yoyo Posted July 14, 2008 Report Share Posted July 14, 2008 Last Saturday I was due to take part in a local trial with the Waltham Chase club at a venue in the New Forest. I was to be riding my Beta 270 along with my lad on his TY80. On the morning of the trial, we decided to run the bikes up on my drive just to have a shake down and get my lad used to the bike again after not rideing for a while. My back brake seized and would not apply so a hurried hour spent trying to strip it and bleed it through proved fruitless so I dropped it off at Inchains in Ringwood for repair and I had resigned myself not to ride. When I was booking my lad on, I was offered a loan of a Sherco 250 as it's owner had a 'hangover from hell' and wouldn't be riding. "Great! " I thought and hurried over to pick the bike up. The owner was looking slightly worse for wear but offered me the loan of his machine, even filling it up with a fresh fuel mix and I scarpered off to get going. The bike felt good at first but was very fluffy at the bottom end and took a bit of reving to clear itself. It then started to stall a lot and it was causing me allsorts of problems leading to me dropping marks left right and centre and getting 5's at every other section. I persevered on and put it down to being a new bike to me and not used to the 250. I had completed about two thirds of the trial when I noticed that it was using a lot of fuel and was getting very low and was thinking about returning to the pits to fill up again when it conked out completley and refused to restart. I was resigned to pushing the bike back to it's owner and thanking him kindly for the very generous use of his bike even though now it wasn't running He was puzzled as it was running fine before I got hold of it. He had a look around and started to grin. "You know why it's not running right?" he queried. "No" I responded "It doesn't like running with the choke full on" "That will be the problem then!" What a bloody wally! I don't believe that I didn't put the choke back off and had struggled all that time on a bike which was fluffy and lunging all over the place. A mate commented that he thought it was "a bit smokey on the exhaust" . A valueable lesson learn't and one that I won't repeat again! The guy who lent me the bike wouldn't let me give him any money for the fuel that I had used - I think that I had cheered him up out of his hangover. And to be honest - I don't think that there are many other sports where you'll find people like that, willing to help you out in such a generous manner. Shaun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shercoman2k8 Posted July 14, 2008 Report Share Posted July 14, 2008 I cant believe that, it just reminds me too much of my mate Charles, he done exactly the same but the bike ended up dying at the bottom of a very steep hill, and we ended up pushing it up, then putting it in his van! He came over to me next day to tell me he had been running his gasser with the choke on! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ranger17 Posted July 14, 2008 Report Share Posted July 14, 2008 About 30+ years back, a few of the lads I knocked around with had trail bikes. One of the guys came out to start his Honda XL250 up one day. Kick, kick, kick. No joy. Leave for a few seconds then kick, kick, kick again. Still no joy! Check the choke. Kick, kick, kick. Zilch! Check and double-check the ignition switch. Not that either! Kick, kick, kick. Zero igntion, Houston, we don't have take-off! Hmmm? I know, check the plug cap. Nipponese bike, so take off those funny metal shrouds they used to have on the cap that would short out as soon as they saw a puddle. Nope. Next stage is to start bumping. They had a driveway that was level then sloped down to the road with enough length to get up a bit of running speed and that was usually enough. Nahh! Now said mate was quite stocky but nature hadn't blessed him with overmuch in the altitude department. This was also somewhere back in the 1970's, so he was wearing some mildly platform-ish zipped ankle boots. Not a major platform - more of a thick sole really, but they can't have helped stability too much for anything more than a slow walk. By now, we're talking about maybe 20 minutes to half an hour or so of heavy duty kicking, running and bumping, so he's reasonably well warmed up and decides he's had enough of this. They lived at the top of a hill. Quite a big, long hill. Maybe just under quarter of a mile or so of fairly steepish hill. Running and bumping down that has GOT to start it - the laws of physics say so. So off he goes down the hill in his enhanced footwear, pushing, running and bumping, sweating and swearing like a good 'un. Right the way down to the bottom of the hill. Do I even need to mention that there was still not the least sign of a spark? He and his bike are now at the bottom of the hill, with only one alternative - push the thing all the way back up. We all arrived just a few minutes after he arrived home, so his breathing and heart rate were pretty much back to normal but his face was such a wonderful shade of red! At which point one of the other guys, who also had an XL250, walked across, took one look at the bike .... ... and re-set the kill switch to ON. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul w Posted July 14, 2008 Report Share Posted July 14, 2008 i bought an yamaha rd250lc as a none runner, quite some years ago. The bloke i bought it from and taken it apart to 'de-coke' and it now wouldnt run on the left cylinder. lots of spark, fuel all ok but wouldnt run. i stripped it down and re-built , still no joy. i started to strip down again and as i removed the exhaust a peice of very oilly newspaper, the size of a golf ball dropped out of the barrel end of the pipe. when the previous owner had stripped the cylinders he had placed screwed up paper in the exhaust port, and on re-build forgotton to remove it, as soon as it fired up it wedged itself in the far end of the pipe and wouldnt let gas out ! i bolted the pipe back on and it ran great. sold it for a decent profit as well ! ( i do hope he does'nt read this, i told him it cost a fortune to repair !) