Update RG500 and other bits

Well, I have decided to repair the RG, so I have sent the cylinder off to PJ Motorcycle Engineers in Wolverhampton UK, they make their own cylinder sleeves, and will provide me with a piston and hopefully machine the inside of the piston to fit the RG500 small ends and thrust washers ~22.3 mms.

I was hoping to get this done locally, but these guys were cheaper, and the local contact offered to meet me in a carpark to do business, so I wasn't filled with confidence about that, so I preferred doing business with a company with a good website - funny world isn't it!

I haven't decided what to do with the crank yet, the neighbour is an engineer so I am going to ask his advice on the bearings - I think they are OK.

In the meantime, ordered a new disk from Maranello with some rivets, Franco reckons I must have vibration issues causing my engine woes. The French RG forum think it was a bad batch of thrust washers (seriously) and some guy is sending me some old ones - this kinda rings a bell, because if I remember correctly Laurent lost one when I gave them to him, and therefore I replaced that with a new one, - it could have been that one which exploded the first time around and then the replacement exploding the second time around.... although I am kind of doubtful. Franco didn't think it was the clearance as there was not sign of heating or blueing on the remaining part of the thrust washer.

So not really that far advanced in my thinking. I did go to the effort of reinstalling the rear crank and then fitting the rotary disk (on Nr. 4) to see if I could see any clearance issues. as there was some evidence of wear on the rear of the internal rotary disk. But again nothing obvious, plenty of clearance between the internal disk cover and the crank bearing.

Plus clearance between the disk and the outer and inner covers. One thing I will do is check that the crank has been put together correctly. The pistons 2 and 3 should be at TDC whilst 1 & 4 should be at BDC, and cylinder Nr3 should be a couple of degrees before the timing cutout in the crank.....

I have also ordered a belly pan and race seat for the FZR600, I was talking to a guy from BB plastics in the UK, but in the end I went for Poly26 locally as the transport from the UK was a bit expensive and a worry. The disadvantage is that Poly26 only do stuff in that horrible grey, and BB plastics would have done a nice black gel coat for some extra money, which would have made painting less of a problem.

Anyway I have applied for my 2016 racing license (training only) and signed up for the Sunday Ride Classic at the famous Paul Ricard circuit on the 16/17th April, so if anyone is down that way....

Happy Xmas, to all!

RG 500 stripdown

So if you remember, the last outing on the RG ended with what I thought a small seize at the end of the straight at Ales.

Well I was kinda putting off, stripping it down (for fear of what I would find), but over this last week, finally got down to it. To be honest, I was considering just selling up, as the lack of reliability this year, has been a disaster.

Well it didn't dissappoint, I could see with just the head off that something had been bouncing around in there, with impacts on the head. After pulling the cylinder, I found a part of  a thrust washer sitting on the inside of the crankcase, about two thirds of it. The other third had wreaked havoc around the the piston, cylinder and crankcase.

The piston  has a slice taken out of it, and unfortunately the cylinder aswell, from the central transfer port down about 1 cm. Difficult to see on the photos but here they are anyway :-

The cylinder is basically toast... although will now need to investigate a new sleeve, which holds it's own complications as that would that cylinder back to the standard bore whilst the others are all 1.5mms bigger.... maybe need to re-sleeve all....

To add insult to injury, the piece of washer had also tried to escape through the rotary disk, so that needs changing as well!

I continued to strip the engine down, and although there are some impact marks on the conrod, I don't think there is any damage to the bearings... although I will need to get it checked professionally, as the last thing I want to do is have it go again. 

The cylinder head is going to have to be OK, after some filing down of the impacts.

I have decided that I will build it back up and not part it out, but I will not run it again until I get airboxes built, although none of these break downs are due to stuff getting in from outside.

I now think the reason that the thrust washers keep breaking, are that there is not enough clearance between the piston webbing and the thrust washers.

I measured the failed piston gap between piston webbing and it was machined to 21.9mms. The gap on a standard piston is 22.2mms, so missing 0.3mms of clearance. If you remember I had to open out the clearance on 3 of the pistons that ALCO did as they not machined straight - well this was the only piston I did NOT touch, and I think that was the reason for the failure.

