My last motorbike was a CB750. I only had it a couple of months before I sold it on. It was too heavy for me to lift. I won’t ride a bike I can’t lift.

Nowadays I ride one speed push bikes, mostly fixed wheel. I can make better than 200 watts for extended periods. Peak over 1000. Working on getting back to near the range I had when I was racing, but even now only a few in my area riding carbon fiber zoot scoots can come anywhere near me on my high tensile steel, Edwardian rig.

The only real downside I find in not having a mobile bordello is that it makes it harder to make the rabbit rifle unobtrusive.

My kitchen is all LED lighting and I’m working on the rest. I started with them in the 90’s when I was working on some optical data acqusition hardware and had the shit lying around on the workbench, so, what the hell, make some lamps and shit.

I used to teach people to drive, when they asked, nowadays I refuse… one of the first lessons was don’t touch the accelerator at all, just use gears and brakes and clutch and steering, it’s amazing how easy it is to progress to top gear, even on moderate inclines… the second trick was a shoelace on the throttle body linkage so you couldn’t get more than 10% throttle opening, you could go on the roads with that, and still not hold up trucks.

Unless you’re racing, no car made since 1980 ever *needs* to go over 2,500 RPM, and they will *all* thank you handsomely in the pocket from less tyre / brake / drivetrain wear and tear, and *significantly* better gas mileage.

Optimal tyre pressures are key to good gas mileage, optimal being the high end of whatever range the manufacturer gives, that and tracking and toe etc, and of course check you brakes ain’t grabbing, not even a little.

Engines will thank you for being made to work hard from low to medium RPM for 60 seconds at a time, rather than being revved to death or coasted under no load…

I always adjust my tickover RPM right down too, provided there is oil pressure, it’s good to go…. cutting from a factory 750 to a stable 500 rpm tickover is a 30% reduction in fuel consumption at tickover, and if you are an urban driver, that adds up real fast.

Binning belt driven accessories off the motor makes an amazing difference too, so electric temp controlled radiator fans instead of running off the engine, wind the windows down instead of using a/c, and don’t forget clean air filters and minimal exhaust restrictions.

That whole stall-speed thing is exactly what Raxx is talking about in the first book, only he doesn’t realize it yet. Think I’m going to write a scene in the sequel where he figures out precisely that, while dealing with one of the many bullshit problems that I’ve run into with the various POSs I’ve driven.

In other news, I get great gas mileage because my stinkmobile’s clutch ain’t so happy, so I seldom peak the RPMs over 3000.

Yea, it is highly regulated, but not compared to other modern racing series.

Straight out of gulag archipelago

Frankly didn´t even bother finding out how Musk fucked up his version of the “electric combustion car”, I simply don´t trust the bastard one bit.
Jeez that´s really crappy what you described there. A shame.
But I guess if they dared building actually vastly superior electric cars, they never would´ve come even that far.

BTW the rare earth safety bottleneck I meant is their scarcity. Of course there´s a new clever RE-free battery design out every month, but I´ll bet my knickers none of them will ever find their way into production. Just like all these super-solarcells.