TerraRoot

XL250k3: beat it into shape

Air filter is doing the business, not.

all four tappet lock nuts are there, nothing looks too bad in there.

Points, well they are there at least.

Spent the rest of the day beating the clutch arm, got it all in good condition now, the roller bearing at the top is seized and missing a few rollers, so that’ll have to be replaced, but it’s good enough now for a test spin. Also beat the bent arm that’s supposed to fit on the star wheel, good enough for a test spin. only took one whack too, skills 🙂

The camchain tensioner lock up set-up is banjaxed, the threads all mullered, so i had to make something to actually lock the guide. when i replace the guides (have to take the flywheel off) i can take the tensioner out and with that out i can fix the threads. hog it out to M8. it’ll leak a bit of oil but no worries.

Niki came over and we span over the bros for 5 minutes on the land rovers battery, it started! good honda. engines fooked,but lack of oil and 100mph will do that to anything. scrapping it, might try to sell it whole to a breakers but if other people need stuff i’d break it myself and give niki the money.

XL250k3

So, I got nice fat work bonus, but i still couldn’t find any yzf750 forks and the one monkey bike i could find online, the seller wasn’t answering, so i had a choice:

Or this one:

Much humping later, and using the three wheeled berg for a cart, got it up to the garage and removed the linings from the shoes.( must put a l/m engine in that berg)

Pump the tyres, polish with a bit of wd40 and blast off all the dead leaves:

And so, on to everything that is wrong with it, or why it ended up being left behind in our ditch when the owner went back to germany:

Positive gear-changes? no.

Camchain, the only bit i need to tell you here is that the honda setup for locking the camchain guide blades can lock them and be oil tight. the single bolt the previous owner put in there could only do one of those thing, and i don’t see any oil stains outside on the casing.
This tells you a lot about whats going to be wrong inside this engine.

Dreaded seized clutch push rod, magnesium and steel don’t mix. currently soaking in GT86.

Oil filer covered in metal bits and cheap rubber insta-gasket crap.

Rear sprocket is totally foooked, rear shocks are shots, exhaust has nice fist sized hole in it, bright metal dust and a lock-nut from the tappets in the sump, one (only one!) fork seal leaking. and some tape around the inlet manifold. still more horrors to find.

Should have held on for that chinese monkey bike.

Front bearings

So they died again, lasted the summer, something maybe a bit worn out in the front end.

So the only thing to do is get another bike, off to the scrappy now,

cub racer

Only one pic today, the sony sp is still in the shop they can’t fix it so i’m getting it back broken. I’m an idiot for buying a sony.

things done today, two patchs for the land rover, a dolomite 1500 turned up as a spares car for the Sprint, An SRAD 600 is dumping the coolant into the sump so we got some trouble shooting done on the oil pump and the oil cooler.

Best thing done today, got the racer 90 ready for road, made a bracket for some random coil and chucked it on.

Bit of petrol and away she went! took off race plates and stickers next, on the road that stuff will just get attention. Not sure if super shocks will get through scrutineering so i’ll try to find something less conspicuous.

Raise the compression, jet up a little, go win some races!

38!

sprained my wrist, goosed the rad cap again, broke brake lever and ruined the frame paint! entirely my fault not the extra speed, cold tires, crap brakes, crap suspension and second hand tires at all…..

but more importantly i broke the little glass jar that i kept my drinking chocolate in 🙁

also i suppose i bananaed my sony xperia, still works tho, so now i’ll have to paint it yellow…..

YPVS pre-93 racer

Teds got a racer license, so a 50’s+ one legged man is entering pre-93 races with a ypvs. yeppers.

Made of some left overs… 2ma wheels right now, but i swear there is some 2xt bits about the place

Rs250 shock, tinchy 2ma rear 2.5″ rear wheel allready found the 3.5″ 2xt rear, no sign of front at the moment..

Race Report, nifty fifty 2014 mondello

After an 8am start getting scrutineering and paper work done, we had a 30 min practice session. I went out just enough to figure out which way the track went (not been on the national circuit) and that it was make of soap, and broke the wee bike! poor alex braham and stephen never had a go, which is quite bad since they have never ridden a honda 90.

So we had to fix it, race was starting asap, bikes fucked, cutting out under load back firing, struggling to rev. Checked plug gap, wd 40 all over the HT lead, nope, dawning despair “are we gonna get out at all!?” We missed the le mans start. Tried to get out after cleaning the carb from a pit start starting 1 lap down, made it to the gravel turn the rally cars use, turned around and spluttered around the back and into the pits. We need a second hand coil, steve tobin knew a man, top job. Replaced coil bike started right up first prod SWEET! jam helmet on, we are down about 20mins 10laps 48th place, out i go, track is drying, Don’t end up on your arse tim, other people need to get a spin, dry track made it easier to get around i could just leave it in top and keep the corner speed up, get my head over the front of the bars, elbows up, everything running sweet, passing loads of people in the lower class’s. and team Manly (66) came by, the one with guy martin on the team. Get them. and so i did, another lap and team BikeWorld (3) also joined the battle, didn’t know at the time but they were in my class, at about this time i posted a 1:30.684 lap 7th fastest lap of the whole race. on my 24th lap. Taking it sensibly in the corners because i’d never hear the end of it if i broke the bike and nobody else got a go i got stuck behind some back markers and 66 and 3 pissed off. End of session came up and i had moved us up to 37th!

