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                (Living on the WWW at)                         \| |/
  "http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/moto/aus.moto/FAQ/"                |_|

Overview
~~~~~~~~
The Aus.Motorcycles FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) comes in three parts.
Part One contains introductory material for learners or new bike buyers.
Part Two contains specific information about Australian touring, maintenaince,
bike hire, gear, etc...
Part Three covers the safety and everything else of clothing & gear.

2.1 Where to ride, sights to see, nice roads, touring...

• Can I ride around Australia without carrying extra fuel?
• Where should I ride in Victoria?
• Where should I ride in Western Australia?
• Where should I ride in New South Wales?
• Where should I ride in South Australia?
• Where should I ride in Queensland?
• Where should I ride in Tasmania?
• Where should I ride in the Northern Territory?
• Where should I ride in the Australian Capital Territory?

Can I ride around Australia without carrying extra fuel?

300+km stretches from Darwin to Mt Iza

From Tony Fathers <a.fathers@uws.edu.au>:
Some of the desert areas - no way! 460 km from Lyndhurst to Innamincka (fuel to fuel)......

Where should I ride in Victoria?

Where should I ride in Western Australia?

Where should I ride in New South Wales?

Day trips from Sydney

Sydney metro, short but different

NSW country

Where should I ride in South Autralia?

Where should I ride in Queensland?

Mt Tamborine through to Springbrook (via the Russ Hinze Dam Road)

A perfect day ride from Brisbane includes Mt. Glorious to Esk via Somerset. From Esk head to Toowoomba (the road gets a a bit thin here, but still bitumin). At Hampton turn right and head to Yarraman. This section of the road is ideal for big speeds, no cops. At Yarraman head back towards Brisbane. At Kilcoy head towards Somerset again.

Gillies highway near Cairns.

Where should I ride in Tasmania?

Tassie Touring Tips
http://www.imagine-it.com.au/ausmoto/tassie.htm

Where? Everywhere! Tasmania has some of the curviest roads in Australia. For the most part they are bitumen, but narrow. Some of the "traditional" frequently used sections are: Grass Tree Hill Road, Channel Highway, East Coast Highway, Lyell/Murchison Highway (beware at Hellyer Gorge, those 100m straights are not really enough to overtake on) Main hazards in Tassy are: log trucks, occasional bad camber, log trucks, lack of use of indicators by cage drivers, and log trucks.

Hobart area: Grasstree hill road ( Risdon vale - Richmond ) 1 Hour
Mud walls road ( Campania - midland highway ) 1 Hour
old Huon Road (Ferntree - Huonville) over Mount Wellington. 2 Hours
Cygnet - Verona Sands road 1/2 day

East coast, 1 day ( maybe two ) Elephant Pass (check out the pancake shop at the top)
St. Mary's Pass
the Sidling (Scottsdale - Launsecton)

Strathgordon road, 1 day return Devonport-Forth-Cradle Mountain (some dirt), 1 day return

Lake Leake Road from just North of Swansea to Campbelltown in the midlands.

Where should I ride in the Northern Territory?

Try Litchfield Park for a day trip from Darwin (visit all 3 Falls).
For a quick 3 hour trip try Fog Dam, get there for Dawn or Dusk (usually no-one there at Dawn, listen to the birds/silence.) - Radley Jones <rdj@senet.com.au>

Where should I ride in the Australian Capital Territory?

You can continue from the Cotter Pub south down past Murray's Corner and Tidbinbilla to Tharwa and back up the Monaro Hwy. The bit through the pine forest past Murray's Corner is a bit prone to slow/unpredicatble traffic and gravel on the road but once it opens up, its quite good, and makes the ride about twice as long.

A quick fang up Coppins Crossing is always fun.

Heading down the coast via the Clyde mountains is an interesting ride with lots of twisties in the later sections, and the ride up the coast from Batemans bay to Sydney (through the national park south of sydney) is a great alternative to the highway (if you have a few extra hours to spare)

The road down Brown Mtn (between Cooma and the coast) is a vastly better road than Clyde Mtn. Every time I went down Clyde Mtn (admittedly a long time ago), the road surface was shocking. Of course, both Brown Mtn and Clyde Mtn are in NSW, not ACT.

2.2 Bike hire? Bike Shops?

• Where can I get my bike dyno'd?
• Where can I hire a motorcycle?
• How should I go about importing a bike to Australia?

Where can I get my bike dyno'd?

