Sounds to me like your lever is bent or non-standard.
Given where the lever is located, it would be easy to end up bent in a bit from tip overs/crashes, so this makes sense.
Mine looks like it'll probably rub just a bit once I get the FWW spacer in....but figure I'll see when I get it installed, and if pulling it out on the splines a tad doesn't work, I'll do the heat/bend thing, since it won't need more than a millimetre or two of extra clearance on my bike. The soap as temperature indicator is a cool idea.
I did the same as rustybay (Wayne), for my '02 GG 280 TXT Pro, which had a spot worn through just like the one in your photo.
Just took off the pipe, and riveted on some matching aluminum plate to cover the hole. I also used some silcone sealer (RTV high temp stuff) to seal around the edges of the patch. While I had it off, I repacked the silencer as well.
Figure, if/when the tire wears through the patch, I'll just drill out the rivets, cut a new aluminum piece and rivet that on.
Cheap/easy fix. Looks pretty good to. If you want, I can take a photo of it and post it in a couple of days.
Figured I would tap into the collective wisdom here.
I have an '02 GG 280 TXT Pro. I'm a beginner to trials riding....rode last summer, but didn't do any formal competitions, though hopefully that will change this year.
I was wondering what the benefit (if any) would be of installing an S3 flywheel weight on my bike.
Pros/Cons of doing so for this bike and a rider of my ability, or more accurately, lack of ability?
I have to say, I can see more disadvantages to non stop, than stop allowed, my 14yr old son got intrested in Trials two years ago, he has got better and better and was going to do a championship this coming year but has lost interest now, as he said " I spent a long time learning good balance, now if I pause to change into second for the hill out of a section or something, after cleaning everything up to that point, I may well get a five, someone just walks the bike through, thats a three! I thought Trials was a test of balance and control, not moto cross?"
Well said, WabbitWacer!
This is my opinion as well....and I've only just started to ride a trials bike this past summer, at the ripe old age of 55!
If inordinate delays are the real problem, then there should be ways to address that without eliminating the ability to stop/hop.
I have been told the change was to get more riders into the British championships, well as I understand it most of the top riders wont ride this year they are going to the worlds where stop is still allowed, I have also been told that the youth series will still be stop allowed, if so, what a mess, do a club championship then do the youth series, rule change, move to the adult, rule change, move to the world, rule change! its not really helping is it?
I was speaking to a very well versed and connected individual in the North American trials community recently. He knows everyone that is everyone and has decades of Trials involvement. This individual thinks the No-Stop rule change in Britain is a political move to try and disadvantage, or at least even the playing field, against the mainland Europeans in top level competition. Supposedly the last set of rule changes had a similar hidden agenda, and it's happening again.
I don't know if this is true or not, but having seen much of the politicing that goes on at the international levels (think the IOC!), it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Unfortunately, the club riders' needs/opinions rarely get taken into account for such things.
Come up here for a visit and we'll demonstrate! I have a spare shovel...and a 700' driveway.
I learnt in my fairly small garage. I found the youtube videos very helpful. I did about 30-40 minutes the first few days and then an hour or so each day after that as i became better. It too less than a week to be able to ride unassisted and about 2-3 weeks to start small turns and 'freemounting'. I was quite surprised at how easily i progressed once i passed that initial 2-3 day period. Mine is a 20" uni with thin narrow road tyres.
That's encouraging....I have all winter and a 24x40' garage to play in. Mind you, the garage is pretty full with two wheeled toys! Heaven forbid if I lose it on the uni and ding my wife's Road King! That would be the end of me!
Wear gloves and possibly kneepads! You'll come off a few times like i did and slap your hands on the concrete!
The wife didn't get me one....so I went out today and picked up a 20" unicycle with a fat (offroad) tire on it.
Merry Christmas to me!
So now I have to start learning how to ride one...fortunately, I have a big garage with a long counter I can use while learning. Can't play outside, since we have nearly a foot of snow on the ground now and it's unlikely to melt till the spring. No trials riding for me for quite some time.
Maybe by the time the Spring thaw rolls around, I'll be able to balance on the uni!
The knobs are for fine-tuning the suspension damping, black/left for compression and red/right (red=right=rebound) for rebound. The 02' forks work well with the black all the way out and the red all the way in (bottom the screws lightly so as to not damage the internals).
So no compression damping, and full rebound damping?
That would mean the forks would compress really easily and fast, but would come back really slow.
Can you explain the logic behind doing this? I would have thought faster rebound would be better....and that more compression damping would help as well given how hard we slam into obstacles at times....wouldn't that lift the rear better?
I hope you got to ride the mountain trail "loop" around the property! Some good stuff there, including the trip up to the falls!
I did do the loop....great ride, though many of the sections were beyond my abilities at the moment...and the 2nd day, by the time I did a few of the easier sections, after a whole day of practice, I had nothing left. One of the reasons I'm determined to go back in 2012!
I finally got some time to be able to post process the photos I took at the Trials Training Center earlier this month....and posted a slideshow of them here:
Seems that Santa was having trouble with the Reindeer losing traction on steep roofs, and not being able to turn in tight spaces. Jumping over the chimneys was getting to be difficult for the ageing reindeer as well, so Santa figured he would modernize his rig!
