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There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them - but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous. Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack - and even there, they will scare the whimpering poo poo out of you... There is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need. When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot drat," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away." "Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers." The Cafe Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5000-foot straightaway is one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess-turn is quite another. But we like it. A thoroughbred Cafe Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew. Cafe Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality, a peculiar mix of low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening commitment to the Cafe Life and all its dangerous pleasures... I am a Cafe Racer myself, on some days - and it is one of my finest addictions. I am not without scars on my brain and my body, but I can live with them. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a picture of a Vincent Black Shadow, or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple... I have visions of compound femur-fractures and large black men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called "Bess" sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill. Ho, ho. Thank God for these flashbacks. The brain is such a wonderful instrument (until God sinks his teeth into it). Some people hear Tiny Tim singing when they go under, and some others hear the song of the Sausage Creature. When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the polo crowd. The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it. Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph cafe-racer. And include some license plates, he'll think it's a streetbike. He's queer for anything fast. Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler and my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Cafe Racer. Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba.... So when I got back from New York and found a fiery red rocket-style bike in my garage, I realized I was back in the road-testing business. The brand-new Ducati 900 Campione del Mundo Desmodue Supersport double-barreled magnum Cafe Racer filled me with feelings of lust every time I looked at it. Others felt the same way. My garage quickly became a magnet for drooling superbike groupies. They quarreled and bitched at each other about who would be the first to help me evaluate my new toy... And I did, of course, need a certain spectrum of opinions, besides my own, to properly judge this motorcycle. The Woody Creek Perverse Environmental Testing Facility is a long way from Daytona or even top-fuel challenge-sprints on the Pacific Coast Highway, where teams of big-bore Kawasakis and Yamahas are said to race head-on against each other in death-defying games of "chicken" at 100 miles an hour.... No. Not everybody who buys a high-dollar torque-brute yearns to go out in a ball of fire on a public street in L.A. Some of us are decent people who want to stay out of the emergency room, but still blast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it... For that we need Fine Machinery. Which we had - no doubt about that. The Ducati people in New Jersey had opted, for some reasons of their own, to send me the 900ss-sp for testing - rather than their 916 crazy-fast, state-of-the-art superbike track-racer. It was far too fast, they said - and prohibitively expensive - to farm out for testing to a gang of half-mad Colorado cowboys who think they're world-class Cafe Racers. The Ducati 900 is a finely engineered machine. My neighbors called it beautiful and admired its racing lines. The nasty little bugger looked like it was going 90 miles an hour when it was standing still in my garage. Taking it on the road, though, was a genuinely terrifying experience. I had no sense of speed until I was going 90 and coming up fast on a bunch of pickup trucks going into a wet curve along the river. I went for both brakes, but only the front one worked, and I almost went end over end. I was out of control staring at the tailpipe of a U.S. Mail truck, still stabbing frantically at my rear brake pedal, which I just couldn't find... I am too tall for these new-age roadracers; they are not built for any rider taller than five-nine, and the rearset brake pedal was not where I thought it would be. Mid-size Italian pimps who like to race from one cafe to another on the boulevards of Rome in a flat-line prone position might like this, but I do not. I was hunched over the tank like a person diving into a pool that got emptied yesterday. Whacko! Bashed on the concrete bottom, flesh ripped off, a Sausage Creature with no teeth, hosed-up for the rest of its life. We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time - and there is always Pain in that... But there is also Fun, the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant take-off, no screeching or squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on our tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear. No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill. On my first take-off, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4000 rpm.... And that's when it got its second wind. From 4000 to 6000 in third will take you from 75 mph to 95 in two seconds - and after that, Bubba, you still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho. I never got to sixth gear, and I didn't get deep into fifth. This is a shameful admission for a full-bore Cafe Racer, but let me tell you something, old sport: This motorcycle is simply too goddamn fast to ride at speed in any kind of normal road traffic unless you're ready to go straight down the centerline with your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat. When aimed in the right direction at high speed, though, it has unnatural capabilities. This I unwittingly discovered as I made my approach to a sharp turn across some railroad tracks, saw that I was going way too fast and that my only chance was to veer right and screw it on totally, in a desperate attempt to leapfrog the curve by going airborne. It was a bold and reckless move, but it was necessary. And it worked: I felt like Evel Knievel as I soared across the tracks with the rain in my eyes and my jaws clamped together in fear. I tried to spit down on the tracks as I passed them, but my mouth was too dry... I landed hard on the edge of the road and lost my grip for a moment as