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I started off this day on the bike but after a fuel stop I wasn’t completely in the mood; so I headed back to the house and switched horsepower to pedal power. I do enjoy a spot of mountain biking and took the chance to explore the back streets of campan and up the sides of the valley.
Back in the early days, from what i understand the locals used these water troughs, the streams running off the sides of the valley can be channelled into here
After my explore I headed straight up the valley side
I found this building which looked like an old turret of some sort over looking the valley
The view from half way up
For official purposes, I ‘accidentally’ rode through the red light
And technically, there was a big green arrow directing me which lane to go in!
Since probably christmas I have been toying with changing my bike, and no… i am not getting two. i dont use one enough, however although we only covered 130 miles this was the day I fell back in love with my bike, with the evening conversation moving to ‘sorting the brakes’, ‘fitting rearsets’, ‘getting the fairing tidied up’ and of course ‘DYNOJETTING’!
The smallest bike in the fleet, low on torque and speed but the little 6r kept up with everything the big bikes had, only being let down by my lack of talent. I know I am biased but nothing beat the noise of the zx6r with straight through scorpion can at over 10K rpm in amongst the mountains. Happy days!
Changed the oil seals on the front forks plus new fork oil. New brake pads and gave the whole front end a good old wd40 degrease! Just need to bolt the nose back on then get the bike in for its mot retest on saturday
Sounds like it was a real shame about the carb probs, how did the rest of the bike feel when it was working?
It was fine, handling was fine, grip levels were about right, Sunday morning the track was wet but the knobbly tyres were finding grip everywhere really, although they locked up quite easily into the braking areas.
We are toying with fitting lighter rollers to get the acceleration up, although we need to mark out the length of the straight and test to check we won’t be bouncing off the rev limiter too early, you can deristrict the rev limiter but that obviously brings other potential issues.
We need to get back to consistency first, the first few years worked well because we just kept going round the track. We are learning though and have already got a shopping list ready.
We’ve had too many problems with that air intake, so it’s coming off in favour of something more robust. We also reckon the carb is jetted too high because the spark plug(s) were coming out totally black. We’ll have it sorted for next time!
So mental note to self, leaving it to the last minute doesn’t work.
We got the bike back on Thursday and headed for Peterborough the next morning.
We arrived at the east of England show ground about 3 ish and set about building camp. We had planned on the weather being changeable so had dug the gazebo out of the garage, although leaving it in the living room at home didn’t help us when we got to the site! This was roughly the start of things to come.
Friday evening/ night had the usual antics of bad eating and high alcohol consumption, mixed up by finding the biggest highest fastest fair ground ride we could to see who had the strongest stomach.
High alcohol contents also produced a rather funny video where we took took the gopro on the dodgems. Will have to get the (edited) highlights on YouTube at some point.
Saturday morning we woke to lost voices and sore heads, after a full English and a few jugs of coffee we headed off around the show, the usual best in show, classics and manufacturers were there but were joined this year by a new offroad and overland section.
A few bargains were to be had this year too, the usual clothing stores were open, with joe (one of the team) collecting a very smart looking set of two piece brand new rk sports leathers for less than £150.
If you are ever looking for something new to add to to your biking wardrobe the show is well worth a look. I almost treated myself to a brand new frank Thomas textile jacket for £40, although my £40 I had was burnt on alcohol the previous night and I already have some textiles!the stunt team were back this year, and also the introduction of motoball
We then gathered back at the paddock for the moped to be safety checked for the races. The guy doing the checks was thorough as usual, and picked up that we were missing 8 case bolts on the swing arm. Being integral to the strength of the swing arm case he told us to go and fit them. Not a problem because I remembered all the case bolts are in the ‘bit pot’! Which we later discovered was in the spares box…. Next to the gazebo…. At home!
A quick run back round the show ground and we traced a man selling different sized bolts. We picked up some case bolts and were ready to go!
At 3pm we gathered up at the paddock with the other riders and after a quick briefing we pushed the mopeds and pulled the gear over the pit lane in the centre of the race track.
For those who are new to this, the moped enduro is held on a speedway track, concrete and shale mixture. Roughly a 400 metre track with 3 chicanes built up from tractor tyres. There are two 90 minute races, team with the most completed laps wins!
Qualifying this year was a luck of the draw. Out of 45 bikes starting we found ourselves 24th and right in the middle.
Race one got off to the usual hectic start with everyone piling into the first chicane. Joe was riding this first stint and came out of the first chicane in the middle. We were off and running!
The bike was holding its own with only a slight lack of power low coming out of the tight chicanes, but speed along the main straight was keeping us in the middle of the pack scrap.
After about 20 minutes we called joe in for a rider change. I jumped on and headed off. Being in mind we hadn’t had any testing or practice, I wasn’t doing to bad. Maybe if we had the time we would of adjusted the tyre pressures but other than that no problems. I was about 15 minutes into my 20 when I miss judged my line through a chicane and smashed the left hand side of the bike along one of the tractor tyres. The impact was heavy, the fairing was cracked and something didn’t sound too healthy from the engine, but this is endurance racing and we keep going!
End of my stint and me and joe switched again, as he headed off I caught a glimpse of the air intake. It didn’t look as it normally does, maybe a bit lower? And bit further back?
“Well, it’s running” I thought.
About 10 minutes in to our 3rd stint, we noticed the moped was not responding out of the chicanes, joe was hardly moving, it didn’t look good. We called him in and had a look, the air intake tube had been split. Maybe from my accident, or maybe something else? It didn’t matter. The new carb was full of crap, the fuel/air adjuster didn’t seem to be affecting anything. Full throttle only made the engine die. We cleaned the carb out but we were now miles behind. We sent the bike out again but it promptly died again out on track. Saturday was over.
That evening after the race, the mood was a bit low in the camp. Mainly frustration than anything. We have all known each other long enough for it to be anything else. We stripped the carb, changed the spark plug which looked like it had been cooked, fitted a new air intake pipe and after a few adjustments on the fuel air mix we got the bike running. A quick 15 minute test in the paddock suggested it should be ok.
That night we drank away any problems with a mixture of lager, beer, cider, Bacardi to name but a few, mixed it up with dancing to the status quo tribute band and headed back to camp.
the lead guitarist I couldn’t help feel he looks like thumper?
and another band where the lead singer had the biggest….. voice
Sunday morning came with the standard painful head and lost voices, only to be added to by everyone testing there mopeds in the paddock.
The race had been moved forward for some horrid reason to half 9, the second race got under way and I was the first man out. The bike was running really well until just before the end of my stint. I came out of the final chicane onto the main straight opened the throttle and…. The engine died.
We tried to get it restarted but to no luck. 20 minutes out of 90 and we were retired from the weekend.
All in all, not the most successful weekend, but we only have ourselves to blame. We are just looking at availability from the various social secretaries to allow us back to the September race. Needless to say, we are pretty much last in the standings, so September will be more of a test session, but….
Here’s to September! Maybe…. Probably…!
Welcome to the forum, and don’t worry about asking questions, you should see some of the questions I have asked in the past!
When I originally clicked on this link, judging by the title I thought it was a story by radar on how he had finally got five bikes in his garage