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zippy Posted July 14, 2008 Report Share Posted July 14, 2008 When I was younger I had a sticker on my bike that stated "Turn the gas on dummy" I needed that silly thing a few times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madcr500 Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 I had a landrover SIII Lightwieght and i noticed that the inlet manifold was leaking at the gasket where it bolted to the motor. Not a problem i thought, i'll just make a new gasket. I carefully took it apart and made a nice new gasket out of a bit of card. Bolted it all back together and it wouldnt start. I flattened the battery trying to get it to run before taking it apart again to discover that i had forgotten to cut the big hole out of the middle of the gasket. You know, the one that lets all the fuel through. D'oh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zippy Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 Well at least it was definitely sealing like a gasket should Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ham2 Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 i bought an yamaha rd250lc as a none runner, quite some years ago. The bloke i bought it from and taken it apart to 'de-coke' and it now wouldnt run on the left cylinder. lots of spark, fuel all ok but wouldnt run. i stripped it down and re-built , still no joy. i started to strip down again and as i removed the exhaust a peice of very oilly newspaper, the size of a golf ball dropped out of the barrel end of the pipe.when the previous owner had stripped the cylinders he had placed screwed up paper in the exhaust port, and on re-build forgotton to remove it, as soon as it fired up it wedged itself in the far end of the pipe and wouldnt let gas out ! i bolted the pipe back on and it ran great. sold it for a decent profit as well ! ( i do hope he does'nt read this, i told him it cost a fortune to repair !) Hey that's the sort of daft thing I did when I stripped my bike years ago. Put it back together and..no-go.. It wasn't until I had done a post-re-build rag-count that I realised that I had 1 less than I had started with..bunged in the exhaust! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoyo Posted July 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 I had a landrover SIII Lightwieght and i noticed that the inlet manifold was leaking at the gasket where it bolted to the motor. Not a problem i thought, i'll just make a new gasket.I carefully took it apart and made a nice new gasket out of a bit of card. Bolted it all back together and it wouldnt start. I flattened the battery trying to get it to run before taking it apart again to discover that i had forgotten to cut the big hole out of the middle of the gasket. You know, the one that lets all the fuel through. D'oh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jse Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 When I was younger I had a sticker on my bike that stated"Turn the gas on dummy" I needed that silly thing a few times. I was racing an OSSA flat track bike at the time and the starts of TT races are measured in gallons of adrenaline, testosterone and very close quarters. After the shocking slow down and four riders behind me attempting to instantly shorten my wheelbase a few inches, the "TURN ON THE GAS, STUPID" sticker was on my tank for the next event. Seems like, if you ride an off-road bike for any length of time, you'll sooner or later earn a membership in the WAT club..... Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
austini Posted July 16, 2008 Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 Many moons ago I had a Rover 2.6SDI after changing the head over for a less warpped one I spent the next two days trying to get a spark from the beast as she wouldn't start. Finally resorting to handing it over to a local garage for inspection I hired a car trailor and whilst loading it on notice someting fall off the wiper blades and onto the driveway. IT WAS THE ROTOR ARM FROM THE DISTRIBUTOR CAP! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ham2 Posted July 16, 2008 Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 Many moons ago I had a Rover 2.6SDI after changing the head over for a less warpped one HA..I know what you mean when it comes to warped cylinder heads ,Rover were world leaders Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
austini Posted July 20, 2008 Report Share Posted July 20, 2008 Ham2 the wife and I were half way up the M5 when I just happened to look down to see the oil pressure gauge start the plummet by the time I pulled over the engine was smoking nicely. As I looked at the last few drops of oil fall out of the hole where my sump plug used to be my wife pointed out that the missing plug couldn't be far as it had only just dropped out...... If only putting the plug back would rectify what was left of the top end of the engine! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ham2 Posted July 20, 2008 Report Share Posted July 20, 2008 Many moons ago,before mobile phones, me and a mate were into rallying and went to spectate at the RAC in Kielder forest. My mate took his Triumph Dolomite Sprint (another BL piece of 5h1t but a fast piece of..). Like most wanabes at that time we took advantage of the empty forest tracks to prove we were potential rally drivers. It was very dark,and wet and the un-made roads there coated the windscreen in gloop but the wipers(and the KC daylighters) could cope..up to a point. After a short while we were down to walking pace because the visibility was so bad...then we stopped to get out and noticed that we could see for miles. The windscreen was covered in that hot emulsion of oil and water that you get when your BL cylinder-head gasket blows , sprays the bulkhead and the airflow carries it upwards like a WW1 bi-plane. Worst bit was the two of us getting caught (in the forest)in the view of someones headlamps,pants down trying to pee into the radiator. ..that's my story and I'm sticking to it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gii Posted July 22, 2008 Report Share Posted July 22, 2008 Don't knock Rover too hard. I knew many Rover engineers - a lot of really talented blokes. Nissan obviously thought so, in the mid eighties there was a major movement of engineers from Cowley and Longbridge to Washington and the result was one of the most efficient plants in Europe. That Sprint engine was at the forefront of technical design at the time, that also meant it was at the limits of the metallurgy / casting / maintenance techniques of the time too. The leading edge technology was reduced to bleeding edge by the bean counters and production workers guided by Red Robbo. However, getting back to the subject, I bought a seized Sprint motor to put in my TR7 in 1980. The lad I'd bought it off claimed to have re-built it but it had seized in a week and he'd run out of money. When I drained the (clean) oil out and removed the sump I found what looked like a paisley pyjama leg wrappped around the oil pickup strainer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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