Motors Motorcycle Mayhem

Yeah, seemed like a reasonably nice day when I left. Sun was out, roads were (mostly dry). I was amazing how fast it changed. The last time it got icy/like this I got a lift. Going to leave work early today to get home while the sun is still up and probably get a lift in tomorrow.

 

Figured you guys might be interested in a side project of mine

 

For those missing the racing season....

The awesome...Shane Byrne (Shakey)


Shakey pop by bdigital101, on Flickr

 

Very nice indeed!!! Would love to hear a bit more about how you wrote it?

 

It's kinda simple really, and my motivation for building it is that MCN/Autotrader etc piss me right off - ads for unrelated crap everywhere, they make no attempt to filter out the crap (YAMAHA R1s WANTED FOR CASH!!!) and their interfaces just suck - massive complicated forms asking you to select the exact bike you want from drop-downs and then hoping for the best - wtf? Surely a better way to do it is, if you are looking for a black fireblade, to just type "black fireblade", just like you would if you were using Google, which is pretty much the easiest thing to use on the planet

Anyway, it works by spidering currently 3 sites, filtering out the rubbish, then doing some analysis on the ads themselves to extract useful data (HPI clear, previous owners, location and about 20 other things). From the data it collects it formulates an overall rank for the ad - for example, fewer previous owners, full service history, less milage, not CAT-D would be considered better than a bike which had no service history, 40,000 miles and 19 previous owners . When you're searching it takes the rank into account, the theory being that the best bikes hit the top and the crappy bikes will be on the final pages. So just like Google, really.

Obviously this all depends on how much information the original ad gives away, but most ads do contain quite a bit of info and it seems to work quite well - you should indeed see 'better' bikes first. It also takes distance from you into account too (if you tell the site where you are) - few people in Bristol are going to care much about a bike up in Aberdeen.

I'll be expanding it to spider more sites - and if anyone in the US wants to point me to any relevant classified sites in the States, i'll cover the US as well. Visordown and Gumtree are next on my list

By the way, it's currently in limp mode at the moment (so you'll see no distances and no maps ), I bumped into Google's geocoder API limit so I can't actually work out where the bikes are at the moment. Hopefully a "Google sales rep" will get back to me soon and I can just buy my way out of that problem, or maybe find an alternate geocoder which is just as good.

Please tell your biker mates! MCN etc are shiiiiiit!

By the way, fully open to ideas & suggestions. Hit me

TLDR;


=

 

That's a really good idea RTT.

I'm just wondering what sort of problems you might have with copying stuff from MCN or Biketrader, etc.

Somthing that would be usefull is to set your own value for the capacity of a motorbike. For instance:

MCN, the lower brackets are: 1-125cc (Ok), 125cc -500cc (Which is stupid) 500-750 (Ok) and so on. Not to mention that the groups overlap- so do you put your 125 in 1-125 or 125-500?

BikeTrader is better, and is ok but not perfect.

Gumtree is plain stupid, although I'd put it down to laziness- 0-999cc? what the hell is the point in that?

Ebay is ok too, but not perfect.

The way I'd want it is you put in your own values, so, say 450cc to 550cc, as opposed to dropdown boxes with set values.

 

Nice page RTT, very clean. The missus is looking to buy a wee bike soon so I'll be using your page to look for one - if that's alright

One suggestion, is it possible to put in a postcode rather than using an IP lookup? It's just that my ISP tends to move me around in respect to where I am/where the interwebs think I am.

Sometimes websites think I am in Glasgow which is correct, other times for some weird reason it thinks I am daan saaf in England (Bradford/Bedford - canny remember).

It matters little in the big scheme of things, nice work and nice page.

TTFN
S.

 

In theory I'm not doing much more than Google already do, and you can't contact any of the sellers without going to Autotrader (etc) without going through to their site, so no real harm done

Can do, I'll put it on the list. Of course, right now, if you want to see 600s, just type "600" and you'll get all 600s - or at least 600s with 600 in the model name, which is most of them

 

Please do! It should save you the hassle of going between AT and MCN. I'm also indexing Pistonheads, but they only have about 500 ads at any one time. In any case, AT and MCN cover about 99% of the online classifieds for bikes in the UK as far as I can tell

Working on this - I'll let you know when it's added. I get the exact same problem and it was annoying me too!

Ta!

 

This is really cool RTT! Will definitely keep an eye on this mate

 

Please do, plenty of plans including alerts when new bikes are listed matching criteria, all of that kind of crap. And you'll be able to place ads yourselves on it, too.

In other news, Suzuki back in MotoGP as of 2014

 

I got to work and there was no snow on the ground, after a day I put her in the shed nice and warm

 

That's a proper R6

 

I took my first pillion passenger out a week ago on Saturday. It was great fun, lovely weather and very few crazy drivers! It did highlight one thing though, how awful the rear shock is on the SV! Despite putting the preload on maximum, the front end still felt really light at times and it was interesting to say the least. I'd love to be able to work on it and do some upgrade work both the front and rear suspension but I just don't have the time or the cash to do it. It's a shame really as I love the SV in every other way. I'll be interested to see how the higher preload affects it when it's just me.

 

Think about weight distribution before you worry too much about your shock. Was your pillion a lot heavier than you? If so, no surprise that it handles like a turd

Pillion riding is a skill in itself, so get more practice before you start tinkering.

 

The pillion was my housemate who weighs the same as me, 11 stone. From the research I've done online (SV Forum and the likes), it seems like the rear shock is sprung for a light rider and can't handle much more than that. The options that people suggest are swapping out the rear for a different, compatible model, but that would still leave the awful front forks!

I think my only option is to wait until I (hopefully!) get a newer SV in the future that's in better nick than this one and then, if I've some spare cash lying around, invest in that one. I'd love one with full fairing, new exhaust, fixed suspension and a few bodywork tweaks, but that's a dream for the future. Money no object, I'd tweak it up to the max, even try to get an under-seat exhaust (I always prefer the looks) and still keep the pillion seat, though I'm not sure that's possible. It'd make it an amazing, road eating, pocket rocket for much less than a Ducati's I see zooming around Chichester! Still, I wouldn't mind a go on one of those too...... Those Panigale's are incredibly alluring!

 

The suspension (and brakes) are the weakest part of the SV. I helped my mate swap out his forks and shock for units off a GSX-R600 and having ridden it before & after, it was like a totally different bike. Think it cost him about £300 all in after some eagle-eyed work on ebay!

 

RTT, I'd like to do that in the future perhaps but right now I don't have the time or the money, and I'd like a slightly newer bike with less miles on too. The dealer I bought mine from had another SV650 a few months ago, same colour, full fairing, 5k miles and full Fuel exhaust system for £2500! I was a bit miffed to say the least!

The other thing I've wondered is how doing suspension mods like that would affect resale and insurance. I'm guessing no dealer would take it so I'd have to sell it myself when the time came?

Thanks!

 

You'll find insurers no problem. I wouldnt ever sell a bike to a dealer unless I had money to burn anyway so I'd forget about that. Private buyers wont be an issue as the real ones will know it's a true upgrade anyway.

That seems awfully cheap for that SV, how old was it?

 

Fair enough. I can't remember how old it was as it was a few months ago but it looked in tip top shape. I know it was fairly recent, no more than a few years old. The price did make me wonder whether the bike had been ragged and they'd just fixed it up etc... Who knows. I'll have to make do with my 'startled trout' forks and awful shock for at least another year yet. Shame really as I with some better suspension, I'd imagine the SV would be an absolute monster!

I've still not gone out yet on the bike having adjusted the preload on the rear so I'll be interested to see what difference it will make.