Pipes painted

Just finished applying the second coat of paint to my pipes. I bought the paint from Restom which is a French company specialising in tank lining products. It's gloss and high temperature resistant. Although they say  to apply directly to the bare metal I first used a rust inhibitor from Loctite, and then 2 coats of paint. Between coats I rubbed it down a bit, because the gloss does bring out every little imperfection. It looks ok wben dry, just hope it's effective.

It's getting cold...

Well despite, the 30-50cms of snow in the garden, nothing warms you more than a good old session in the garage!

This time I was removing bits from the RG in preparation for repairing them! The exhausts need a coat of paint, and as I bought some high temperature RESTOM paint, I am impatient to try it!

I bent the footrest holder flat again (wiv a hammer!) and also bent the gearlever back into shape, I turned off the end of the gear change lever so you can't even see it was damaged. I made up a couple of aluminium spacers for the footrest hanger and also one for the gear lever itself that should make it a bit less wobbley. I was quite pleased as I managed to "part-off" the spacers with my lathe, which I hadn't managed to succeed at as yet, a combination of lots of cutting/cooling fluid and regularly removing the tool from the metal to prevent the tool jamming in the metal.

It would appear that the fibre glass dust has penetrated inside the disk cover, and therefore inside the engine, I am not sure if I can be bothered to split the engine cases again, just for some fibre glass dust, I don't think it can be abrasive.... or maybe it is.....

Keeping Busy

Haven't written much recently, but I have been busy, trying to make space so I can start working on the RG in ernest. After Chris fell off the ducati during his visit, the right hand footrest needed rebrazing back on, and consequently painting, so that was done, and it is now all back together again, the Daytona has had a new front tyre, went for a Dunlop Sportsmart 2 this time around as they were cheaper and supposedly better than the Sportsmart 1 - we'll see, I was amazed that the previous tyre nearly did 10K kms, which is great for a sports tyre.

Jean-Luc's DT125 is still not running well, I cut up an old RD350 air filter, to make it fit the DT, but it starts OK, and then dies after a few seconds. Still some work to do there, I am begining to think it may not be just the carb. being dirty - maybe there is an electrical problem, aswell.... maybe....

The list of stuff to do on the race bikes is coming together :-

Clean out debris from accident remove rotary disk cover from Nr. 3 to see how far the shit got.
Repair fairings
Paint exhausts black
Fit MD pickup and re-adjust timing
On the 350 slacken off the damping on the gold valves (forks) I reckon about 3 turns off should do it!

Technical Update

First time out in the garage after Croix. I have received my new TM34 carb from MotoCarb in the UK, about the cheapest in Europe (that I know), and very quick service. There are some differences which are a little worrying - the bellmouth is a slightly different shape, and the needles are different, but in principle I will exchange over all my jets, needles etc.. from the old one so I am hoping there will not be any significant difference. The fuel spigot is a bigger diameter, which means a bigger diameter fuel pipe (good).

I purchased a new ignition controller from Borut which should be compatible with the Dent ignition pickup, I installed it in about 15 mins. mostly plug and play, except the old controller needed a sepearate wire for each coil whereas this one only needs one pair of wires (standard). Hopefully I can test this with the Dent pickup sooner rather than later.

Of course I will need to think about cleaning out he crap in the rotary valves on Cylinder 3 and also think about what to do with the fairing. I picked up some cheap lever replacements in the web, which I'll pick up from the UK in a couple of weeks.

Croix-en-Ternois

Spent the weekend filling and repainting the right fairing with some rattle cans and fibreglass filler, in the end I was pretty pleased with the result, although it would need some varnish to have the same finish. Anyway no time for that, I rebalanced the carbs after having shortened the throttle cable by about 3 mms, I did it in situ which isn't easy as I didn't want to burn the fairing or instruments, but I managed OK.

So the plan was to attend the weekend at C-en-T circuit as it was the last ProClassic weekend of the year, plus Philippe was putting on some parade lap sessions, so thought I would see our buddies and have some track time aswell!

We travelled up, with just the 500 in the lorry, and on the Thursday evening, stayed in Troyes over night and then finished the journey on Friday morning arriving at the circuit just before midday.

I booked in for some free practise in the afternoon and setup up camp. The first session with the needles in position 2 from the top was (I think) better, and the bike was lifting the front in the first 3 gears (off the hairpin), not surprising as I run 14/40 front/rear sprockets, and I still only just needed 6th gear along the straight! I was able to measure my acceleration and top speed with some of the GSXR's and I am not bad, still missing a little for the top boys, but I think pretty competitive for the middle runners.

I didn't change anything for the second of third sessions, although I could try lifting the needles one more clip position as I am still suffering from a huge hole (less than Magny-Cours - maybe).

Anyway in the third session I was being overtaken by a couple of fast guys on the right hand side, and as I drifted out to the left to prepare for the next right hand bend, someone came past on my left and clipped me, taking me down! I just had the chance to see his bike as I fell. Not the fastest part of the circuit but probably at 80-100km per hour, I slid down the track and then as I left the track I did multiple head over heels. I got the feeling that I had stopped but still kept going, finishing in the gravel trap. The bike ended up further into the gravel having slid all the way on the left side.

