Posted on Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 09:07 am:

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Description (revised) Seller assumes all responsibility for listing this item.
YOU are bidding on the rolling chassis for a Honda CB500T, 1978 vintage.

The CB500T was possibly one of the nastiest Honda twins ever made, coupling excruciating vibration, lousy handling and a horrendous engine in an unholy union of incompetent engineering. So the chassis isn’t worth talking about.


Viewers will see this, but because there are so many people on Ebay who appear devoid of functioning eyes and brain, I shall point it out, in words of one syllable. This is for the benefit of those mental defectives who’ve just found out how to turn the doorknob the right way to escape from their remedial classes:


THIS BIKE DOES NOT GO. IT DOES NOT RUN.


The lack of engine is a clue. Ditto the lack of any fuel tank, a seat, exhausts, ignition system and anything else usually associated with an internal combustion engine and forward motion. Even freewheeling it will be fraught with excitement, because it hasn’t got a front brake either. See? Nor handlebars, so steering it will be an adventure. A frame, forks, pair of wheels, and a few odds and sods, and what you see in the pic (try http://www.chateau.murray.dsl.pipex.com/CB500Twreck.jpg if you want) is your lot.


Now, I’ve got a bit tired of the decerebrated turnips that bid on Ebay, as perusal of the old C90 that I sold (item no. 2442354423) will show. Possession of a powerful computer is no substitute for a working brain. Only the other week I was sitting beside an American female in a business centre in a Chilean hotel, as she tried to connect to her Yahoo messager that normally pops up on her screen at home. Needless to say, it didn’t there. I suggested she try her Yahoo email, and she asked how to find that. So I told her to go to yahoo.com and watched as she added an extra w to the www, no dot and an extra c in com.


And then she called the hotel girl over and complained to her she’d forgotten her Yahoo password, and could she help? The girls's face was a picture. I have no idea what: "You complete imbecile!" is in Spanish, but I can mime it now. At this point I left them to it. And these people have Ebay accounts…… terrifying, isn’t it? So anyone I consider particularly bereft of clue will have their bids cancelled.

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Posted on Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 10:07 am:

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Oh Good God. Ebayers, meet g4-gertje. g4-gertje, meet the sharp end of my keyboard. g4-gertje wants to know if I'll just sell the indicator brackets for some project bike he has. g4-gertje is in Belgium and thus separated from me by a few hundred miles, the English Channel and, I suspect, several dozen IQ points. Does this auction say: "will flog off minute components bit by bit"? NO! It's a damned auction. Buy the whole thing or nothing at all. I mean, the winning bidder (who I notice has a feedback of 1 and is teetering on the edge of Bid Cancel Canyon, might want them as well. Unlikely, but can you imagine actually winning this pile of crap and finding that the one component you want from it has been sold?

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