Given the presents under the tree this year, I guess it must have worked!
Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!
PS. Yes....I rode for about an hour today (Boxing Day)! Bit slippery with the front tire on the tight turns, but great fun nonetheless!
PPS. Hmmmm.....not a bit of purple to be seen. Maybe I need to change my handle to Crimson Beast instead?
Looked outside around 4pm today....looked a bit wet still, but it wasn't raining and about 4C at 4pm, so I took the GasGas trials bike out for some playtime in the yard.
Had a blast....a few dabs, but didn't dump the bike, and given that I did the monster log crossing (thanks Treeguy!) about a dozen times, zigzagged through the pine stand and did wheelies over the driveway, that was good! Even went for a bit of an exploring session...there's a hardwood bush SW of my place that has wide dirt tracks (pickup truck sized) criss-crossing all through it, and going within 200 metres of the 400 highway, with a few small hills, a bit of light mud, a stream crossing and just generally a nice area. I suppose I should find out who owns that piece of bush, but it's not posted, I'm local and the trials bike is pretty quiet, so figured it wouldn't be a big deal puttering about there. I think my neighbours ride their horses in there during the summer.....I'll ask them who the owner is.
And anyway...I had my GasGas red/white jersey and matching pants on, so maybe they would think it was Santa just scouting some new routes prior to the big delivery on Christmas Eve?
It sure felt good to be out on a bike in the dirt! Who would have thought it...riding with no snow on the ground on Dec 22nd! Amazing. I think I'm going to try and get out on the trails in Drury (and maybe Horseshoe) between Christmas and New Years, if the snow holds off, which it looks like it will from the current forecast.
Anyway....I picked up a new set of knee pads a few days ago, to use on the trials bike. Normal dirt bike knee pads were a bit bulky and cumbersome at the slower speeds of a trials bike and with all the knee/leg movement you use on those types of bikes. Gary had mentioned that he frequents a good bicycle shop in town called Black Tooth Grin (from the greasy smiley face the chain wheel leaves on your leg, in case you are wondering where the cool shop name came from). They're on Dunlop St West....just before Crossovers (a local "gentlemen's establishment"), not that any of you would know or patronize a place like that!
I went to see what they had by way of unicycles....something I've always had a hankering to learn how to ride, and figured I would look at the mountain bike knee/elbow pads while I was there, since they are made lighter/thinner than typical trail/mx pads. Found some 661 Evo knee pads that I liked the look, size and feel of. They are much smaller than MX pads....with no shin guard, but then on a trials bike, the boots come up far enough that you really don't need a shin guard. These knee pads use a lycra tube design, but have velcro on the sides, so that you can put them on even if you have your boots already on. They have velcro wrap straps that secure the pads above and below your knees, but what is really sweet is the kneecap protection uses the new d3o polymer. d3o is very cool technology...it feels like a soft, flexible gel pad....but hardens instantly under impact. Pretty high tech! Not cheap, mind you....a pair of these pads ran $140! Ouch! But man are they soft and comfortable! They also fit well under my tighter fitting trials pants, which even my smaller rigid knee pads wouldn't. Once they were on, they stayed in place for the whole ride with no slippage....and I couldn't even tell they were on! Very, very comfortable! I can't speak to how well they would do in a crash situation, but it would be better than not wearing any pads at all for sure. The only issue I've heard about with d30 pads is that they might not stand up to a sharp object as well as a rigid plastic guard, but it's all tradeoffs. I like the comfort, and for trials riding, give these knee pads two thumbs up! I'll be getting a matching set of 661 EVO d3o elbow pads when the bike shop has 'em in stock....would have already got 'em, but they were out unfortunately.
Anyway....it was good to get out and have some fun in the dirt today, a few days before Christmas. Talk about a long riding season....by rights we should be snowed in by now! No complaints here, but if it's not a white Christmas, that will be very strange.
Dunno about the 2011's....I own/ride an 02 280 pro and two weeks ago, spent the weekend riding an 07 300 Pro at the Trials Training Center.
I really didn't see too much difference in the power or smoothness between the two bikes, but fair warning, I'm a beginner trials rider (started this Spring when I bought my 02). White throttle tube on both.
I do have an S3 flywheel weight sitting on my workbench that I'll be installing to smooth out the power even more, as I heard it from knowledgeable folks that it's a great mod to add to a 280 or 300, and I like the anti-stall assistance and smoothed out power band I got on my YZ250 when I installed a flywheel weight in it.
Figured I would chime in with more of a newcomer's impression, for what it's worth, since I bought my first ever trials bike this past Spring, and haven't entered any competitions as of yet. I'm 55....got into dirt bikes late in life (late 40's start), and have taken up trials riding since it looked like a blast and everything I had heard led me to believe it would improve all my riding, both dirt and street (which it already has!). I live on 10 acres in the country and have been building out a small obstacle course to practice both trials and dirt riding. Most recently, two weeks ago I went to a weekend course at the Trials Training Center in Tennessee, which was great fun and learned a lot (I'll be going back for sure in 2012).
