wrsni

There's a small area on the borders of our land which I've an interest in trying to buy. Maybe not even half an acre, certainly no more, totally land locked for present owner as it borders a main railway line and the crossing that served it was blocked off some time ago. We could access it under the railway by traveling about 30ft up a stream which borders both it and our own woodland. It was planted with willow over thirty years ago and has never been touched in any way shape or form so height wise they are huge but from what I can see also quite well spaced. How would you approach such an area? Coppice the willow and leave it at that, coppice them and maybe intersperse with something else, or remove the willow altogether and put something more worthwhile in, it's lowland with deep loam so capable of growing just about anything you fancy.

Everybody is being so diplomatic and polite, is it the calm before the storm, christmas goodwill to all men, or does somebody just need to grow a pair and give the man their opinion!

Well for me Christmas means something a bit different. There's a local charity radio station which runs for 4 weeks every year ending on the afternoon of Christmas eve which means it kicks off this Thursday. Last year we raised £60,000 for third world charities and since it's inception it's raised over a million pounds. I do the sound desk on it in the evening and my first shift is this Saturday from 8.30pm till midnight. Then it's pretty much every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evening from now till Christmas, probably be a few others to fill in as well as I'm on the "emergency" rota too. So by the time Christmas day comes I'm well ready for a rest and some peace and quiet but sort of content as well. Radio Cracker

Sure the most of the buggers are that brazen now they'll just use a Stihl saw or set of burners anyway! Our place is NEVER unattended, 24hrs every day. On the rare occasion that the whole family have to be somewhere I've a few mates from Belfast that I arrange it with and some of them come up and house sit. Bit extreme maybe but so far it has worked.

All sounds good, and presumably the brakes are AJP! Engine?

In many respects the XR is better. Do you think people will be scouring the country high and low in 20 years time looking for CRF's?. Whereas the XR's and XL's will still be thumping about. What sort of suspension of the AJP, it certainly looks the part.

Were the Chinese making stoves 25 years ago? Is it not possible like so many other things that what would have been seen as "bargain basement" 25 years ago would now be "premium quality". The fact that it's still working as well as the day it was bought should yet again tell you something about it!

When we fitted the Burley a year ago we were told by all and sundry that a flue liner would be essential but nobody could give me a decent reason why other than the normal "well you just have to" type answer. So once I'd figured that I could fit the liner ok anyway after the stove was in, I decided to give it a go without one and there has been no problems whatsoever. Chimney draws well, is staying clean, I've been checking the top of the stove for deposits or tar running down and there's nothing. The really strange thing is that the chimney breast gets warmer with the stove than with the open fire which probably explains why it's working so well but I thought it should be cooler. Now I'm not suggesting for one second that no one needs a flue liner, there are many scenarios described above where it's probably essentially. But by the same token it's obviously not necessary everywhere and the problem seems to be as usual that while there is no scarcity of regulation and "approved experts" there is a serious lack of people with the honesty and knowledge to look at a particular situation and judge it properly. In this case however, the fact that it's run for nearly 25 years with no trouble should tell you something.

Wee unexpected trip to A&E this spring thanks to one of my Maico moto-x bikes.

That's a very clever post, makes an excellent point!

I love air-cooled dirt bikes, sadly too few of them available new. I know I'm unashamedly old school but I like my dirt bikes as minimalist as possible. If you're not pushing the limits of hp, which few are off-road, you don't need water-cooling, which then means you don't need a fan, which then means you don't need a bigger battery, bigger alternator, reg/rec, extra handlebar switches, more wiring which there's no room for, never naming all the extra piping, radiators, etc for the cooling itself. I had high hopes for the CRF230 but then Honda went and built it out of crap and just ruined the whole principle behind it, be interesting to see how yours does.

Like the earlier Fords the IH engines could get a bit blowey, unlike the Fords however it was relatively easy cured with a set of pistons and liners. Over the years I've had several 574's and 674's, brilliant tractors and just as relevant today as they ever were. Well worth looking after, I still have a 454 sitting about and don't think I'll ever part with it.