Vic - Dynobike
WA - SuperCycles
NSW - Parry's
SA -
Qld -

Where can I hire a motorcycle?

my bike hire page
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/moto/hire.html

Australian Motorcycle Rentals
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~adamv/bikes/rentals.html

Victoria Motorcycle Hire and Sales: 606 High st
Kew East 3102
Ph: (03) 817 3206
Mobile: (015) 314 970
Fax: (03) 817 3662

3 bike shops in Brisbane that do guaranteed buy-back prices:
Shogun Honda (07) 808 7850 - Knew what was going on, very helpful.
Phil Beaumont (07) 252 2115 - Knew what was going on, dubious shop.
Springwood Suzuki (07) 208 7999 - Helpful, will do buy-back but no system, negotiable.

Outrider Rentals in Sydney c/- http://magna.com.au/~advtours/atbthome.html

How should I go about importing a bike to Australia?

We recently imported two bikes from the USA after a 7 week holiday there. There are many avenues open to importing bikes into Aus. The first and most IMPORTANT step is to contact the:

Department of Transport
GPO Box 1553
Canberra
ACT 2601
Fax: +61 6 274 6013
Tel: +61 6 274 7506
+61 6 274 7111

If you contact them first you should have no problems importing bikes into Aus. You may even find that they will not have to comply with Australian Design Rules (ADR). The Federal Office of Road Safety will send you the information that you need about importing bikes to Aus. There are a number of different classifications that a bike may fall into. Approval can take up to 3 weeks and costs $50.00 per application. You can put more than one bike on an application. With the info you get from Canberra there is also a list of people who can issue ADR plates in different states. This may solve any problems but as with all services you will have to pay someone something. Once you get the bike imported you then have to sort out registration in your state. Below is an extract of relevant information from the booklet that the Federal Office of Road Safety will send out.

THE MOTOR VEHICLE STANDARDS ACT

The Motor Vehicle Standards Act 1989, which came into effect on 1 August 1989, makes it an offence to import a new or secondhand vehicle unless:

• it meets the safety and emissions standards applying to vehicles to be used on Australian roads (the ADRs) and has a valid Australian compliance plate fitted;

  or

• arrangements are in place, by way of written agreement, for an organisation holding Compliance Plate Approval from the Federal Office of Road Safety to modify the vehicle to meet the ADRs and to fit a compliance plate, after its arrival in Australia

The importer will require a Vehicle Import Approval from the Federal Office of Road Safety to obtain clearance at the port of entry. The vehicle cannot be given into your possession without this approval and any delays may prove costly.

Import approval will be granted if the above two requirements are met. Import approval will also be granted if:

• you obtained a letter of compliance from the manufacture

  or

• you have owned and used the vehicle overseas for a continuous period of not less than three months, you are of driving age and are an Australian citizen or migrant holding permanent residency in Australia

  or

• the vehicle was manufactured before January 1974 (for vehicles other than motorcycles small trailers, trucks and buses), or 1 July 1975 (for motorcycles), or 1 July 1988 (for small trailers less than 4.5 tonnes ladden weight). These will be known as `specified dates' for the remainder of this brochure.

Before importing a vehicle it is essential that you ensure it will be allowed into Australia. Otherwise you may have to export or scrap the vehicle, or be penalised with a fine of up to $12 000. Potential importers should check with the Australian Customs Service for requirements relating to tariffs and quarantine.

EXEMPTIONS
There are vehicles such as agricultural and earthmoving equipment, competition, display, farm and evaluation vehicles which are not subject to the Motor Vehicle Standards Act. Contact the Federal Office of Road Safety for further advise on these vehicles as an import approval may still be required to gain clearance at the port of entry.

REGISTRATION
These guidelines relate to the import of vehicles before first registration. If some of these requirements are not met at the time of importation, then they must be met before registration. A vehicle must also meet the registering authority's requirements for registration, such as roadworthiness.

NOTE: Not mentioned in the main text of the book but on the Application for Vehicle Import Approval:
APPLICATION FOR VEHICLE IMPORT APPROVAL
Part 4 - Date of manufacture
Was the vehicle manufactured:
* 15 or more years ago? or
* before 30/6/88 for trailers under 4.5t ATM?

|  Y  |                 |  N  |  
Go to Part 10           Go to Part 5

This means that if your motorcycle is 15 or more years old then it may not be required to have an ADR to obtain an Import Approval.

