Sunday Ride Classic

Great weekend at the SRC this last Easter weekend. We took  3 bikes down, the FZR 600 for Pierre-Luc, the RG for me and the 350 just in case!

I borrowed a trailer which I have used before, but this time the tyres were not in brilliant shape, and you can't see it at all once it's behind the Renault Trafic. Still I loaded up Thursday afternoon after having finally sorted the carbs I shortened the cable to carb nr. 3, so I could bring it close to adjustment. It was dripping premix from somewhere but within acceptable limits, so it went in as was.

We left Friday morning to arrive at lunchtime, the make shift number plate ended up on the floor, but that was the only minor mishap. We wanted to be next to PL arriving later in the day so decided to put ourselves in parking E which is a long way out, but the organisation had added electricity connections so the only thing we were missing were toilets.

PL was going to miss the Friday evening session which they had moved forward to avoid people having to stay late on Sunday, crazy from our perspective as there was Easter Monday so no need to get home before Monday evening. Anyway I got all the admin out of he way and even managed to convince them to give me a scrutineering badge for 350, which meant that I could use it at a moments notice (a good thing).

The bike was still loosing fluid which on further investigation seemed to be coming from a rather large air leak from the ignition pickup. Wow if I had gone out with that leak I would have surely seized! Disaster avoided!
I removed the pickup (with some difficulty as one of the screws had seized and I ended up drilling it out) and borrowed some gasket silicone and we were back in business.

Friday evening the first session, finished after a couple of laps as I couldn't shift up by foot. The lever was jamming on the connecting rod, bummer. A quick fix by adding a was here to stiffen things up a bit. The bike was running as normal apart from the gears.... That's to say nothing under 8krpm and then great power up to the red line at 11.5k.

PL arrived at around 9:00 having had an awful journey through the holiday traffic. Luckily I had taken his pass, so I waited for him at the entrance on the FZR.

He went wrong somewhere so I waited for about 15mins, and then went to start the bike to lead him to the car park, and the battery was almost dead. I managed to limp back to the car park and upon further investigation it was clear that the reg/rec had burnt out! Luckily we were able to put the battery on charge overnight, otherwise he would have been disappointed in the morning.

As it was, in the morning the FFM were unable to provide a day license so PL ended up missing his second session!
I went out again and completed 3 laps this time round as one of the side panels came loose and I had to pull in to fix the dzus fittings.

Libby also told me that the bike was smoking a lot even down the straight so I checked the plugs for richness and effectively they were dark, but I wasn't going to jet down as the next session was a cold morning one.

Anyway next session the bike only started on 3 and despite my efforts to fix it the cylinder nr. 3 was still not firing correctly so I peeled my sticker off and jumped on the 350 for the 3rd session which went great! A real pleasure to be able to concentrate on enjoying myself  rather than worrying about the bike.

In the evening I changed the coil and plug on the RG but nothing altered so I can only assume that the carb settings on nr. 3 were so far out due to me setting them up with the leak, that this was affecting the firing.

Anyway, I could emptied it of petrol, filled up the 350 and didn't touch it again until Sunday evening loading.

The Sunday we had 2 morning sessions and the 350 was a dream to ride, I had a great time battling it out with other 2 strokes!

In the meantime whilst wondering about Saturday morning I managed to find a reg/rec similar to the one on the 600, which I purchased for 30 euros, and the 600 was back to charging the battery again! So we didn't have to dismantle everything after each session to charge the battery.

All in all a weekend that started badly but ended rather well especially as we had a great day on the coast and a lovely meal with friends on Sunday evening before hitting the traffic Monday afternoon.