The clearance of the other pistons (that I machined) is larger than the standard Suzuki clearance, I am pretty convinced that having a slightly bigger clearance is better, as long as (of course) the conrod can not move to touch the crank webbing.

Anyway sorry to be so wordy..... the bench is very busy....

New shock for the FZR

Went for what is now the cheapest after market shock on the market, and by no means the worst, if his reputation is to be believed. 395 Euros delivered, and received within 48 hours! Of course changing the shock is a pain, coz you have to support the bike frame rather than just the swinging arm, so you either need to use a jack on the exhaust headers (don't like this method) or prop the bike frame rails with blocks of wood. Mike at the Shock Factory suggested I take a longer shock to give the rear end a bit more lift as it will predominantly be used on the track.

Anyway got the old one out, which was actually in pretty good nick (at least it was clean), ,then started putting the new one in, it's a much bigger beast, the spring is much bigger, but it went in easilt enough, except half way through the bike fell off it's blocks of wood. Thankfully Libby was just a phone call away, and we got it back up on the blocks!

Also installed the remaining rear steel braided brake lines on the RG and RD.

First engine start

I thought it was worth starting the engine before investing any money in the track FZR, so I swapped over the battery on the road version, and tried the started motor, which didn't do much, some troubleshooting later revealed that the starter motor relay was not functioning plus there is another relay box which seems to control a number of other circuit also had a broken pin, luckily I had both bits in my parts stash, so they were quickly exchanged, and the starter worked... the engine didn't start first off. I knew there was 12 volts at the coils, so suspected either the pickup or the CDI box, I cleaned up the connectors on the CDI, and removed a plug to test for a spark.

With the plug out a lovely big spark was seen! I put the plug back in and low and behold there was life!

Although the exhaust is pretty quiet the induction noise without the airbox is quite loud. Now I know it works, I will balance the carbs and try and get her running smoothly! I cheated on the video as this was the second start :-)

Garage floor

Finally got some time to cover the flaky paint flooring in the garage, that meant everything out and then a good opportunity to clean out everything and make some more space.

Seals and bushes

Received the Pyramid kit, and the YSS Fork valve a cheaper version of the racetech goldvalves.

I had never changed bushes before, and it was  a right pain getting the outer bush seated in the lower part of the fork, lot's of bashing about, still they finally went in and then the oil seals and new dust covers were a doddle. In order to fit the PD valves, (dunno what that stands for, but they couldn't really call them "gold valves" could they!), you basically negate the damping effect of the damping rod by drilling some big holes, to allow the oil to circulate freely, then the damping is controlled by a spring loaded shim which sits in the path of the oil. The spring pressure is controlled by a screw, and it's this screw which you can adjust to get varying levels of damping stiffness.

Here is a picture of the damping rods with the holes drilled in them (before and after).

The forks went back on and I fitted the clipons between the top and bottom triple clamps, to make it more racey. I bolted up the gearbox sprocket, and removed the rear wheel for cleaning.

I need to put it back on as the garage is getting cleaned out and a lino floor put down, hopefully banishing the white flecks of paint on everything, I'll take a photo of the new garage floor!

FZR forks overhaul

Well, I have been working on the front end of the "Track" FZR. I managed to get the brake pistons moving fairly well, and I think with some rubber grease in there, they will be OK.

The forks are a bit marked, and a full strip down was necessary, but I couldn't get the damper bolt out of the bottom of each fork leg, they were really stuck. Looking on the web, many people had used a 24mm (across flats) nut which fits in the top of the damper unit, so it was off to the shops to buy some threaded rod and 4 nuts.

The two additional nuts are just to block the others on the thread. It worked a treat and the fork legs are now apart.

The old gunge in the bottom of the legs was discusting - stank the place out! One of the bushes was worn, so I have purchased a kit off Ebay, which contains the 2x2 bushes and seals and dust covers.

I am also contemplating buying a do it yourself length of braided brake hose, with the appropriate fittings to do the front of the FZR, plus the rear on the RG, RD, and FZR, works out a lot cheaper, and doesn't seem difficult to achieve. Venhill do a kit of stuff.

Bike Updates

Just some stuff to ensure I have it written down :-
Serviced the Daytona at the weekend : Oil, filter, Air filter, plugs just past 80K kms now.
Changed the oil and filter on the Street at 15785Kms.

