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X-Mailer: m, by Cameron Simpson
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:09:25 +0000
Subject: aus.motorcycles FAQ, part 2 of 3 [monthly post]
Approved: [email protected]
Followup-To: aus.motorcycles
Summary: This posting and its companions cover most of the
common issues raised in motorcycling discussions, with
Australia specific information.
From: Cameron Simpson <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
Errors-to: [email protected]
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Archive-name: motorcycles/aus-faq/part2
URL: http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/moto/aus.moto/FAQ/
Maintainer: Cameron Simpson <[email protected]>
Posting-frequency: monthly

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(Living on the WWW at) \| |/
"http://www.zip.com.au/~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.

1. 2.1 Where to ride, sights to see, nice roads, touring...

2.

Where to ride, sights to see, nice roads, touring... Also
see the Group Rides section of this FAQ.

� 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?

2.1 Can I ride around Australia without carrying extra
fuel?

2.2

Vic, NSW, Tas will present no problems at all. Just make
sure you hit smaller towns while the fuel stations are still
open. In the other states there are deserts to cross.
Hwy/Fwy 1 is no problem, even across deserts. Always check
with locals before you leave a town anyway. It is generally
recomended to carry 5-10 litres spare. Nasty rumours abound
of dropped bikes going up in smoke from jerry cans igniting
:-/

2.2.1 300+km stretches from Darwin to Mt Iza
2.2.2
From Chris Ruskie <[email protected]>:
I crossed the Nullarbor way back in '81 (on the main
highway, not through the dirt tracks) on a Ducati with only
just over 200 km before reserve. We stopped at all bar one
petrol stations, but made it without any concerns about
running out of fuel. Pity we broke down though.... ;^(

From Tony Fathers <[email protected]>:
Some of the desert areas - no way! 460 km from Lyndhurst to
Innamincka (fuel to fuel)......

2.3 Where should I ride in Victoria?

2.4

Black's Spur (Healesville to Marysville), Lake Mtn, Reefton
Spur (Marysville to Reefton), Great Ocean Rd, Kew Blv (Melb.
metro area)... Arthur's Seat(Mornington Peninsula),
Hurstbridge->Kinglake->Healesville.

2.5 Where should I ride in Western Australia?

2.6

Round Wongong Dam - short but twisty bits.
Serpentine Dam, South Dandalup
Dam->Dwellingup->Boddington->Brookton.
York, Toodjay, Northam.
Bridgetown-Nannup-Balingup-Bridgetown.
Caves Road Yallingup to Margret River.

2.7 Where should I ride in New South Wales?

2.8

2.8.1 Day trips from Sydney
2.8.2
Old Pacific Highway, Hornsby to Gosford
Bells Line of Road, out Lithgow way
Putty Road, Windsor to Singleton

2.8.3 Sydney metro, short but different
2.8.4
Berowra Waters Ferry road
Galston Gorge, for terminal crazies (especially at night)
2.8.5 NSW country
2.8.6
Oxley Highway, Wauchope to Armidale/Walcha (left, right,
left, right.....)
Buckett's Way (Hexham? to Taree via Gloucester); the run
from Singleton (above - Putty) to Dungog stitches up nicely
to this.

2.9 Where should I ride in South Autralia?

2.10

Up the BelAir road through Coromandel Valley, to Clarendon
then Meadows, MAcclesfield, Strathalbyn, Ashbourne, Bull
Creek, back to Meadows.
Up the Gorge Road to Gumeracha then Birdwood. Check the
Motor Museum out, then home the same way or via
Hahndorf/Freeway. Basically, head for the Adelaide hills
and go nuts :)

2.11 Where should I ride in Queensland?

2.12

Mt Glorious - good for a quick fang. Nice windy roads,
coffee shops, scenery. Can go down the other side to the
Wivenhoe Dam. Downside is that a lot of people are killing
themselves on that road, and the police are doing more speed
traps. Mapleton Pub - rip up the Bruce Highway, maybe stop
into the Ettamogah Pub on the way, then swing up high for a
nice lunch and view. Ride back through Montville and
Maleny. Stanthorpe - for a longer ride (read overnight) go
west to Stanthorpe, stay the night in a national park. Drop
down through NSW to Glen Innes to wave at the friendly
bikers, then come back up past Byron and the Gold Coast.

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.

2.13 Where should I ride in Tasmania?

2.14

See also Kevin Gleeson <[email protected]>'s
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.

2.15 Where should I ride in the Northern Territory?

2.16

Everywhere as fast as you can :)
[INDEED. Well, after Humpty Doo turn-off anyway. - Radley
Jones <[email protected]>]

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 <[email protected]>

2.17 Where should I ride in the Australian Capital
Territory?

2.18

The Uriarra/Cotter loop is a fantastic stretch of road, with

wide variations in road 'style' and landscape type. Start on
the Cotter road, turn off at Coppins Crossing, then head
onto Uriarra road. Follow Uriarra until the Turn-off back to
canberra, and it will take you back onto the Cotter road
just before Cotter Pub. Continue along Cotter road to
Tuggeranong, and return to canberra along any viable route.

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.
3. 2.2 Bike hire? Bike Shops?

4.

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?

4.1 Where can I get my bike dyno'd?

4.2

Most states should have one or two performace shops that
offer this service. Look out for their Dyno Days in AMCN
(Aus MotorCycle News) Ring around and ask, shouldn't cost
you more than $10-$15 a go.

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

4.3 Where can I hire a motorcycle?

4.4

Also see
my bike hire page
http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/moto/hire.html
and Adam Vaughan's <[email protected]> most excellent
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

4.5 How should I go about importing a bike to Australia?

4.6

From Roy Armstrong <[email protected]> Thu Apr 13
22:10:22 1995:
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.
5. 2.3 Cleaning your bike

6.

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.
7. 2.4 Other clues on the Information SuperRacetrack :)

8.

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 ]

8.1 Web Sites

8.2

Moto FAQs at www.faqs.org
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/motorcycles/
Home of the FAQ
http://www.zip.com.au/~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.zip.com.au/~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.zip.com.au/~cs/moto/aus.moto/faces/imindex.html
Cameron Simpson's Moto Page
http://www.zip.com.au/~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

8.3 Picture Archives

8.4

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.zip.com.au/~cs/moto/index.html#pics

8.4.1 How do I scan photos & piccys so they look great?
8.4.2
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.zip.com.au/~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?

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

8.6

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

8.7 Books and magazines

8.8

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. "

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