the Ducati began fishtailing crazily into oncoming traffic. For two or three seconds I came face to face with the Sausage Creature.... But somehow the brute straightened out. I passed a schoolbus on the right and got the bike under control long enough to gear down and pull off into an abandoned gravel driveway where I stopped and turned off the engine. My hands had seized up like claws and the rest of my body was numb. I felt nauseous and I cried for my mama, but nobody heard, then I went into a trance for 30 or 40 seconds until I was finally able to light a cigarette and calm down enough to ride home. I was too hysterical to shift gears, so I went the whole way in first at 40 miles an hour. Whoops! What am I saying? Tall stories, ho, ho... We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We poo poo on the chests of the Weird.... But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles. The emergence of the superbike has heightened this equation drastically. Motorcycle technology has made such a great leap forward. Take the Ducati. You want optimum cruising speed on this bugger? Try 90mph in fifth at 5500 rpm - and just then, you see a bull moose in the middle of the road. WHACKO. Meet the Sausage Creature. Or maybe not: The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and balanced and torqued that you *can* do 90 mph in fifth through a 35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast - it is *extremely* quick and responsive, and it *will* do amazing things... It is like riding a Vincent Black Shadow, which would outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the take-off runway, but at the end, the F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes again. There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old Vincents and the new breed of superbikes. If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet in Dallas that went sideways and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time. It was impossible. But so was my terrifying sideways leap across the railroad tracks on the 900sp. The bike did it easily with the grace of a fleeing tomcat. The landing was so easy I remember thinking, goddamnit, if I had screwed it on a little more I could have gone a lot farther. Maybe this is the new Cafe Racer macho. My bike is so much faster than yours that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you have the balls to ride this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE? That is the attitude of the new-age superbike freak, and I am one of them. On some days they are about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than a superbike will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow more than once, but a fool can ride a Ducati 900 many times, and it will always be a bloodcurdling kind of fun. That is the Curse of Speed which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME." This is a chat thread to discuss the Motor Industry Development Plan and the man, the myth, the legend: JOHN MF BUTTON (unrelated but i hope nobody minds my repeated sniping of the chat threads)
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Jul 31, 2021 15:00
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Wow. What an opening.
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Jul 31, 2021 15:16
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first post
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Jul 31, 2021 15:16
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bird with big dick posted:first post  3 slow 4 furious
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Jul 31, 2021 15:27
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I saw a cool Cafe Racer the other day but missed taking photos. It sounded really really cool taking off in the rush hour traffic I assumed he hated. Not that type but I have a big horn for Grandads restoration. He took Grandma for rides back in the day with this:  
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Jul 31, 2021 15:29
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lagidnam posted:24 hours of Spa just started:
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Jul 31, 2021 15:48
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Typical Ferrari driver spins out and then re-enters in front of traffic
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Jul 31, 2021 16:05
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HST forever.me posted:On my tombstone they will carve, IT NEVER GOT ECONOBOX ENOUGH FOR ME. I was a slave to those small engines, those dizzying peaky horsepower numbers lower than the fuel economy sticker, those Macpherson Struts. I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it. But mopeds? That was a bridge too far, or so I thought.
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Jul 31, 2021 16:41
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Hunter S. Thompson is never inappropriate to post. gg, op Edit: This could be a game changer: https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-time-crystal-built-using-googles-quantum-computer-20210730/ meatpimp fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jul 31, 2021 |
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Jul 31, 2021 16:42
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EVERYWHERE 
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Jebus, walked away from TV for a moment and now its torrential rain! Everybody spin! Humphreys fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Jul 31, 2021 |
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Jul 31, 2021 16:56
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Ok it is august which means I have two months to put the Poncho together for the Duct Tape Drags in Tucson. I mean that is just one major system per weekend right? 
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Jul 31, 2021 19:02
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Who can identify what this (I assume) hood ornament is from? I found it on a site years ago kinda just buried in some dirt near the surface and took it back to the shop with me. I'm in Canada, so it would be something sold at least in Canada, if not North America. Back in the old days, some times Canada got its own models of cars. Certain Mercurys, Pontiacs etc... Its metal, fairly heavy and magnets kinda stick to it. By "kinda" I mean that using some fairly strong magnets, they stick to it, but compared to the side of the filing cabinet these things are stuck to, they only stick to this piece weakly. At the very bottom of this piece there is a number: 1801 https://imgur.com/a/O1zx0Z7 For scale, the piece below the ornament is 8 inches long.     