New rear tyres for the Dayto and the Street - Sportsmart II, fitted at Dafy Moto
New front tyre on the FZR 600 fitted at MotoLabo - Pirelli Angel

Stripped the forks and front brakes on the Track FZR, got all the pistons moving again, but need to make a tool to allow me to split the fork uppers from the lowers, on the web the guys use a 24mm nut on the end of a long threaded rod, the 24mm nut fits into the end of the damping rod allowing you to turn the allen screw at the other end.

Went out on the Ducati at the weekend - started second kick (good), although still popping and farting more than it did. It just about holds tickover now, I let Pierre-Luc have a go (at his request), and was able to follow it, and it is blowing a bit of blue smoke, so need to keep an eye on the oil level. Pumped the front tyre up on it, and improved the handling no-end :-) When we stopped Pierre Luc pulled on the tank, grabbing the petrol line and dislodging it from the rear carb, so we spent half an hour trying to push it back on, it just needs to be a few cms. longer.....Lovely colours in the Vercors, and bikes running well.

Still need to look at the RG500 after the weekend at Ales, I think it has seized slightly on Nr. 1 but I need to look.

The winter program is looking something like :

RG500 : Engine, build a carbon airbox

RD350 : Look at slight oil leak (gear change shaft or clutch cover), fix rev. counter
Ducati : Petrol lines (don't worry Chris I'll keep the old ones..), oil and filter change
FZR600 Track : Finish forks, simplify wiring, Race fairing

FZR600 Street : Paint & fit new fairing

Alès Video - just a couple of laps on the RD350

Don't worry if the revs. never go over 4K - I was having some problems with the needle jamming!

Ales - RG 500 30 years anniversary Track Day outing

I had booked us in to the RG500 club de France annual track day weekend, at the Pole Technique d'Ales, they always pick such a late date in the year, last years was cancelled due to bad weather, but as it was the 30th birthday gig, I couldn't really miss it.

They join forces with the RD500 club, and basically any two strokes can take to the track.

They book the Sunday and Monday for the "weekend" which I think reduces costs, and does allow anyone, anywhere in France and elsewhere to get to the circuit in the South of France. We had been eyeing the weather forecast for the last couple of weeks, and the Sunday and Monday seemed OK, but torrential rain was forecasted for Saturday, so we decided on staying at a hotel for Saturday night and setting up at the circuit on Sunday morning.

As forecast there were some really bad storms, with people dying near Nice and other parts of the South, so we were pretty lucky, that in Ales the storms were just bad!

Sunday morning at the track, and we jumped on the last space in the paddock near a fence (for the barnum), next to a couple of guys down from the UK, with their highly modified track RD500's (Darren & Luke).

We got setup and signed on for the "confirmed" group (most experienced). The weather was pretty cold so I was bit worried about the jetting of the RG, so I took out the RD 350 for the first and second sessions on an initially damp track, but quickly drying off. Just before the lunch time break I took the 500 out, and it went through 15 mins, on a dry track. No worries, although nothing much under 8.5K there was strong power through to 11K. The temperature must have around 17-18 degrees centigrade, still a little low compared to my last track day at Ledenon. At lunch I checked the plugs on the 350 and 500, the 350 looked a little light on one plug, but the 500 seemed pretty rich on the 3 out of 4 cylinders, so I wasn't concerned when I took it out for the first afternoon session at 15:00. Unfortunately I did a couple of laps, and at the end of the relatively short straight, it coughed and I felt a seize coming on, so in with the clutch and coast back to the pits!

The rest of the weekend went well on the 350, completing 11 sessions in all.
They had a classic rock band on the Sunday night with a guitarist who really knew his Hendrix, Clapton etc..., with a BBQ etc.. so all in all a great weekend, a part from the obvious technical issues. My thanks as usual to the pit crew (Libby) for an excellent weekend. The photos below are an RG500 with an RGV250 top fairing, with an RS250 seat unit, which I really like and may try to emulate in a future build.

Building another bike

Made the most of Chris being down to change out the engine on the spare FZR. The one I got for 200 euros had mayonnaise in the engine so I wanted to swap it out with the spare engine I got with the running bike - clear?