Watching someone like Toni Bou (I now have quite a few trials DVDs, both of world events and instructional ones) is very exciting and quite inspiring, though I don't ever expect I'll come close to being able to master that level of riding, given my age and late start. But I still enjoy seeing what is possible at the pinnacle of the sport, and look forward to seeing how much more the top-class riders can push the envelope. Toni's "no engine" YouTube clip is mind boggling.
I also like to see the smooth, effortless riders in sections and aspire more to that, since becoming a smoother, more flowing rider (both trails and trials), where you expend less energy, is a more realistic goal for me to strive for. Finesse is definitely something to admire.
So I see the arguments for both sides of the No-Stop debate quite clearly.
As a relative newcomer, I do see that stopping, hopping, etc. is part of what defines Trials riding as compared to any other form of offroad motorcycle competition. No other two-wheeled sport demonstrates or needs stopping/hopping, and in fact that would cost you time, barring the Extreme Enduro sections where it's more of a speed-trials approach (the rock garden at Erzberg comes to mind). I would hate to see the stops, hops and big obstacles disappear from the sport, since that is something unique about trials, and as others have noted, does attract the attention of non-riders. Spectator appeal is not the be-all/end-all, but can be very valuable to the long term viability of a sport, in attracting new members and funding the top echelon of competitors and manufacturers/sponsors.
Much has been said of "perceptions". It's worth remembering, that when it comes to human nature, "perception is reality". So perceptions have to be dealt with, across competitors, observers, organizers, spectators, manufacturers, sponsors, old vs young, new versus experienced, etc. The trick is balancing the perceptions across different constituencies who quite obviously will have different motivations, desires and perceptions. Quite the balancing act....but then, isn't trials fundamentally about balance?
When the time comes for me to enter a trials competition, it won't much matter whether the rules are no-stop or stop to me....I doubt I'll have the stop/hop skills for it to make any difference to my riding, though I will be working on developing those skills just because I think it's a challenge and I want to improve. Though if the rules are "stop allowed" I hope I don't run into the riders that show off and waste everyone's time.....that doesn't sound like fun. Maybe it's time for spectators (including queued up competitors) to have special "observer" cards that they can flash when folks like that slow the process down. Ones that say "Asshat" or some such on 'em, which can be flipped up prominently as required?
Maybe it's a simple as having competitors declare which rules they want to ride under....stop or no-stop, and then you give them different coloured/marked number jerseys or stickers or some such to differentiate them. With a time limit on those that select stop rules?
Anyway....for what it's worth, I don't have any answers, but figured I would chime in with some observations on the debate just to muddy the waters!
As many of you know, I spent the past weekend at the Trials Training Center in Tennessee working on my trials techniques.
The folks at the TTC were wonderful, the facility is superb with some obstacles that are intimidating to say the least (I stayed off those! :shock: ), the instruction was excellent and the trails/sections a blast to ride. My fellow students (there were only 3 of us...they keep the class sizes small so that you get a lot of personalized instruction/time) were great, with one, Peter, being from our neck of the woods (Bracebridge). My riding improved greatly, but I still have a long way to go. I would recommend a session at the TTC for anyone, not just trials riders, that want to improve their dirt riding skills.
I'll post more about the experience with some photos in a day or two. In the meantime, I've uploaded a short video of me practicing my double blip log crossing technique:
I'll definitely be going back to the TTC for more trials training/riding in 2012, and will see if any other SCORRA members might want to join me when the time comes.
At the Trials Training Centre, Charlie Roberts (the head instructor) had these on his GG. They looked like they would provide a more comfortable platform for your boots, and he said they worked better being lowered and pushed back. The larger pegs sure didn't get in his way in the tight stuff from what I could see.
I'm thinking of putting new pegs on my '02 TXT Pro this winter.....either these or maybe the Raptors. Not sure which way to go....
Also, I'm off to the TTC (Trials Training Center) in Tennessee this week. Leaving Wed, and will be down there late Friday afternoon for a two day "Double Blip" training course. I'm really looking forward to it, since it's been snowing up here and our riding season is done at this stage...winter has us in it's grip! This will likely be the last riding till next Spring for me...barring practicing my balancing techniques (which need a lot of practice) on the GasGas in the garage this winter.
I'll probably be wired with a heart rate monitor most of the time I'm riding down there too.
I'll post a review of the training session/trip once I get back.
I posted a new entry on my blog, about the ride I did yesterday, and the new online tool (from Garmin, the GPS folks) I used to analyze the ride/heartrate data:
I was asked for details on how I built my dirt bike teeter totter, and more recently, my trials bike wheelie/holding pressure ramp....so I took some photos today before the rain resumed and posted a bunch up on my web site, for those that are curious and/or want to build their own stuff.
This will likely be the last riding till next Spring for me...barring practicing my balancing techniques (which need a lot of practice) on the GasGas in the garage this winter.
Kenny The Rooster - Contains Adult Humour
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There are 10 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and the rest.