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Jul 31, 2021 22:21
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Looks like a side mirror. Late 50s Mopar?
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Jul 31, 2021 23:20
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SNiPER_Magnum posted:Looks like a side mirror. Late 50s Mopar? Oh poo poo! Maybe a side mirror mount? Goons? It's not important that I know, but I'm rather curious having had this thing around for a while now.
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Jul 31, 2021 23:28
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I typed "50's american car side mirror" into google image search and this was the third result. Sadly just a stock image and no info. https://www.agefotostock.com/age/en/details-photo/side-mirror-on-a-bright-red-classic-american-car-from-the-1950s-havana-cuba/X3N-3453557
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Jul 31, 2021 23:36
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SNiPER_Magnum posted:Looks like a side mirror. Late 50s Mopar? Bingo. 57-59 Chrysler side mirror: https://www.ebay.com/itm/233580658666
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Jul 31, 2021 23:39
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big dong wanter posted:
As long as you make OP's worthwhile (like this month), knock yourself out.
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Aug 1, 2021 00:02
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Deteriorata posted:Bingo. 57-59 Chrysler side mirror: https://www.ebay.com/itm/233580658666 Hey!!! Look at that! In the one photo, you can even see the number on the bottom. Thanks goons, curiosity abated.
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Aug 1, 2021 00:15
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meatpimp posted:Hunter S. Thompson is never inappropriate to post. gg, op Can’t help but feel “science invents a new phase of matter that evades the laws of thermodynamics” is something that gets explained in the opening scenes of a post apocalyptic sci-fi film where we’ve horribly broken the universe.
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Aug 1, 2021 00:18
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What a wonderful opening to chat thread.
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Aug 1, 2021 00:36
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BuckyDoneGun posted:Can’t help but feel “science invents a new phase of matter that evades the laws of thermodynamics” is something that gets explained in the opening scenes of a post apocalyptic sci-fi film where we’ve horribly broken the universe. I'm interested, but also kind of hoping this is like the experiment a number of years back where scientists thought they broke the speed of light but it turned out their clocks were just wrong, because that doesn't fundamentally break the universe.
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Aug 1, 2021 00:47
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Well I am absolutely exhausted, but I had a great day. It's been an incredibly long week at work and preparing for my daughter's birthday party today. I did a pork shoulder and brisket flat on the smoker to feed all my guests. It was really nice to see my family again. I don't think I've seen my grandmother since the beginning of the pandemic and I've seen the rest of my family maybe twice since then. Really glad I got a family bbq in before we have to hole up in our homes and go back into lockdown again.     Sorry no pics of the pork shoulder.
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Aug 1, 2021 02:19
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drat that brisket looks great. What was your cook time on it?
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Aug 1, 2021 02:24
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Food poisoning is no loving fun. In the last 12hrs I’ve blasted 3kg of weight out of either my arse or my mouth. Feel like absolute death now
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Aug 1, 2021 04:29
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Ferremit posted:Food poisoning is no loving fun. In the last 12hrs I’ve blasted 3kg of weight out of either my arse or my mouth. Feel like absolute death now And yet you found the strength to share. The true posters spirit.
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Aug 1, 2021 04:31
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Ferremit posted:Food poisoning is no loving fun. In the last 12hrs I’ve blasted 3kg of weight out of either my arse or my mouth. Feel like absolute death now Only good thing about the last time I had food poisoning was I was at a conference in San Fran so it was someone else’s problem to clean up.
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Aug 1, 2021 04:35
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It's ok, making GBS threads on the sidewalk is culturally acceptable here.
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Aug 1, 2021 04:45
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Ferremit posted:Food poisoning is no loving fun. In the last 12hrs I’ve blasted 3kg of weight out of either my arse or my mouth. Feel like absolute death now Blu cheese got me last time. How do you tell when blue cheese goes bad? It’s already got mold in it. One way I’ve learned is to eat it and regret later. Very cleansing though! Speaking of making GBS threads oneself, I’ve done a thing. 