The 2 engines are slightly different.  The newer engine (mayonnaise), has no seperate oil cooler and therefore the oil and associated water plumbing are different.

The engine went in OK, with the carbs from the newer bike and the stator and pickup from the newer bike.

Now I either have to adapt the newer oil (screw on) filter to the old engine, or buy an oil cooler on the newer system, there os a coolant circuit that flows through the oil filter fixing plate, which means Yamaha could save money by removing the oil cooler. Unfortunately it's not an easy retrofit,  it will require machining to the newer plate. Hmmm will see if I can find a second hand cooler.

Second hand (60 euros) for an oil cooler, a bit expensive all the same, but simpler if I can sort out the plumbing.

Ledenon

Well, finally got around to writing up our trip down to Ledenon last weekend. Globally not bad, the RG got well and truly run-in although did manage to loosen up one rotary disk at the end of Sunday, but we managed 12 sessions in total with 8 sessions on the 350 (between Pierre-Luc, Pablo and myself) and 4 on the RG. About 50 litres of fuel, and a couple of litres of oil!

The 350 worked a dream all weekend, Pierre-Luc took her out first thing Satruday morning and bedded in the brakes (new disks and wheels) plus to wear-in the tyres. Pablo had his first go on the track soon after, and really did well, finishing the weekend with a great position on the bike as witnessed by his knee down at the entry to the tripl left at the end of the straight.

Although I think he has some work to hit the apex on that bend he certainly had great style!

I followed PL for a couple of laps with the onboard camera, and edited it down to the following small video :

Even the weather stayed good, the rain was supposed to hit on Sunday around lunch time so we packed up at around 12:00, and then hit the holiday traffic to get home around 16:00.

The aftermath of the RG500 was pretty dismal, and I am formally dumping my screwed up rotary disk hubs, to on only use the rivetted ones from now on!

The bike has been duly stripped down to the cranks again for a wash out, and fortunately the bearings seem OK. Don't know if I am going to sell it after this, as I am getting really pissed off with it! Still the next track outing is for the RG500 club at Ales, in October so we will see.

Still looks nice though!

On a different subject, I tightened the head race bearings on the FZR and she now handles acceptabley well, no longer shakes her head, and we will see about a new rear shock in the winter to bring her back to good handling bike, I really enjoyed batting around on her this weekend, and even Libby enjoyed a brief blast!

More work

As suspected 2 of the cylinder head studs didn't appreciate all this repeated activity and promptly pulled through. So the risky business of putting in a thread insert in the 2 stud holes was on the agenda. The tricky bit of this is to ensure all the drilling and threading is done vertically and not on the bonk, otherwise the head won't go on. Because of this I decided to use a drill chuck in the milling machine and setup the cylinder flat on the bed of the mill. As you can see from the first photo managed to fix the cylinder solidly to the bed and then drill and tap for the thread insert. I remember paying a bit of money for my thread insert kit, but it has payed for itself time over especially considering I would be out of the game right now if I had to rely on services from a shop!

Anyway the game plan is to try it again tomorrow with a small amount of gasket silicon on the head gasket, and then if that doesn't work swap the gasket again.

More news tomorrow.

Rebuild continues

Two steps forward one step back....

The engine was finished, and it fired 3/4 kick yesterday, not running very evenly, and I think I have inversed the rear carbs slides i.e. put the one from Cyl. 3 on 4 and visa versa, as they are way out in terms of synchro.

The worst of it though is that the front head gasket is leaking water...

Stripped the front head off and flipped the gasket to see if the leak moves, and it doesn't.... hmm....

Maybe there is a knick in the surface of cylinder holding it proud, or maybe the cylinder head is warped! Ordered a head gasket from Suzuki just in case, it will arive Thursday. Is it my impression or are the threads starting to pull through on one of the head studs......

In the process, changed over the carb slides, and now marked them up with coloured tie wraps. Green = gauche (left), Red = right, Red/black = right rear, Green/Black = left rear. 

In the process of removing the head I lost one of the heads nut washers - looked everywhere, moved the bikes, everything off the floor, removed the radiator, the exhausts to get a better look in between the cylinders, but nothing - really getting pissed off with this. I would prefer to be sleeping!

