2 strokes run colder than 4 strokes (fuel goes through the engine every revolution, cooling it). I think diluted lubrication wears them faster as well as differential expansion of cylinders because of ports cut into cylinder walls. Dirt bikes have modest porting.

If there's not enough labour in Australia and the world, I love to hear your solution. I'm not anti-immigration, my partner is from Africa, but creating a crisis and having people suffering by having too many each year is to my mind idiotic. Demand has to match supply.

If we can't and never will be able to build enough housing, what do we do? More people living in tents and cars or under bridges? What?

The Australian military aren't there to build houses. The one and only solution is to reduce immigration to match achievable housing supply. Our government set a target of 1.2 million houses but that's just pissing in the wind.

These high performance 2 strokes don't last. Mine needed new pistons and cylinder barrels at 30,000km which is fairly typical.

I repeat I have worked in building, you haven't, it's a shit job. Doing a concrete pour on an apartment block is just awful!. Cutting mesh, laying it on bar chairs, tying it together, manhandling concrete chutes. All day with bolt cutters, cutting mesh to size, it's awful. Dangerous too.

When I rode the Yamaha 350 a friend noticed every time we even sedately accelerated from a standing start, I leaned forward to keep the front wheel on the road, it just became second nature. Braking hard would lift the rear wheel too.

(a) there's a global shortage of 'skilled labour' and (b) 'skilled labour' doesn't want to come to Australia because of high housing costs. The solution is quite simple, reduce per annum immigration by about 20% and homelessness goes away. There is no other solution to homelessness.

Tradies get paid enough but I have worked in building industry when I studied for my degree and it's physically hard work that people don't want to do! Doesn't matter how much you pay, they don't want to do it when there are better jobs even for less pay.

Almost perversely, those who can build homes don't want to migrate to Australia because housing costs here are too high. The only solution to homelessness, apart from cutting immigration by about 20%, is to train more, but with such a low unemployment rate this likely won't happen.

The limitation to building more homes in Australia is shortages of skilled labour. Here in Canberra, it's not been possible to build more social housing because there's not enough skilled labour. So the solution is, match demand to supply.

You have to wring the neck of a small 4 stroke. I had a 1981 Yamaha RD350 water-cooled 2 stroke which had usable power from 3,000 and giant-killing power 6,000 to 9,000 so it was light, fast, tractable, dirty and thirsty. The Yamaha LC range spawned imitators from all of them.