Alex went out next, two quite long full course cautions in his session, but he moved us up to 30th, had a great race with another team (haven’t got their number)
Braham got us up to 25, more full course cautions, everyone is having trouble with dunlop corner, the off camber entrance combined with trail braking mean the rear brake pedal would drag, dodgey situation. we decide to pull him in a 10 mins early, the timer board says their is about 55 mins left in the race.
Stephen goes out. Crashes on the fourth corner. Of his first lap. Luckily near the back pit entrance so he is back into the pit garage before even a lap is up. I’m up at the pit wall, turn away thinking “it’s his first lap be ages before he comes aro.. WTF!” zip over a scrutineer is doing his job well and spots a bent rear shock, i fix it with my mighty right arm, the mud is scrapped off and he’s out again. not too much time lost 
We look to be getting a top 20 finish, 4th in class, not bad, practically slapping each other on the backs at that point. They extend the race finish time, we worry have we enough fuel, people are pitting, stephen hasn’t a clue whats happening we’ve no pit board. we keep waving him onwards. don’t run out of fuel don’t run out of fuel. After extra half hour of racing we got 14th place and 3rd in class, I’m in awe of our selves, We did the fucking business

My pre race night bbq, best steak sandwich ever, van got a bit smokey tho…

 

Morning of the race, it’s a bit wet…

Alex and Stephen

Guy Martin and Stephen, poor guy 🙂

Next years targets

At this point i though we’d gotten 4th in class. but yellow flag infringements and penalty’s pushed us up!

Best fucking day ever, totally hooked, all ready booked for next year, will even finish putting the engine back together properly now. Gonna enter in the watergrasshill superpole if i can make it

An update!

Been a while eh? Kidney disease, very rare auto-immune Adult Minimal Change Disease, i’ve been in remission for a week, which is nice, so I got a haircut shaved my outa control beard.

Still off my face on steroids, having roid-rage at missing tea towels, eating everything (lost 17kg of water and fat, 72kg stickman now) but it’s time for an update, even half dead i managed to fix a few things 🙂

Teds new toy!, he wanted a GB500 for sometime, in the end he now has a GB400TT slighty tatty

Tatty is good because it will be getting the dominator 650 engine, then were gonna pop the 400 into the domi for the crack.

Cub90 longstoke racer head, really should have found an E22 head, but I’ll make it work, gonna raise the port to match the 22mm inlet i have, here I’ve finished lapping in the valves, there were well bad. actually the short side turn wasn’t so bad so once I’m done it should flow reasonably.

Nikki broke his car again 🙂

Noel Quinn top man, lent me this Chinese 110 just in case i blow the 90 racer, the other lads can still have ago.

Niall Mackenzie’s old yzf750r caburys boost race leathers, i fit in them now ‘coz I’m skinny.
likely to let me race in them? ha no.

And finally, over the last month and a half I couldn’t drive the bike, the poor landy never broke down! But it has been getting slower the poor thing. So a service, dad helped with all the bits that needed an arm (and not a wet noodle arm). We replaced the lift pump, fuel filter, oil + oil filter.
Cleaned out the mesh filter in the tank again too. The lift pump should have been replaced when i cleaned and sealed the tank. 1400 miles before i fecking changed the oil, really should have done when i got, lazy bastard.

Also a catch tank for the engine breather was zip tied into place, and some where along the way i replaced the rad cap and chucked the useless engine fan and duck taped up some internal hot air vents to try in vain to keep the windscreen demisted me vaguely warm. two coats, MX gloves, a hat and a full head scarf did most of the work 🙂

It’s all fast again, needs the correct gearbox oil to speed up the changes, then a longer ratio transfer box. still not enough boost, gonna play with pump setting but i still think it the crappy intercooler and pipe work. Later when I’m not so dependent on it.

Roll on summer, good kidneys and my bike!

two two strokes.

Got the rover started, small leak from the copper washer on the drain bung. also the flapper on the exhaust was open the whole month or so it was off the road, queue buckets of black sooty water splattered everywhere, excellent.

obama agrees. awesome tzr250 oil pump which i have spent forever looking for.

So awesome i fitted it straight away, god i love ebay.

so next up was some welding to the xtdr, front mount was started and tak welded in place.

Chopped out a rusty bit of the rear grab rail.

then chopped out a replacement bit of rail from a tdr 125.

Fitted in ok, but the rot was further along the rail then i though, so instead of cutting it out (no time) i plated it, not so nice but at least it’s strong.

Even managed to bolt on one of the pipe, it’ll be running in no time (ha!)

cbr, bloody valves

So the other day after i changed the front tyre, the rear went flat while i was speeding to work, que two days of driving the chromtastic cb550 before i got the spare time for cbr6 shenanigans.

ted got the supermoto wheels off the dominator,

Apart the obvious chain chewing, it not a street tyre, not much point in putting it on when it’ll be ripped up too quickly.

Luckily, it was only the valve, stupid thing is too long and the metal neck flops about the place.

So what else is buggered up? the carrier bearing AGAIN and my underused rear brake rusted up in pretty much every fucking place.

Probably need a new one of these…

Ah feckit, often do i use the rear brake anywho?

Cleaned, greased and ready to roll for just until i get the yzf on the road which right after i will chop the shit outa the poor cbr. i mean it this time!