Perkins engine or IH engine?

Billy Connolly said that you knew when someone was proper stinking rich when it took longer to drive from the entrance gates to the house than it took to drive there in the first place!

In short, yes! To clarify, whether or not this applies to garden/horticulture machinery oils I can't say, but it certainly applies to motorcycle, quad, snowmobile. Certain oils that are available here are not over there and vice versa, some companies that are big players in the UK and Europe pretty much give the U.S. a miss. A lot of the manufacturers own branded products seem to play a much greater part in the market over there than they do here, for example, the "Yamalube" range I don't know if you can even get in Europe, certainly never seen any, yet it is widely used and very well regarded in the States at all levels. In the past you could see the GP team running in the States with Yamalube branding on the bikes and then it being removed for European races. Don't know if this is due to regulation, trade agreements, market preferences or whatever, maybe a bit of all of them, but the two oil markets are very, very, different as far as I am aware. Someone else may be well aware exactly how this would translate to the chainsaw market.

I was able to do a full lap of our kart track on a bicycle propelled by one!

Sounds like a typical VW, god alone knows how their cars ever gained the reputation for reliability they seem to have. Must hark back to the Beetle. As covered elsewhere, the running costs of something with a high towing capacity used as a "runabout" will be shocking. With a careful use of your available budget you could very easily be much better off with a vehicle for each job.

Try your query here. Tends to be a bit intolerant of non-professionals but some on it that are extremely knowledgeable of this stuff and will help if possible. Also a bit of a niche profession so don't give up if you have to wait a while for a reply.

That Redline is crazy money for a 2 stroke oil, especially to put in a chainsaw. It's about the same price as XR77 which is FIM approved for GP racing, and that process doesn't come cheap! You'll get one of the best full synthetic two stroke oils available, Castrol TTS or 2T racing, for roughly half. No experience of Aspen but on the face of it rather than spend that sort of money on oil to mix with shitty fuel, why no spend the money on a better fuel? Out of interest, my young fella is at Whilton Mill today testing for the BUKC, must ask what oil they're running in the karts.

There is no definitive answer to that, ....................no matter what others say!

Damn right, every high performance 2 stroke engine the world over will explode in seconds without it. Apparently!

Aye that would be OK. I'd probably have spread them out a bit more if I hadn't known so I'll pay heed to that. As ever I'll probably end up being limited to some degree by what I can get over here or get sent over here although the young fella is at Myerscough and might be able to bring something back at Christmas. Finally, are they best planted as just the standard 60-90 bare-rooted whips or what?

Doubtful, but nonetheless I'm thinking that's the way to go.

Silkolene is shite man, wouldn't have it about the place. Only popular because it's easy to get wholesale and has a massive retail mark up. OK, I'm not going to run down your Redline, no personal experience of it but don't doubt that it's probably very good. My beef is the claim that it's not only the best out there but by a considerable margin. For myself I'd put Castrol two stroke oils up against anything in any conditions. I know people who've run GP bikes on them at all levels, who've won TT's and Manx GP's running it and are now running it again in Classic TT's. People who've spent a **** load of money rebuilding an old 2-stroke just for classic runs and are quite happy to trust it to Castrol. Know a guy who flys microlites, everyone in the club he's in uses Castrol and wouldn't even consider anything else. Somebody comes over from the continent however and chances are he'll be using Valvoline and will just have as much faith in it as we do in the Castrol, and he's probably not wrong. Americans love their Bel-Ray and Yamalube. The Italians, who know a thing or six about high performance two strokes in both karts and minibikes are big in to Bardahl and Wladoil. One renown Italian two stroke engine builder who I knew well was so convinced by the merits of Wladoil "R" that he sent me a case of it to use convinced that I'd never ever use anything else. It's still sitting unopened! And I've never even mentioned Shell, Putoline, Morris, or Motorex, all of whom have their followers and who are quite prepared to trust their machinery and in some cases their lives to the oil. It's a big claim to back up that all of us are wrong!