Harry Dunn, a 19 year old motorcyclist, died in August when his bike hit a car (that may have been driven by the wife of an American Diplomat) after it pulled out of an exit onto the wrong side of the road.

The Police wanted to question her and she said she wouldn't leave the country, but she then flew back to the USA and Trump has just said that the USA will not waive her Diplomatic Immunity and return her to the UK to be questioned and face possible trial
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-49995867

The speedo/ revcounter display on my FZ6 SA (S1 ABS European model) has been flickering for a while, but now it's almost completely faded out when idling and it flickers at higher speeds.

If I am running eg 70mph, however, the display works almost fine.

I've found a thread on a Turkish site where someone had the same sort of problem and took one apart (see google translate link):

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.motosiklet.net%2Fforum%2Fmt-atolye-teknik-servis%2F172785-motosiklet-kadran-digital-gosterge-km-h-ekran-tamiri.html

The images aren't there, but they are on a different forum's thread here:
https://www.600riders.com/forum/fz6-electrical/57385-s1-fz6-cluster-inside-electronics.html

Aparently the whole thing is glued together and they separated the parts with a Dremel (rotary tool) which  don't really want to do if I don't have to!

Does anyone have any suggestions on a better way to get access or am I just going to have to cut it open?

I've posted this on the FB group, but I thought I'd ask here too...

I'm having major hassles at the moment as I needed to replace the gasket at the bottom of the cat pipe on my FZ6 (2006) and decided I might as well replace the header bolts and studs since they were getting seriously manky.

Unfortunately, despite liberal spraying with Plusgas, tapping with a hammer and wedging two nuts together, I still can't get them to budge.

I went to B&Q and got myself a blow torch and some freeze spray, I've used more Plusgas, I've used the blow torch, I've used the freeze spray, but even with two nuts wedged together, the stud won't shift and I just end up unscrewing both nuts at the same time!

(And, yes, I cleaned the Plusgas off the stud before I put the nuts on!)

I've used a wire brush on a Dremel to clear as much rust off the base of the studs as I can and sprayed on more Plusgas, maybe they'll shift tomorrow...

Question: How long should I apply heat from the blowtorch? I've tried 30 seconds and then a minute, but I'm not sure how much effect it's having.
Anyone got any recommendations for how long I should use the torch without worrying about melting parts?

Paging the Foccer font of all knowledge...!

A bit of a long explanation to start with...

My 3 bed house (built around 1900) didn't have a bathroom when it was constructed.

There was a "back door" between the (central) stairs and the kitchen, leading to an alleyway down the side of the house, but then someone built a utility room (with a new back door) on the back of the house with the wall extending the whole width of the property, including blocking the alleyway.

They then put a wall halfway down the alleyway and a sloping roof down from there to the new back wall of the house (ie the one that goes across from the utility room)

So I have a bathroom which is (internally) about 10' x 4' and the ceiling goes from 7'2" at one end to 5'6" at the other end.

Some tiles fell off the wall by the bath yesterday, so I've decided that I'm going to get rid of the bath, put in a shower cubicle and get it insulated properly, because the walls at either end and along the alleyway wall are all single-skinned with just a layer of fibreboard between them and the tiles, which means it's an absolute fridge in the winter!

The only good thing is that the sloping roof is insulated, because, when we've had snow and the heating has been on in the bathroom, the snow on the roof has not melted.

What I want to do is to get some foam blocks or panels to insulate the outer walls (the inside wall doesn't need it), but I don't know whether this is something I could do myself or whether I'd need to get it done professionally.

Also I'd need to finish the inside surfaces somehow. Can I just paint over them or would there be more to it?

Attached are some pics: Bathroom-1 shows the door in (I bodged a temporary fix where the tiles came off with some clingfilm and gaffer tape!)
Bathroom-2 shows the left wall (as you go in). I want to get rid of the bath, put in a shower cubicle and insulate the left wall and the long wall section behind the bath where the tiles fell off.

Ideally (I think there's enough room under the floorboards and joists) I'd like to get the shower pan sunk into the floor as my girlfriend is 6'1" and can't get under the shower properly at the moment.

