Troubleshooting

Well, I spent the day working on the bikes, the race stator seems to be the cause of the popping and backfiring, and the power valve controller seems to be dead as well, although I think I can say that the ignition boxes (both sets) work OK.

With my Yamaha Stator the bike starts and runs fine, although would not rev through the mid-range. I have not had time to look at why as yet, but it could be that the carbs are not setup properly, and the fact that the power valve is not connected doesn't help.

I wanted to get going again on the RG 500, and the next steps are to fit the GSXR 750 forks and make the new rear wheel (4.5") fit the RG swinging arm. The GSXR Wheel uses a 20 mm axel, and the RG standard is only 17 mm therefore I will need to enlarge the holes in the swinging arm to take the bigger axle. Some guys were proposing re-enforced swinging arms on the French RG forum, with the modification already done, and I was hoping to buy one in as modifying the original item is no return! The problem is that they don't reply to email!!

I concentrated on cleaning up the front end. The forks were OK, but heavily oxidised/damaged by stones etc... so I spent a couple of hours with the dremel and metal wool, rubbing them down and they turned out as the photo, so quite pleased. I need to find out what oil to put in them, and then I can fit them.

I have also found a local supplier of aluminium, so I bought a lump that I intend to use to cut out my rearsets from. Should be interesting! I will post photos as they come along!

Winter tests at ALES!

Hi, I am a little late in posting this as we went down to Ales (near Nimes) on the 2nd November. The one day testing at Ales seemed a good idea at the time, as I wanted to test my new (old) carbs with the PowerJets and also retest Borut's ignition as I still have 2 sets. In preparation for the weekend, I had changed the carbs and upped the main jets to 320's just to be safe - the power jets come on line at high revs, and add fuel when the revs are high, therefore allowing smaller main jets to fuel better at low/mid rpm - Just what I needed! I also put my old ignition boxes back on. Just to add to the fun, I had also removed the baffle plate in the airbox (normally this is just to make the induction noise less).

We travelled down to Ales on Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning we arrived at the circuit at 8:00am. The circuit is hideen away in the hills but they still have a maximum noise limit on weekends of 95db. Each bike is tested, the 4 strokes get tested at 4k rpm, but they tested me (the only 2 stroke) at 7K, and of course I failed with a reading of 100db. However the guy didn't send me home, and I was aloowed to run with the condition that if he thought I was making too much noise, we would pull me off the circuit! When I heard some of the other bikes I knew I would be safe for the day! I think some of the guys put a removable baffle in for the test and then remove it to run - needles to say I was not the most noisy bike.

The bike was not pulling too well in the first seance, but as I was (kinda) running in a new piston I wasn't too bothered. But we did reduce main jets for the second run. I had reserved "racers" category (they have beginners, confirmed and racers) which was great because there was not many guys, and they were all experienced enough to not cause any problems.

The circuit was nice, but the surface was a bit lumpy especially around some of the bends, the first run was with a wet track, and the second run was with a drying track, and the bike still not really pulling well.

At lunch time we reduced the jet size again, and I was looking to reprogram my ignition and power valve, when we noticed that the powervalve was not opening properly, and it was not working well, when we plugged in the controller to test the powervalve, it came up with an error..... Perhaps this was why the bike was not pulling if the valve wasn't opening the performance would be really off.

Then followed some panic troubleshooting, as the bike would no longer start and the spark was not happening - hmmm I seem to remember this from somewhere....

My chief mechanic (Libby) was convinced that we should look at the carbs as this was the only thing we had touched, and duly instructed I just swapped the carbs out to my old ones as they were in a working configuration (from Carole).

I was convinced that this problem was exactly the same as I had had at Carole! (2 races back), because the powervalve was not working we disconnected it, and we could get a spark, however although the bike would start, it was popping and backfiring at low revs.

During lunch the weather had turned much worse and the wind and rain started to head in, I did however manage to go out for a couple of laps with the bike popping and farting, but with the powervalve fully open. I came in as I was going nowhere quickly the bike wasn't pulling at all!

The heavens opened and the rain fell! More and more people were calling it a day, and after a last ditch attempt at changing the stator (yes again!), we no longer could get a spark, and we decided it was time to go ourselves.