The head looks OK on a pane of glass, and with a set square, so I think that should be alright, there is a small (very) knick in the cylinder surface which I will remove when I get my new gasket on Thursday.

While I was doing nothing in the garage (!), took the rotary disk covers off on the RHS to check to see if the disk hubs were still tight (they were), so looking good there.

This morning, Libby came for a look, and found the washer in less than 5 minutes - was on a frame rail under the engine - F*&k !

Engine rebuild Update

Had an interesting discussion with a guy from Pro-bolt about torquing his bolts down, and they say they don't recommend anything over 16NM for these bolts, so needing 24NM was too much for it. For the moment I have replaced
with the originals - at least I know they will torque down, even if they disturb the airflow a little.

Finished the rest of the engine over the weekend, When I wanted to install the pistons, the machining on the inside was not quite at the right angle for the gudgeon pins to go through, on 3 out of 4 pistons....So I had the choice to try and correct it myself or send the pistons back to Laurent losing 4-6 days in the roundtrip in the post. After a chat with Laurent, I decided I would try and file them, although after a quick try it was impossible to do manually, so I decided to try and do one in the mill. The difficulty with milling is always getting the workpiece held firmly, and with a piston being round this was difficult, not wanting to mark the exterior of the piston, yet hold it firmly enough so it doesn't move.

Anyway, using very light cuts, I was successful at taking some metal off the inside, and eventually getting a free fit on the con-rod. I did the other 2 in the same way, although I made a bodge of Nr. 2 as I cut too deeply and then had to move the cutting tool out so there is a ridge on that one - I hope it won't matter!

The RG is special in that it uses thrust washers to space out the con-rod on the cranshaft in order that it doesn't touch the crank webs, however the washers are in the small end, so the alignment cylinder, piston, conrod, crankshaft is all linked. So me taking adhoc material off the pistons could affect everything - we will see!

Due to Laurent taking material off the head to cut out the impact damage, I had to check the squish values of the front cylinder, The volume of each combustion chamber is 14.2ccs (measured by Laurent), anyway he gave me the tip of assembling the cylinders with the piston rings removed to that it would be quick to get them on and off, which is what I did.

As you will remember, the technique is to position 3-4cms of 2mm diameter solder around the pistons "stuck" on with grease, then you have to assemble the heads (I just tightened them not torqued), then you turn the engine over slowly and the solder is crushed by the contact with the cylinder heads.

You then measure the pieces of solder and that gives you the squish value of each cylinder.

You can take the average values by adding the opposing numbers and then dividing by 2. The front squish was just over 1mm and the rear was about 0.9mm, In order to change the squish you need to vary the thickness of the base gaskets, which I will need to purchase, as I don't have the correct size. The optimal squish is 0.8 mms for a 125cc cylinder, so the rear is correct but the front could do with lowering slightly. Having a greater squish will lower optimal performance, but is safer for eventual piston, head contact.... so I am on the safe side.

I have now installed the piston rings and cylinders, heads all torqued up nicely, and now I have to attack my rotary disks!

Another quick update

The Ducati is now working, turned out that just changing the stator, although slightly changing the problem (i.e. the reg/rec got hot with the new stator), didn't fix the charging issue, I had to buy a reg/rec as well (RR51 Electrexworld) from a French company at the cost of 120 Euros all in. This fixed the problem, I now have a healthy 14.5 volts on the battery with the engine running. I've had it out a couple of times now, and all is well - I even have a generator light on (normal).

I went out with Olly, him on the FZR 600 and me on the Duke, the FZR has stopped leaking oil from the valve cover, so I think I was probably seeing oil dripping from earlier attempts and leaks, so all is well, except Olly said the head still shakes when you let the bars go. I need to check the tightness of the new headset.

I received my engine parts back from ALCO, with the front cylinders rebored to 57.5mms. Larent left a couple of marks lower down the bore otherwise we would've had to change the cylinder sleeves. So last bore on the front. I also got 2 new pistons for the rear cylinders now at 57.0 mms, he also changed all 4 con-rods and outside bearings on both crankshafts - just over a grand (Euros) if you are interested!

