Ducati is legal

Well, as I have been off sick from work, I took the opportunity to queue for 2 hours at the French prefecture in Grenoble to get the Ducati paperwork sorted, and guess what it is now fully legal in France, and registered as a Collectors bike, this allows me to insure for an additional 9 Euros per year!! Obviously it is not covered for theft for this price. So it now has a French number plate, and I only hope the weather stays nice so I can take it out before the winter arrives.

I had to helicoil one of the front brake caliper holding bolt holes, which gave me the opportunity to try out a new set of helicoil tools that I bought. The helicoil process allows you to replace the often to soft aluminium thread with a much stronger stainless steel thread insert, which looks much like a spring. You have to drill out the old thread with a specific size drill, then tap the thread that takes the insert. You use a special tool to "screw" the helicoil in, and once it is in position you break off the special tab (which is what the insertion tool uses) with another special tool, and there you have a bright and shiny new steel thread in the place of the old one. It was a pretty straight forward operation, although I made a mistake in pushing to hard on the insertion tool, which made the initial insert (remember spring like) stretch and jump a thread. I had to remove it and use another one, by just turning the tool, no pushing, and it worked perfectly!

Rear Carb done

It's strange why the rear carb is cleaner and in better nick than the front one (internally). The accelerator pump definitely works, nothing of note inside, although I couldn't get the float out as the axle was too stiff, and I didn't want to damage it.

Change a few gaskets, and a couple of o rings. I noted the size of the jets as below :-
Emulsion tube AB265
Mains 152
Pilot 60
Accelerator pump jet 50

The front mixture screw was 2.5 turns out and the rear was 2.25 turns out. I need to check if my vacuum guages will fit the inlet stubs, so I can now set about adjusting the carbs and hopefully getting some resemblance of an idle.

Chris had bought the original workshop manuals which have some really good diagrams of the carbs showing all the different fuel and air circuits pretty good!

Will change the pads on the 350 this afternoon, as expected it's pissing down outside - still avoids working in the garden!

New disks....

Put the new disks on, and cleaned up the front wheel, took a couple of hours, but it was worth it - I wonder how long it will stay this shiny! I couldn't put the new pads and the new disks in together, as it would really have binded, so I have put the old pads in for the moment, until the disks are bedded in a bit, then I will put the new EBC pads in as well. I will do the rear carb tomorrow, as the forecast is rain, and hopefully I can try it during the week!

Ducati Disks & Carbs

Had a chance to do the front carb. on the Ducati, and received the rotors. Replaced a few gaskets from the kit I had bought although I didn't touch the accelerator pump as it works, I don't know if it needed bleeding or not, but it definately works, so I left alone. There was some nice sludge in the emulsion tube, so I was glad that I made the effort.

The new disks are sexy, I will put them on tomorrow.

Stuff to do over winter....

I went out to try a Daytona 675 today at the local Triumph shop. The 3 things that come to mind straight away are - lovely engine, fantastic brakes, but very bum in the air - the thing revs to 15K, and makes a lovely noise with a road legal arrow silencer. The mirrors were absolutely useless worse I've seen, and my boots rubbed on the swinging arm, as the heel protectors seem to be badly positioned for me. Don't think I'll get one - my 955i Daytona is still a lovely bike!

Anyway, the point of this post is really to start my list for the winter or what I would like to do :-
1/. Put dzeus quarter turn fittings on the RG fairing (difficult)
2/. Change the RG clutch plates to Kevlar ones to stop the binding (easy)
3/. Drop mains to 220's on the RG (easy)
4/. Drop mains to 350's on the RD (easy)
5/. Change a couple of pistons on the RG (medium)
6/. Change pistons on the RD (medium)
7/. Buy a van and prepare it for racing (I'm looking at a Renautl Traffic L2/H1 any opinions....)
8/. Service Libby's bike (CB 500)
9/. Do the disks and carbs on the Ducati.

Voila, that's it - for the moment!

Video from Ledenon

Spot the speed -

Ledenon - Race report

Well, we are back from Ledenon, after a weekend's racing. For those that aren't too familiar with French geography Ledenon is in the South of France near Nimes, so one would expect there to be lots of sun for the last race weekend of the year, well the weather forecasters got it right for once, and although Friday and Saturday were sunny, the Sunday was a disaster, with rain starting early morning and getting heavier and heavier as time went on. Finally around 16:00 they cancelled our second race because they were so far behind schedule that we would have needed lights to race!

Anyway back to Friday. We arrived early to reserve space for the fan club (this being my home circuit), and setup the tent etc... the only practice was at 15:30. The RD 350 had leaked a little oil from the clutch cover during the trip, so I was really hoping the RG500 was going to be track worthy.

As I mentioned previously, I had upped main jets to 250's for the cooler weather, however when I went out it was a sunny 25 degrees, so I was way too rich. The bike had difficulty making it's way to 8K and then it would fly off at 9K to around 10.5K, really difficult to ride, anyway the engine ran for 20 minutes, and everything seemed OK.

