Following my recent dip in the water, after the Nostalgia Trial my bike went back to Pete Kirby for the engine to be stripped, examined and rebuilt - mainly for my own piece of mind to make sure that I didn't cause any damage to it.
Pete bought the bike back to Ullenhall on Sunday so it was a bit of a testing day to make sure that it was all running well and get the settings back to where they were before it went away.
Well, all didn't actually go to plan to be honest. The engine was running fine but I had some problems with ignition and clutch.
Firstly the clutch started playing up as soon as it got hot, not engaging and dis-engaging as it normally does - I checked with Pete and we believed that it was down to the oil that had been used as I normally run AFT in the primary case. Not a major problem as the trial was fairly easy and I thought it would be a good idea to ride off the clutch and see how I got on. Bit of a culture shock to be honest as I never ride without full use of the clutch!
I then felt that the bike had lost it's punch at mid throttle and felt quite flat so I went back to the car, dropped the oil from the primary case and avanced it up a bit.
This seemed to improve things but unfortunatly the clutch had now stopped working completely.
I continued to finish the trial but I was losing marks for fun! A coupls of 5's were taken where I stalled the bike, needing a bit of clutch at the bottom of a steep bank and another couple due to over running tight turns and missing the line because I was ahead of where I wanted to be.
The problem was that I generally set quite a lot of tickover to ensure that I dont stall then ride on the clutch and this clearly was not going to work in this trial because there was no clutch and the tickover was jus too quick for the tight sections.
Anyway, as the trial went on, the bike again became flat. It was like the timing was inconsistent or we have come across a self reterding ignition system!
Needless to say, Pete has taken it back to check these bits and bobs out and I should get it back next weekend at Bromsgrove.
The result was as expected, pretty poor considering it should have been a single mark trial, however it was good to identify these issues sooner rather then later at an event that mattered.
Pics are from this trial - I decided to wear my mountain bike helmet because it was so hot! You will see that on neither of these pics do I have a finger on the clutch (pretty unusual for me!)
Results as follows;
Experts (Up to 350cc)
1. Nathan Jones 7
2. Dave Jones 14
3. Laurance Alden 22
4. Dave Dawson 34
5. Ray Barrett 39
Experts (Over 350cc)
1. Pete Peed 18
2. Jim Pickering 20
Intermediates
1. Steve Neale 5
2. Pete Kirby 29
3. Ian Bullock 32
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