Got ambulanced back to the medical centre, all my fingers were really painful, and I had a sore shoulder and had burned a hole in my knee where my leathers had worn through. I felt quite sick for a bit, and so I got shipped to the local clinic to be checked out. My right middle finger was broken (last phalanxe) and the rest was just bruised (luckily). My head had scuffed the deck as the visor was scratched but nothing serious.

I got back to the circuit later that evening, to look at the bike. Most of the damage was to the left hand fairing which had worn down the top (nr3) carb finishing by splitting the bell mouth, so it is basically dead. The top of the fairing was lightly scratched and the clutch lever and cable broken. The seat unit suffered a few scrapes and some gravel rash!

Not fixable for the rest of the weekend, and anyway with the splint they put on my finger neither was the pilot!

Lots of work for the winter!

Magny-Cours Bol d'Or Classic

So back from the weekend at Magny-Cours at the Bol d'Or Classic weekend. Libby and I were signed up for the parade laps. Six sessions, 2 per day on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We got there around 11:00 am on the Friday, and got straight to the sign-in desk, as our first session was at 13:30. The bikes also had to go through a rudimentary scrutineering, with our equipment. All that was done, and the stress was increasing (for Libby) this was her first time at a big event, and the first time at Magny-Cours. She was now managing to start the bike on her own, so I think she less anxious about sitting on the pre-grid.

The first session was great, I stayed with Lib for the first lap - trying to show her the way around. There were at least 3 other RG 500 in the session, but I was the only one really opening up! The bike was great, with really nice power above 7.5K all the way through to about 11K. I wasn't pushing it in the first laps as I had taken a complete guess at the main jet sizes (260 all round). I was really careful to choke the bike at the braking for Adelaide as the end of biggest straight. I cut the igntion at the end of the session to try and preserve some colour on the plugs, which turned out to be a really nice chocolate brown, although the left cylinders were slightly lighter than the right side - don't know why? Chris (bruv.) arrived in the afternoon, and we went out for the second session at the end of the afternoon, and had a great time, I started to really open the RG up, as the jetting was near enough right. Still a big hole before 7.5K I will try to raise the needles for the next session. I had put on a second hand rear Pirelli SuperCorsa I had bought off ebay, which I completely forgot, so it was operating OK. The temperature hung around 71 degrees centigrade which I was well pleased with, although I am not sure if this is a result of the new radiater cap or because of something else - that is the problem of changing loads of stuff at once. In the evening the classic and post classic bikes were out for qualification for the Bol d'Or, and we were surprised to find some of our mates from ProClassic, so we followed with interest the qualification sessions

Quite a good event with a jumble and some professional stands (I bought some new ear plugs - 18 Euros so I hope they are good). I also found some rubber caps for some brake bleed nipples that I was missing. There were also some interesting clubs there, with Ural side cars, Z900 club etc..

Saturday we had another two sessions, unfortunately I lost the front end going into Estoril, which is a long fast right hander leading onto the Golf straight. I don't know why, maybe some oil on the track, I was in a higher gear than normal so perhaps I didn't have enough drive going into the bend, anyway I found myself on my back looking at the bike sliding away into the gravel trap!

After a brief trip in the breakdown truck back to the pits, I inspected the bike, and too my relief there was not much damage. The right hand side fairing was scraped, the carbon air deflector had worn through, and one carb was a little scraped. The main damage was taken on the footrest and clipon, and brake lever which had snapped. The worst was trying to clear out all the gravel - it gets in everywhere, I recovered a couple of stones from in the bellmouths, but the rotary valves were all OK, and the engine turned over nice and smooth by hand.

I replace the brake lever, and the footrest, bodged some tape over the fairing holes, stuck the air deflector back on and we were ready to go out again!

Libby didn't want to go out in the last session, so I took the 350 out, which was good fun, although I really need to back off the gold valves a couple of turns as the front end chatters considerabley.

With night falling, the rain started, and we watched the Bol d'Or first round race, which was wet to say the least - shame!

We have rain all night, and we were due out at 8:30, but we both decided to stay in bed! The rain continued into the morning, and we decided to abandon ship. We packed up everything in the wet, and made our way home!

Now the carbs are setup for (2 notch from the top) for C-en-T in a weeks time, so I will test them there!

Technical Update - Pickup, fairing molds etc...

Been busy in the garage again, trying to get the RG started. Since installing my Dent pickup I have only managed to start it once - after much sweating on the kickstart!  And even then it didn't run right. Mark actually replied to my email, although just reassuring me that it would work - if the gap was right. I will wait 'til after the Magny-Cours weekend before playing with it again. He didn't tell me what the gap should be, but discussions on the Gamma list would lead me to testing with the plugs out and trying different gaps, until I can get a decent signal from it. Have re-installed the original one which fired the bike first time, I quickly checked the carbs (balance), and adjusted the tickover slightly - I will need to do this again before packing the bike in the van.


I need to remember to switch ignition programs.....

As far as the molds are going I couldn't remove the clay plugs without damaging them, so I just soaked them in water, and they came out as liquid mud! The molds are OK... still a few bubbles and stuff but they are alright for a first go - I am sure I will have to create some more.

Anyway you can see them here with 2 layers of carbon weave which will have to be trimmed off this evening and then I need to think about how I am going to attach them to the fairing.