During scrutineering, the bike wouldn't make more than 6k sitting on the stand because it was too rich. I had the 350 go through scrutineering as well just in case.

Friday evening, I went down to 230's again, plus I lowered the needles to the second to highest clip position, plus I removed the carb trunks, which I reckon is probably worth another 15 points.
With these modifications completed we had a drink and went to bed. You can imagine I didn't sleep well, thinking I had gone too far in my leaning off the carbs.

In the morning I decided that a plug chop was absolutely necessary, before racing, so I decided to do only a couple of laps of timed practice on the RG, and this would give me the opportunity to qualify the 350 as well. SO having decided this, I "fixed" my oil leak on the 350 again, and moved it closer to the pits so that I could make a quick change.

Well, the 500 was working much better, much more mid range with an acceptable kick at around 7.5K as the exhaust valves close - as planned I pulled in after 3 laps trying to give a final full throttle going into the pit lane, and coasting to a stop next to the 350. I completed the session on the 350 although they didn't catch any of my lap times after swapping bikes, so I qualified at the back of the grid.

Back at camp, I pulled off the tank and checked out the plugs on 3 and 4, and they were both a dark chocolate brown - yea hey - we are getting somewhere. Still a little rich in my opinion, but working much better!

The village fan club arrived Saturday afternoon, so it was disappointing to wake up Sunday morning to the rain! The first race was at 10:50, and as I sat on the pre-grid we watched the rain really start to fall, a number of my colleagues abandoned at that point, and as we went out onto the track, it was clear that this was not going to be fun. The warm up lap, was liquid cooled, and my tyres were probably as cold as they could get, I got a reasonalbe start and overtook, about 6 guys into the first triple left hander. The water was sitting on the track in the flat bits, and was creating streams across the track in the sloped sections. Everywhere was really slippy! I had a couple of really big moments opening the throttle and after that I decided the main objective was to stay upright!

I finished the race in a lowly position, having been overtaken by numerous bikes, and honestly I didn't have the means to go any faster, the front end was slipping as I leant over, and the back was spinning each time I opened her up. There were two sections where the tyres were gripping so I could give it the beans there, but altogether a poor performance, and totally disagreable - but the positive side was that the bike was working!

Throughout lunch and early afternoon, it was clear that the weather was worsening, and as happens it these cases there had to be a big accident before the race organisers decided to take action. The final of the Promosport 600, and someone fell at the first bend and was run over by a few bikes, the race was red flagged, and the debris and ambulances took about an hour to clear. The guy was in pretty bad shape, last we heard he had 2 broken legs and crushed chest - I hope he makes it!

Anyway after much discussion the rest of the afternoon was canceled, so we packed up in the rain, with at least the knowledge that both my bikes are now working well....

Photos and video later.

Update

Well I started the RG500 today - about 6 kicks were enough to get the petrol through, and generate enough electricity for the capacitor. It wouldn't idle, so I kept the throttle open until she was nice and warm, the cylinders seem to be well balanced, at least all the pipes were heating at the same level.

I let her cool down and then started her up and balanced the carbs, phew all OK, I need to check the oil level before taking her out, but the fairing is now back on and the bikes are both tucked up in the trailer.

Sorry, no video...

Technical Update

Well it's Tuesday evening, and the cylinders, heads, exhaust valves, carbs. are all now back on, just leaving the radiater and exhausts for tomorrow, and then I can start her up! No issues, I just hope I haven't forgotten anything. I up jetted the carbs. to 250's, mainly because I want it nice and rich so that everything is well cooled and lubricated, I might even up the oil a bit, just to be sure.

I'll try and video the start up if I have enough hands.

Pistons in

So I got my gasket cement/maker on Friday in the post, it is THREEBOND 1104 which is liquid and grey in colour and runny, but most importantly it is resistant to petrol and oil!

Friday evening I got the crankcase upper on, and fitted the pistons, I was hoping I would have 2 new pistons from Mark Dent, however due to a cock up with his supplier, he received the wrong size, hence I have put the old ones back in, (old is a relative term as they don't have many miles on them at all). The gudgeon pins and bearings and circlips are new. interestingly you can really feel, on the old gudgeon pins, a ridge that has worn - either a symptom of the broken bearings or the reason. Anyway, at least the bottom end is now new, and balanced, so even if I swap out pistons at a later date, this isn't much work. I am on a run down to the last race weekend now, so it would be nice to get the RG back out on the track even if I just run in the cranks, and bearings.

I need to get the cylinders on and the rotary valves in place this evening.

The rest of last weekend was spent at Magny-Cours watching the French round of the World Superbikes, both races being very exciting with plenty of suspense up until the last laps. The 1000 superstock was good as well with a French rider winning the race in front of Badovini and his BMW. The only bummer of the weekend was the wind, which broke my tent, "luckily" on the Sunday. We had a good trip up and back, on some small twisties through the massif central. Both BMW and Aprilia had huge stands with all of their models present.

Update tomorrow if I manage to take some photos.