I installed the cranks, and put the crankcase half on, but during tightening/torquing I rounded the head on one of the domed allen head bolts that I purchased specifically for the job from Pro-bolt - not happy! Tried everything to remove the bolt to replace it, but in the end had to drill the head off, and remove the crankcase to remove the rest of the bolt... arghhh. Really pissed off with my (expensive bolts) although the guy at probolts says they are only rated at 16nm torque and I was tightening to 23nms, he told me this was written on the packet - which I haven't checked yet. Anyway replaced with the original bolts which although stick into the airflow, at least they are reliable.

Just in the process of putting my pistons in!

More news as soon as it's together - supposed to be going to Ledenon in 2 weeks time, to run it in!

Speak soon.

Quickie

Put in bigger pilot jets in the RG500 carbs: reference : 30 jets

New stator

Ha ha.... they kept me waiting but they sent me a rotor aswell - plonkers.

FZR600 Head stock bearings changed

So the handling of the FZR is somewhat strange to say the least, a new tyre on the rear helped and now it has had all the wheel bearings changed (the guy that sold the bike included them in the package!), so I thought the last thing that would affect the fairly iffy front end would be the headstock bearings.

Got a set off Ebay - pyramid bearings that were cheap, and came with the bearing covers included, I couldn't better the price so went with them!

I stuck the races in the freezer, and the bearings on the window sill (it's currently about 36 degrees c over here), and went to strip the bike. Everything came off relatively easily, although I had to use a hydraulic jack under the exhaust system to hold the bike up, which was a bit dodgy, and as it is parked next to the Ducati, I didn't want it falling over and damaging anything. Anyway I shored it up with bits of wood to avoid disaster.

It took me the best part of the evening to get the lower bearing off the stem, very sweaty work, basically smashing away with a chisel and anything I could get my hands on, but it eventually gave way, the top race in the frame also came out pretty easily after tapping it out with a long drift stuck up from the bottom.

The lower race in the frame was a different matter! They give you 2 cutouts in the frame to allow you to see less than 1mm of race with a drift. Well nothing could get it to move, and despite inventing some ingenious tools with the grinder and pliers, nothing seemed to work for more than one good hit with the sledge hammer, they all just slipped. I saw some guys on youtube that used a dismantled bearing puller from the bottom to get a grip on the insed of the bearing, but that didn't work for me either.

So, after a couple of evenings abortive attempts, I got serious, and started using the dremel and a cutting wheel. I cut a couple of diagonale lines into the bearing and tried chiselling out the bits in the middle. Anyway this technique eventually worked (as it must), and the bearing came out, and it was pretty marked as well, so I think this was a good change.

Getting the new races into the frame went relatively easily with a long threaded bolt, and loads of old bearings and races to space things out and then do the bolt up, this pulls the race into place, despite some misalignment (fixed with a hammer!). The hardest part was fitting the bearing on the stem.

I had left the stem in the freezer for a couple of days, and the bearing in the sun, but it still only engaged a couple of mms onto the thicker part of the stem! I had found a furniture leg from the local DIY shop, which made a perfect drift over the stem, and with this and an old race I managed to get to within 2mms of the seat, before the "leg" started to buckle, in fact the old race I was using as a drift was actually butting up to the thickening stem, and I couldn't hit it any further, after I sussed this out I added a slightly larger diameter drift, and then we got to get it the last couple of mms, phew.... all done, just need to get it back together.

Route des Grands Alpes

Col de la colombiere 1618m saturday lunch. Road very melted. But beautiful views. Unfortunately there is the Harley days at Les Gets so loads of traffic, and slow moving obstacles! Second half of the day much busier. Going thru' les saisies and then down to Modan (I've done that road before) at st Michel de Modanes you take a left up the Col du Telegraph the road is really  busy and difficult to overtake, although I managed. Stopped at the top for a coke and a photo, and then onto Lautaret and then Galibier, the descent from Galibier is really nice fast and suits the Dayto really well. Spent the night at the recommended hotel in Briancon. With the high temperatures I should have stayed high, although it was nice to have a choice of resto. And a walk around Briancon. Tomorrow is another long day if I want to finish in the sea!
Started with the Col d'Izoard today - got to be the best. Smooth starts with long swoopy bends and then tightens up at top. Great descente into Guiestre and then up the Col de Vars good aswell and then Col de la bonnette, which is much tighter and requires lots of concentration. After following the Tinee down to the sea -except after Isola saw a sign to Dignes les Bains and I took it, so now eating lunch at Chateau Arnaux. On the way home! Great trip, ok on a sports bike, and ok for 2-3 days. I rushed it a bit, but swimming in the sea alone while trying to look after the stuff on the bike is difficult and it's just too hot. Got home at 15:30 just in time for the end of the tennis. A little over 1100kms in 2 days with the most mountain passes I've done in such a short time. Really does rival going over the alps to Brno. The bike ran faultlessly and I had great trip here are some of the photies.

