Dave's Bikes: 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!