Olly and I put our wet weather gear on while Libby stood in the trailer, I have not seen such torrential rain as that in a long time. By the time we were packed up, nearly everybody was in the process of leaving, and by 16:00 we were on the road. As we passed over many river crossings we could see the water up really high, and flooding had started in some places. On the motorway everyone was driving at 90kph, and luckily we had no incidents going home.

The bike will need troubleshooting at home, but I am getting really pissed off with these electrics issues!!

RG Gearbox

After getting the correct bit, a PH3 (for those that are interested), usng the impact driver I removed the various bits to allow me to get at the gearbox. The advantage of the RG 500 is that it has a "cassette gearbox" which means you can remove it from the side without having to disturb the crankcases. You still have to remove the clutch and it's basket, which went relatively well for me. I was kind of dreading getting the gearbox on the kitchen table - you know all those cogs and bits that need keeping in the same order etc..

With the gearbox on the kitchen table, I set about the task of understanding which bits I needed to remove in order to install the Nova gearbox. Basically Nova supply the input and output shafts with all the gears, they do however require you to keep two bushes on the input shaft and alter the position of a washer on the output shaft. The instructions were quite clear, and I proceeded without any issues. Once the new shafts and gears were in place, time to try and understand how a gearbox works! In fact it's still a mystery - the guys that design these for a living are obviously more clever than I!

I was able to verify by hand that I have most gears! and neutral, so hopefully I will find them all when everything is back together.

I am not going to use the two stroke oil pump (will use premix), so as I was not going to replace it I needed to make up a blanking plate for the hole it leaves in the gearbox, this was duely knocked up out of a bit of aluminium plate, and the gearbox was then returned to it's home - I really hope that I don't have to remove it again!

RG500 work started!

So... here we go! The fairing, tank, mudguards, indicators, headlamps, oil tank are now in nice cardboard boxes in the loft (If I ever want to sell this thing as anything other than a race bike). The bike actually looks (in my opinion) a lot nicer without the plastic than with, and once the frame was cleaned up - it shines - isn't aluminium lurvely...

I fitted the new Hagon shock which went in surprisingly easily! The expansion chambers are really a work of art (Jolly Moto), and although the previous owner has painted them with some horrible silver paint, they cleaned up OK.

I started work on the engine, draining gearbox oil, plus removing the clutch cover. There are some nasty looking cross head screws under the gearbox sprocket, which have initially not yielded to my electric screwdriver! I need to buy the right sized bit for my impact driver this weekend.

Some questions are coming up :- the choke is handlebar mounted and integrated into the left hand control, which is a shame, because I don't want all the stuff on the clip-on, but I really wanted to keep the choke mounted up there - always handy at the end of the straight when you are missing fuel....

I need to make rearsets, and also if I don't cut down the rear mudguard I will need to fabicate a new one in aluminium sheet.

Plus there are loads of wires hanging around which I don't need but I don't want to ruin the wiring harness....

Anyway that's it for now - next installment after the weekend.

Next steps

Hi All,
So the season has ended early and hopefully this will give me more time to prepare the RG500 for next year. I am still working on the RD for the coming weeks, as I still have to send an ignition set back to Borut (Zeeltronic) and I wanted to get back to full power. Hence last weekend I installed a new piston and rings in the right hand (seized 2 races back) cylinder. At the same time I have installed some new (ebay) powerjet carbs. The principal of powerjet carbs is to have an additional jet that come into use high in the rev range, allowing you more adjustment in the mid range with the standard main jet, but still giving enough cooling fuel at the top end - I am hoping this will make my bike more reliable especially at the top end. In principal, the power jets are 60 on the left and 65 on the right, so I am starting with 300 main jets both sides (at the top end this should make it Very rich 60 + 300 is 360, and I was running 340's at the last race.

I also spent a rainy weekend simplifying my wiring - I ripped out all the light related stuff and have just left the ignition and generator wiring along with the temp. gauge, neutral switch and the ignition switch. Saved 300 grams in weight :-)
I tried my old zeeltronic boxes and couldn't get them to fail, so I expect I will send the others back, although something funny going on there! My West Country Windings stator has gone back to them for fixing with a suitable letter - I will wait for their reply before slagging them off publicly!

Next thing on the program will be start the RG500 project I want it to look similar to Pascal Mayer's bike as shown above! We will see how it progresses. Speak to you soon.

Dave Vs. Duhamel Ducati

Dave takes Philippe at Carole 2008