BMF September

We headed out to Peterborough again for another BMF show. We arrived mid afternoon and set up camp. To be honest I wasn’t feeling too hot, a couple of beers the night before and a tough week at work meant I wasn’t really in the mood to even look at our troubled scooter. So in our traditional way, we left the scooter in the van and opened one of 3 packs of 24 beers we had taken and settled in whilst the heavens opened on the other competitors just arriving.

I say ‘troubled scooter’ as those of you know the last few races haven’t been exactly smooth sailing. The moped enduro is a pretty gruelling 3 hour endurance  race held at each BMF weekend split into two 90 minute sessions. The track is generally speedway shale which creates massive dust clouds when dry or thick sticky mud when wet. You can usually count on the wet stuff at the start of the race and the dusty stuff toward the end.

Conditions have caused past issues of carburettor clogging, twisted steering, jammed reed valves, one brake failure, two clutch failures, multiple low sides and a very impressive high side of which ripped the dashboard clean off the bike and tossed our rider an estimated 4 foot into the air before landing him on his back (he’s okay!)

That Friday evening was spent in true race prep style, roast beef carvery and many beers. As per usual there were a number of bands on

Saturday morning came with a standard bad heads and rough stomachs, after a full English we set to work on the bike. Everything ran up fairly well, we had a couple of acceleration issues which we managed to iron out with an idle jet change and a restriction in our air intake (you wouldn’t believe a strip of Sellotape would fix a fuelling issue but in moped enduro… anything goes!

An hour before the start the paddock was hit with the news that the races had been extended to two hours each. Four hours for the weekend. Rain in the morning had soaked the track, and this year they had added a new section of track in which due to a slight downward slope had just filled with rain water.

This was going to be tough!

We geared up and headed to the track

I have been promising for years and for this time I finally delivered!

On board footage!

The race got underway and we started well, the earlier rain was causing tough conditions with grip, our knobbled tyres were clearing stacks of mud, acceleration was greeted with a shower of crap thrown up from the wheels, we had removed the mud guards in a previous year after mud collecting between the tyre and the guard caused the front to lock going down the main straight and dropping the bike down hard. Braking was coupled with squeaky bum moments whilst trying to balance hard late braking with not locking the front.

We were making good progress and racing was tight

Sadly, the gremlins returned. Lack of time and TLC reared more problems. The bike lost power, nothing…. Anywhere.

I managed to get the bike back to the pits but as we began the search for the issue it was clear this wasn’t going to be a simple task.

The mud had soaked in and glued to everything. Steam was pouring off as the hot components cooked the mud to the metal.

I am sure there’s a radiator in there somewhere

We suspected that it was fuelling issues again however post race investigations has shown the water and mud had caused a complete and terminal failure of the electrical system. Bad times.

That night we did what we do best, eat and drink!

More bands were on, and following a fairly uneventful power cut and evacuation of the music building we had a treat of 70’s (?) superstar (?) Alvin Stardust.

Now, born in the early 80’s I have no idea who Alvin Stardust is, and asking people didn’t really help when they just stood there a said “coo coo cachoo”, what ever that means. Although I will accept that he was very good and sung a stack of covers which I did know.

Sunday wasn’t pretty, as usual, two days of drinking and eating badly, coupled with lack of sleep and early mornings I was happy with our decision to sit Sundays half 9am race out.

We got up anyway I headed up with the teams to watch the start.

We watched the race for a bit then headed off for breakfast, did some shopping, packed the tents, gazebo and scooter into the van, had a coffee and then sat back down to watch the end of the race! Two hours is a long race!

Anyway, another failure, another retirement.

On a positive note, we got some on board footage of the opening lap, enjoy

https://youtu.be/kuPieq_x8dw