Bathroom-3 shows the basin which is on a boxed-out section (I think there is probably a brick pillar behind that) and the loo and right wall.

Given the lack of space around the loo, it may need thinner insulation otherwise there's nowhere to go but given there's sod-all insulation at the moment, anything would be a benefit!

Has anyone used this sort of insulation and could comment?

Currently I have a narrow door on the shed where I store my bike (only just wider than the bars on my FZ6)  which exits at 90 degrees to an alley way which is about the same width as the bike is long.
What I have to do is manoeuvre the bike out through the door and then go back and forth a few times until I can turn it enough to point it down the alleyway and ride out.
When I park, I have to pull up past the door then wheel the bike backwards to get it through the door again. Sometimes I get the line up right, other times I have to move it back and forth until I can get it to go in without getting stuck on the bars or side stand or rear brake lever!

What I want to do is to replace the door with a much wider one, then I can ride the bike in to park it. Obviously to ride the bike out, I'd need to turn it around, so I was thinking of getting a turntable or a "dolly" to make this easier as I can't do the trick where you lean the bike on the side stand and spin it around.
Has anyone used one of these? Can anyone make any recommendations?

For some reason, some images don't seem to be appearing in posts for me.

Even when I've disabled all blockers, NoScript etc, the ones VNA posts in the Brexit thread don't show up.
If I quote the post, I can see the image code is there, but the only way I can actually see the picture is by copying it and pasting it into a new browser tab.
Anyone got any ideas why?

Does anyone know where I can get stainless steel front brake pad slider pins?

I've been looking everywhere (and I can find the caliper mounting bolts) but nobody seem to do the pad pins for the floating caliper. The OEM ones are made from cheese, so I've just rounded one off

I have the FZ6-SA 2006 registration which has some rust on the frame.
I want to clean this up and re-paint it, but the only information I can find on the colours for my bike is that it's Yamaha DNMB (diamond black) and the tank is BS4 (bluish silver)
The tank isn't the same colour as the frame (which is a more silvery silver, without the blue), so can anyone tell me what colour I need to get for this?

As I'm getting a new (17k miles) engine in my FZ6 (65k miles) can anyone tell me if this is liable to cause hassles with insurance renewals?
The insurance is up again literally next week, so I'd like to know the best way to do this to avoid having to pay stupid charges for something being changed...

Yesterday I was in Devon, having a nice surfing and biking break.

I'd been out for a great ride down the A39, then back up the B3254, when I tried to start an overtake and the bike just wasn't giving me any power
I backed off and the engine was still running but when I opened the throttle, it just wouldn't pull.
I stopped, switched off and back on again and when I tried to start it, there was a rattling or clattering sound, so I immediately switched off again and called the RAC.
I had major hassles getting back to the campsite and then getting the bike back to Portsmouth, and then found that Vernon's Motorcycles is closing down in September and isn't taking any more work and Downeys and Bike Moto aren't open until Tuesday
The guy I spoke to at Vernons said (just a guess) that maybe a valve had dropped, but also said that it if it was something more serious, might actually be cheaper to simply buy a replacement engine, rather than pay for the workshop time to strip the current engine and rebuild it!

Still, at least Kudos to the other two bikers who pulled over when they saw me broken down, thanks to them, whoever they are
One other thing, I'd checked the oil a few weeks ago (it was around the top of the scale) and there wasn't any dripping out in my shed or when the bike was standing, but when I checked it after the engine had cooled off a bit, it was right down the bottom of the scale. It was on a bit of a slope and canted over, but I don't think that should have made that much of a difference to the level.

The LCD displays on the clocks of my FZ6 are flickering and I think it's due to dirty/ corroded contacts on the connector plugs that go from the ECU, past the yokes and into the bottom of the instruments.
There is a plug (see image) that I want to disconnect to clean the contacts, but it seems to have *three* clips, one on the top and one on each side.
This makes it impossible to get apart (at least as far as I have managed!)
I tried wedging thin screwdrivers down each side to separate the clips , then using another to undo the clip on the tip, but it won't budge.
Am I doing something wrong or is it just a total bugger??

She suggested that we make a sex video, and all I did was suggest we should hold auditions for her part.