Ducati Electrics

Looks like the stator on the Ducati is not functioning despite the resistance being just a couple of ohms, and no obvious shorts. Electrexworld make a relatively cheap replacement. 194 euros delivered. Hope I am right!

Busy busy...

Just to record some changes really.

Put new wheel bearings in the 350 and the FZR, hopefully that will stop the noise on the FZR. The wheel spacers I built for the 350 are a reasonable fit, but I need to keep an eye on the right hand side disk caliper as it is pretty close to the disk. Also had a new rear tyre fitted to the FZT a Pirelli Super Demon. It's a 130/70/18.

I also moved the needles on the Ducati up one slot, they were in the middle and are now at the bottom clip setting, I also replaced the faulty plug cap (zero resistance), and also tightened the carb manifolds (on the cylinder) which were loose and visibley leaking a touch - this could be the reason it seems to be running weak and popping and farting a lot, will test this weekend to see if anything changes.

Long time no write

Well, after my "stage de pilotage" had to strip down the engine to see what had gone wrong (again). Well this time, it would appear as if one of the thrust washers on cylinder 2 had gone walkies, and killed the piston and at the same time blocked the roatry disk shearing the disk into 2 pieces.

When I was cleaning it out, I also came across a piece of bearing cage in cylinder 4, which had lightly damaged the 4th piston. I think the moral of all this is that carbon is an extremely abrasive substance, and when the carbon disks are eaten by the engine, then a change of bearings is required!

The front head, two cylinders, and both crankshafts headed up to ALCO (Laurent Badie) to see if the cylinder could be rebored and saved or whether I need a new sleeve, in any case good job we are not going on holiday this summer, coz this is going to be expensive.

In the meantime, I have been sorting out the FZR600 so that it goes a bit better, so far it has had a good service, and last weekend I balanced the carbs. which made a significant improvement to the engine running just off idle, now much easier to pull away. What is left to do is check out the front end - I think there must be a wheel bearing or headstock bearings that are gone, as it feels real funny at the front.

The 350 has been treated to some wheels from a later model which are lighter, and so I had to turn up some front wheel spacers and also fit different bearings, a new set of AVON racing tyres and we are ready to go!

Stages de pilotage with Suzuki Endurance Racing Team (SERT)

The finer points of bike setup with Vincent Philippe and Anthony Masson (recent winners of the 24 hour Le Mans). This was how I spent my Wednesday and Thursday last week. They also tried to teach us how to get around Le Vigeant a bit quicker.... Good experience, to be repeated.

Stickers finished

FZR 600 Update

Just for the record, did a big service on the FZR before using it :-
Oil and filter
Air filter
Checked coolant (OK)
Valve clearances (3 were too tight)
Adjusted gear lever (lowered it)
Charged battery
Didn't check the carbs
Checked the clutch - all within spec. except a couple of the springs which were a little compressed
Adjusted clutch play at the push rod

Things to do :-

Balance carbs
fix fairings (ha ha!)

Fixed at last nearly....

So a bit frustrating really, my electrical problem turned out to be the stator! And I tried that at the circuit as well!

Borut (Zeeltronic) sent me a troubleshooting tree, which really helped.

My bike was failing on the chargin PCDI step - only generating approx. 25 volts instead of 150V.
When I replace the stator with an old one, I immediately obtained the 150V, so a new stator has been ordered from Electrexworld. This despite the resistances of the ignition charging coils measuring within specification.

Anyway at least I should be able to get it fixed within the next week or so.

In the mean time, my decal set finally arrived from the UK - over 3 weeks to get it, so I have started fitting the stickers to the fairings, and they look pretty good. I will need to get all the fairings on the bike to ensure they line up correctly.

