11 by RazMan]

quote:

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Originally posted by RazMan
This one by any chance? - although it looks more like 500lb to me


[Edited on 2-4-11 by RazMan]

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I bet that's not what he really meant when he said he wanted a big c0ck