Preparation for CenT

Busy weekend in preparation for the weekend at Croix-en-Ternois in September, I will be participating in my first endurance (3 hours) with the Yam 350, and also in the normal races on the RG500. I started on the RG500, on which I did the following :-

- Drained and replaced the gearbox oil, replaced with Motul Transoil and Mecacyl HY which is a gearbox additive which is supposed to improve the binding clutch situation.

- Drained the coolant, and ran through some radiator cleaning fluid, and checked out the water pump impeller which was in perfect condition.

- Installed smaller main jets - now down to 200's 

On the 350 I did the following :-

- Changed the piston rings, I discovered that the expander rings that I had debated putting in had actually become very brittle and when I removed them they both broke into pieces, I did  not replace them!

- Charged the battery

- On the 350 I am waiting for my damper rods to come back from brazing up the holes - I just hope they arrive today (Monday), which will enable me to get the forks back on, as time is ticking on.

I started up the 500 to check things were OK, and noticed that the cylinder No. 3 was not running as hot as the others, i.e. the exhaust pipe was only warm after about 5 minutes running, and even removing the spark plug cap, did not seem to make difference. To cut a long story short, I still haven't found the issue, but suspect that the rotary disk that I replaced long ago, must have been installed wrong! When I look through the carbs at the rotary disks (throttle open), the disk is not synchronised with cylinder No. 2 and it should be! Nos. 1 & 4 are at the same angle, but 2 & 3 are out!!! I am going to have to pull this off tonight to see if I could have made a mistake when I installed it. This would explain why this cylinder is blowing back a lot of fuel through the carb - more updates tomorrow.

We will be traveling up to the UK at the end of the week, and will be leaving the trailer with a friend in Lille, this will avoid having to drive all the way down through France, and then back up for the race near Calais the next weekend, so everything has to be packed up and ready to roll Thursday evening!