While I was in the garage, I also changed a leaky fork seal on the 350, which was a bit of a pain, as the lower bush pulled through the upper one when I pulled out the stanchion, so I now need to refit that, plus the seals that I had in my tool box, were actually 38mm and not 35mm as I thought, so I will need to go to the shop today and buy some 35mm fork seals, and while I am there I need 2 new wheel bearings for my nearly finished wheels for the 350 (6301 12x37x12) - hope they have them!

The girls were complaining about the height of the gear lever on the 350 and on the FZR, so an adjustment was made on the FZR, but the 350 needed the rod shortening and threading, so it took a bit longer than planned.

Paul Ricard SRC 2015

Onboard video from the weekend at the Circuit Paul Ricard.

Paul Ricard - Circuit de Castellet

Just back at work, after a great weekend down in the sunny South of France at Circuit Paul Ricard, I would love to say I had no technical issues, but once again, I had oily hands most of the weekend!

In fact I shouldn't say oily because it was mostly ignition, wiring issues!

I travelled down with Carly in the van, and for once all the family were travelling in from different parts - Oliver from Apt, Libby coming down later Friday night, as she was working! Carly and I arrived at around 14:30, to get our passes from the Best Western hotel just next to Paul Ricard, great organisation, and clutching my bag of goodies we proceeded to Parking C, where wegot installed. It wasn't super busy so we got setup, and despite the high wind warnings we put up the barnum (no sides however) as people arrived we were surrounded by tall vans, so we were actually quite well protected from the wind.

We went to see the ProClassic teams in another paddock, and managed to get a couple of passes for Lib and Olly, which was good. I put some petrol in the 350 to let Carly have a go around the paddock, which she did, thoroughly enjoying the race crouch and torquey motor of the 350 (not)!

The guys came around to the tent (!) to check out the bikes, and I got both the 350 and 500 controlled just in case!

After a cold night in the van, (the kids and wife were in a B&B!), I got up for the briefing at 8:00 and then the first session at 8:55. The organisation was pretty good, and on time, and we lined up behind Herve Moineau(?) (the lead!) who lead us out. First impressions are that you are really out in the open the track is so wide, with loads of run off everywhere. Pretty complicated at both ends, with long fast straights joining both ends. The famous mistral straight 1.8kms long, now has a chicane in the middle to save the two strokes from seizing (just joking). Anyway I was just completing lap 1, behind Hervé when the bike stopped! F*&k.

Got back to the pits, knowing it wasn't anything serious - must be a lead come loose somewhere, then spent the rest of the weekend trying to find the ignition problem. We had zero sparks on any cylinder!

At least when the thing blows up you know what has happened! This was pretty frustrating, as I think I know the electrics pretty well but nothing was adding up. The HT coils are doubled up on the RG, so doubtful that both would fail at once. I could see an rpm reading on the programmer for my ignition box, so the pickup must be working, and the fact that the ignition box would power up and I could enter all of the menus, kinda proves that works (maybe..). We swapped out the stator for an old one (although not sure if it the replacement was a working model....!) still the same symptom. I found a standard ignition box in the paddock (thanks Phil) but no difference either.

We had a strange reading from the kill switch which seemed to operate correctly up at the front, but by the time the signal got to the ignition box, it was not reading the right resistance, so we set about running 2 wires directly from the front connector which equally didn't improve anything.

Suffice to say we were stumped and would stay that way all weekend!

Luckily the stickers peeled off quite nicely, so the 350 was converted into race bike number 1. And she went well all weekend, all 4 additional sessions were great on the 350. Had some fun with another couple of RD350's and enjoyed blasting the numerous RG500 that were equally out there for the 2 stroke sessions!

I think we ended the weekend on Sunday evening as the last session at around 18:30!

We had to pack the van Sunday evening, as the circuit had stuff going on, on the Monday, so we cleared out and went to Bandol for some well earned some bathing and seafood on the Monday.

I only took a few photos of the endurance racing, and the sunset on Saturday night below!

Sunset over Paul Ricard

Endurance team 31 Ducati

Endurance team 31 Ducati

Endurance team 31 Ducati

Endurance team 31 Ducati

Carly at the beach

Olly at the beach

Stephen Mertens (Phase one endurance)

The women enjoying the warmth of the pit boxes