2.3 Cleaning your bike

Cleaning your bike Somebody asked us "How do i get all that oil and grease off my engine, rims and the like? Can i use that cheap degreaser? What works and how well?"

Summary:

• the $2 spraycans of degreaser from The_Reject_Shop have been used with good results.
• kerosine in a pump pack works well
• use an old paint brush, you can cut the bristles right back for a good scrub. Toothbrushes are good too.
• Spray_&_Wipe is good for steel wheels
• Mr_Sheen is good for painted alloy rims
• Autosol, Gumption etc.. for the other bits, thinners for carbies.
• Detergent for paintwork followed by polish.

2.4 Other clues on the Information SuperRacetrack :)

Other clues on the Information SuperRacetrack :) Are you running a useful a.m service? Send me your URL now!
[ Web Sites | Picture Archives and making your own | Group Rides and info | Books and magazines ]

Web Sites

Moto FAQs at www.faqs.org
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/motorcycles/

Home of the FAQ
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/moto/aus.moto/FAQ/

Beginner Motorcyclist Information
http://vger.rutgers.edu/~ravi/bike/docs/beginner.html

Cameron Simpson's pointers to various aus.moto pages
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/moto/aus.moto/

Kevin Gleeson's Pointers to various aus.moto pages
http://www.imagine-it.com.au/ausmoto/

Aus.Moto faces page
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/moto/aus.moto/faces/imindex.html

Cameron Simpson's Moto Page
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/moto/

Mike Cutter's upcoming events
http://ledoux.arbld.unimelb.edu.au/~mtc/moto/motorbike.html

A Guide to Motorcycle Parking in Australian Universities
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~atm/bikepark.html

The Rec.Motorcycles Index
http://www.halcyon.com/moto/index.html

Picture Archives

ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/pics/vehicles/motorcycles
ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/pics/vehicles/motorcycles

I know there're heaps more. Try starting at

Cameron's Pic Links
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/moto/index.html#pics

How do I scan photos & piccys so they look great?

The trick in my experience is to not scan at too high a resolution. If my original is large enough, I will scan at 75dpi in 24 bit. Any higher and you pick up the texture of the paper and it looks all speckled. If the original is small and you'd like to try and enlarge it then try scanning at higher resolutions.

Always scan at more than you'll want to put on your page (i.e. at the maximum res you can without showing the grain). Keep the originals (on your home machine, on a tape, whatever) and post resized (smaller) ones to your web site if you have bandwidth or storage costs.

Image format? Avoid wasteful image formats like TIFF or BMP (neither has any compression). Choose JPEG format usually. Avoid GIFs for full size images - the colour quantisation ruins the image (but see thumbnailing, below)..

Indexing? Don't include the full-size pic in your page. Include thumbnails and attach HREFs to the full-size pic to the thumbnail. Do make real thumbnails. Novice web authors sometimes use the size attributes of the IMG tag to include a resized-very-small inline image of the original simply by pointing at it. This is bad, as the whole original is downloaded by the browser and only then resized. So the page takes forever to load anyway. Use GIFs for the thumbnails, quantised to few colours (i.e. 16, 32 or 64 instead of the default close-to-256); you'll get good compression this way, better than JPEG for thumbnail-sized images.

Tools? I use

im2html
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/im2html/

for my image galleries. You just throw the images into a directory and run the script. You can use the thumbnail script supplied with it standalone if you want the thumbnails but prefer a different web page layout scheme. Anyone got other good tools?

People to contact for group rides, info, etc...

Just post to aus.motorcycles. NSW, Vic, Qld, SA & WA are all into net rides, so you'll get some response. Mailing lists also exist for several regions. Check out the

Australian Local Ride Mailing Lists
http://ledoux.arbld.unimelb.edu.au/~mtc/moto/comingup/html/mailinglists.html

Books and magazines

Motorcycle tuning: chassis - John Robinson Redwood Press Limited, Melksham, Wiltshire ISBN 0 7506 0798 X

AMCN (Australian MotorCycle News) magazine

Two Wheels magazine

David Minton - The Motorcyclist's Handbook. a little dated in some areas (written in 1982) but brilliant on defensive riding, clothing, basic maintenance, and intro to motorcycle sport.

The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Motorcycles by Erwin Tragatsch.

Another book to have a look at is 'A twist of the wrist' . Ed II. These books are limited in there scope, more on advanced riding techniques for racing rather than the road. Written by Keith Code. Look it up, it's put out by the Californian Superbike School.