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Aug 1, 2021 05:32
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I’m posting this in July, this thread is early  Woke up this morning to messages from the in-laws about the apartment building across from their house burning. Just got a follow-up: two people dead and they’re saying it was arson. Hopefully one of the dead is the arsonist but that’s asking a lot. https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2021/07/31/2-dead-after-eagle-river-apartment-fire-police-say/ quote:Two people are dead following a fire in an apartment complex early Saturday morning in Eagle River, Anchorage police said.
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Aug 1, 2021 08:03
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Op is good but makes me sad I just had to blow all the money I'd saved for a motorbike on repairing my wife's car. Ah well, guess my life expectancy went up a little at least.
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Aug 1, 2021 11:28
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cakesmith handyman posted:Op is good but makes me sad I just had to blow all the money I'd saved for a motorbike on repairing my wife's car. Ah well, guess my life expectancy went up a little at least. you could always take out a loan on a fast ducati, you dont have to pay it back if you are splattered on the front of a peterbilt
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Aug 1, 2021 12:01
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tuna posted:drat that brisket looks great. What was your cook time on it? 13h including crutch but a 7h hold in the cambro. It never fell below 160ish so I'm actually pretty impressed with my cooler. I did have to unwrap it and pop it back in the oven before the party to crisp up the bark though.  StormDrain posted:And yet you found the strength to share. The true posters spirit. I mean what else are you gonna do when you're glued to the toilet for 12h?
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Aug 1, 2021 13:49
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Made a nice picanha today from the 1/4 beef we bought a couple of months ago, and some bacon-wrapped peppers from the garden.   It’s nice having actual time off to do things with the family. Imperador do Brasil fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Aug 1, 2021 |
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Aug 1, 2021 17:42
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I have lost an easy way to source tires for a lot of my Kei imports. I could get a couple of different brands on Amazon or Walmart (12” radial all season tires, NOT trailer tires) for $200 a set but they are now either removed or showing OOS. I was pleased with ride and quality amongst them all. I snagged 2 sets on Walmart and they shipped one but now that brand is also OOS. I can run cheap and plentiful 13” on most but then my problem is wheels - no good way to search or can only find new sets on eBay for $300. I will try to hit closest pull-a-part soon but it’s 90 mile drive and not sure how plentiful small rims will be. I CAN get Japanese made tires in the $400 a set range as shipping g is so high right now, didn’t know how good I had it getting $160 sets off Amazon. Main question is am I looking wrong searching online for 13” wheels? Or is it really my best option to troll the pull-a-part?
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Aug 1, 2021 18:56
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everdave posted:I have lost an easy way to source tires for a lot of my Kei imports. I could get a couple of different brands on Amazon or Walmart (12” radial all season tires, NOT trailer tires) for $200 a set but they are now either removed or showing OOS. I was pleased with ride and quality amongst them all. I snagged 2 sets on Walmart and they shipped one but now that brand is also OOS. I doubt a breaker is going to have much in the way of 13" tires that will be any better than what you're getting off the boat. Tires are in short supply as another covid side effect, and oddball sizes are going to take the longest to recover... and 13" is a damned oddball size in the current car world. If it were me, I'd adjust my prices to the "new normal" and pay $500/set to get them from Japan while I could.
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Aug 1, 2021 19:42
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meatpimp posted:I doubt a breaker is going to have much in the way of 13" tires that will be any better than what you're getting off the boat. I’m starting to think the same thing…might buy the last few Japanese sets I can source here in the $450 total range and be good for a bit
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Aug 1, 2021 19:50
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A 15 minute sink sprayer replacement turned into a 4 hour ordeal today. So that's fun.
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Aug 1, 2021 19:59
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everdave posted:I’m starting to think the same thing…might buy the last few Japanese sets I can source here in the $450 total range and be good for a bit Just as a data point, here's the Amazon price history of a tire I bought for $56 each in March of last year. $83 now, and has spiked much higher. Is this the peak, or not? Who knows, but it's ugly.
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Aug 1, 2021 20:01
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That’s still cheaper than real estate. Our house has nearly doubled in the last 8 years. Our wages have not.
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Aug 1, 2021 20:08
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If you know you'll be in that business for a while would it be worth it to get a while bunch shipped from Japan wholesale? Both wheels and tyres?
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Aug 1, 2021 20:14
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