Chris Sheppard

Had another three inch or so fall here last night, but on top of the frozen remnants from before so our lane's a bit bad. Just had to help next door extract their car off their drive, which is tight enough in the dry.

Do it, you know you want to Looks like the little DR's suffered a bit more than I hoped Whipped rocker cover off and everything at first glance looked as it should, til I knocked the inlet valve springs and they moved. Had snapped valve off a bit below the collet. Hoping it wouldnt be too bad once got the head off, could see where it had hit the piston, but nothing really terrible......... Then spotted the two little bits of broken off Ali stuck to the head near the valve. Tapped the valve down a bit to find the valve guide missing half of it. Reckon when the piston hit the valve it's pushed it hard enough against the guide to snap it Going to see if can get the other engine up and running this aft and see what happens.

Cheers guys That one in west yorkshire looks really quite nice but I reckon there must be something not quite right as it's been on there a week or so now and still not gone. Had a disastrous afternoon. Decided to take DR out for a blat and on the way home it developed a fairly loud rattle that didn't sound like tappets (even with the tappets set where they should be it's still tappety) and almost a bit down on power - very quickly followed by a bang 4 mile push home - was dark by the time got in so abandoned it in the garage til the morning but have my suspicions the timing chain let go

Good stuff, sounds like it wouldn't be a bad thing to have. I'd alway ridden small 2 strokes in the past so it mightn't feel too much of a change. Whilst have had a few days quiet I might have made a slightly daft desicion that I'm putting down to having a bit of spare time to sit and think . The roughly bike shape pile of bits I bought to use as spares for the little DR turns out to be a bona fide DR 125 (not an "S" or "SE") so was the more off road oriented one with ali wheels, ali swing arm (very RM styled) no pillion pegs (or mounts for them), slightly longer wheelbase and bit better suspension - looks to be a bit of a rarity over here. Quite fancy putting it back together as apparently it was a runner and I've got a logbook for it too. Only missing a few small bits (front brake, side panels and silencer are main bits) and it doesn't seem in bad fettle.

Good call, best place to be wheen snowed off from work How'd you find the 250 Geoff? Have heard they can be a pig to restart if they conk under load. Hopefully going to get a look at a mid 80's one for Vinduro I've a hankering for a 600 but reckon it'd be a bit much to wrestle round the sort of courses we get out this way.

Yep, done and dusted in 2-3 days if not getting any firewood out I reckon. Week, maybe just into second week if pulling out firewood too. I'd go for several smaller fires, felling as many tops onto fire heap as could so as to avoid a bit of double handling. Smaller fires will mean tractor can just keep loading rather than having to wait for big fire to drop a bit before loading next few grabs. Spend a bit of time getting fires really hot and going well then load load load

Serves me right for not reading it properly

I spoke to Richard at Fuelwood at the APF about the japa 100 as they didn't have one on the stand. He'd said that Japa had redesigned it a fair bit and it made it more expensive so he couldn't see it being as popular. I've not seen a new one but it must be some fair amount of changes from the old one to be so much dearer now.

What you have to consider though is whilst you may be a good climber, are you, after a year, going to be fast enough to make up the extra money? For instance, if he can get someone in at £100 say but they can get the same job done in less cuts and making them a lot quicker then it all evens out a bit. I'm not saying you are slow, just factoring in something you mightn't have thought of. Have to see it from both sides.

We're not that bad here but up on the tops between here and Driffield yesterday was pretty deep. Came across 4 or 5 cars in various states of stuck that needed moving before I could get through. Surely people should realise that once they are having to push it with their bumper they aren't going to go much further!? Ours was the nice grippy snow (except where it had fallen on top of the heavily compacted stuff closer to civilisation) - had to go through some decent sized drifts in the 90 and somewhow kept on going

Chances are you'll get a grown up come along with the proper answer shortly but my understanding is that it is to partly stop any hot bits of carbon from being ejected onto dry tinder in hotter countries and partly something to do with emmisions. I can't see any bad coming from removing it as it's a restriction in the exhaust so surely can only be reducing the potential power.

snowing here again now

Really enjoyed that - a very talented man who can think outside the box

We've been fairly fortunate up until one site just before Christmas. The timber was on a road that saw very little traffic as it only went from the village (a tiny one at that) up to an estate farm and may as well have been a private road. There was just shy of an 8 wheeler load, but enough to warrant sending a wagon in for. Customer rolled up with the wagon to collect to find about 3T or so gone (he knew what was there as he'd forwarded it out from where wed left it). Fortunately thye'd come out with a smaller wagon and managed to make up a load, but that's not the point. Chances are there'l be someone down in the village thinking theve done well out of it, not giving thought to what it cost to get it there in the first place.

Fairly coldd here tody but not snowing any more. Fair bit hawed yesterday but whats lefts froen hard. Frustrating as can't crack on with the work thats to do, had a workshop day yesterday so mean i've got to grout the kitchen today

I've seen one just the same as yours for sale on ebay.......

Most agricultural stores or fencing suppliers should have or be able to get you 4" machine round tanalised poles easy enough - most of the time you need to let them dry for a few months before they are ready to prepare for painting. Cheapest is to buy by the full pack direct from the docks in Hull but that's something like 100 poles at a time. It might have all changed but BSJA used to send you out a set of plans for about £10. Those in the last pic were based on the BSJA ones but slightly smaller and using more conventional sizes of timber (the BSJA ones from memory used 4x2 1/2 and 3 x 1 1/2 - odd sizes to get hold of easily anyway) Depends on who your target market is as to what's best to start making - The standard wings and basic fillers were always good sellers but the practice stands went out in most volume. I've not been up to the farm for a year or two but think I might still have all my old templates for wings, practice stands, possibly some fillers, some XC fences and definitely the sheep and Pig fillers - if it's something you fancy trying they'd save you a fair bit of hard work. Should also be the racks I made up for painting poles on too and maybe a few other odds and sods.

Palax do/did one - don't know the model number off hand though. Several years ago I looked at both the japa and the HP but went for the HP eagle as it felt the right way round for me (this was when they were just a mirror image of each other) Mine was a slightly different design on the slitter compared to the new ones but hardly noticable. I really liked mine. Sold it to buy a processor and whilst the processor was good on the right stuff, I wished I'd hung on to the eagle.

A few pics off the old computer. I never got into doing static fences but found the portable cross country ones were quite good as quite often you could hire them out for an event and usually sell them straight off the course to deliver on the way home. About half of the ones in the paddock at Askham Bryan are some of the first I did - probably about 2005/2006 and they seem to have stood the test of time fairly well What used to be a good seller on the showjumps was the mini wings - looked like a normal set but scaled down to about 3ft tall and with 8ft poles and fillers.

Can see where you're coming from I can only go on what I was told at the time - thankfully that was a several years ago now an I don't get involved with them anymore

Probably going to be Bishop Burton I'd guess.

Supposedly, she's all Siberian Husky but I think she's too stocky to be. I reckon there's some malamute in there somewhere.

You'd be surprised just how heavy some of the tanalised softwood poles can be if they've been done fairly green too. Cup design is more important IME