smokey125

I've got a 309, unfortunately the front disc guard got broken when my brother borrowed the front end out of the bike! Been looking at the idea of using what I have of the guard to make a mould and make a replacement in carbon or Kevlar. The guard looks to be the same on the 305, 307, 309 and early K-Roo. Question is if I made some would anyone be interested in one? The only reason I'm asking is if there is some interest I will put a bit more effort onto the mould if not I will make it good enough to make me a couple for me and leave it at that. If I do this it's not likely to happen until towards the end of the year, got too many other projects to finish. Please don't think I'm doing this in any way as a business it's just something I'm doing for myself and thought I would ask the question.

This isn't the first time this has happened to a "Big" manufacturer of trials bikes. It might be my memory but as a kid but back in the 80's almost everything was a TY or a Fantic. Fantic also had other revenues with road bikes and mopeds, didn't stop them getting in trouble. Montesa only survived as long as they did by virtue of being owned by Honda. I'm sure with a bit of thought you could list lots more. Manufacturing for a specialist market is always going to be difficult and being one of the big fish in a very small pond is no protection. I wish Gas Gas all the best and hope they turn things around but I would be surprised if they do. Sad to say but give it another 10-20 years and I'm sure we will having the same conversation about another big company!

Fair comment about the spindle bending being better than anything else. I'll check tonight but I had a feeling the original spindle on my outfit was 20mm. I know it was bent but I seem to recall that it was bent where it stepped down to go into trailing/swing arm. I'm fairly sure the Hope hubs people use are called Bulb hubs. Hope don't make them anymore so you have to look out for them second hand.

Paul do you have any problems with the wheel spindle being too small and bending? What tyre do you run?

Thanks for that at least I know what I'm looking for now.

As the title says, does anybody know what size the thread on a 309 rotor puller is. I have a mate who runs a bike shop so I can borrow one just need to know what size to ask him for.

I might be about to buy a 2000 rev 3, I was wondering what spares were like for the forks as they are the only year with USD forks?!? Any idea why they put them on for just the 1 year? Is there anything particulaty weak on these. I've looked through the forum and have seen about the stator/electrics anything else to watch out for?

Depends on the shape of the can but I generally do the same a pindie said. If you have a uniform inside shape you can role it slightly bigger and carefully twist it as you go to get it all in. In theory it is possible to over pack the lose type of packing but that does require a fair amount of OCD! It costs about £5 for a pack of the sheet material so why not change it fairly regularly? It’s not as critical on a trials bike but generally they blow more oil into the packing than a road racer. Reason for the reference I repack the end can on my 125 GP race bike every 2-3 meetings to really keep it performing at its best.

Might work but based on the process we went through at work cleaning excess adhesive off an ali base I suspect you would probably wreck a couple of sets of plates finding the right media and the right blast settings. My other concern would be blast media impregnating the surface of the friction material and then causing problems. The blasting would remove the rough edges, but the guide shows actually removal of metal to smooth an area the should be flat, blasting wont do this. I would have thought the quickest solution would be careful fixturing and set up on a mill (not really a home solution and not cheap either) or make a small scraper, an old piece of hacksaw blade ground to the right shape would probably do.

I had one on my 309 which I took off again. Seem to recall we made a longer cable to get the arm working in the correct position. I will look through my parts to check what length it was. I think the reason I took it off was I found that it took too much travel at the handlebar leaver to get the clutch fully engaged.Will be interesting to see what lengths the various arms measure.

Thanks for the replies very useful answers. I had wondered about Falcon for the unit. We use his shocks on our classic road racers so I know his main area is offroad stuff. Htrdoug that’s the reason why I want to get her running properly again. When I was riding regularly it could always do more than me and watching some of my old riding mates putting twin shocks round the expert route with ease it shows just what you can do with an old bike. I know about the adjuster’s first thing I tried was the compression damper on the remote reservoir, max to min made no noticeable difference! That’s why I started looking for other problems. We don’t have as much ethanol in the fuel over here as you do and the floats seem ok. Float valve might not be perfect as that was the only part I couldn’t get out when I cleaned the carb. Where did you get the alloy kick start leaver from? What did you do to the suspension linkage? That was always the weakest area of the Fantic, especially compared to the TY250 I had before! We modified the swing are pivots to add grease nipples but at the time were limited to the original bushes which aren’t really robust enough! I never took the weights out of the flywheel never felt the need to, even doing the schoolboy nationals where there were some pretty big steps! Out of interest has anyone managed to successfully open and repack the exhaust? We ended up putting a DEP end can on (I think) and I tried cutting the side out of the original to repack it but it didn’t really work very well.

Hi thanks for the replies been a bit crazy at work so I've had to stop working on it for a while. lakelanddrambler, I've seen pictures of your outfit whist I was looking around for info. Looks good, I believe that is how mine spent a lot of it's recent years attached to a trail bike and used on a farm. Having dragged my old Fantic out the shed for a trial at the weekend and having to finish the trial on my brother JTR Gas Gas I've realised the newer I can get the better. I will talk to the Allaways and try to get over to a few sidecar trials to have a look and a chat. trialsdaryl1 I'm south of Dorking. Nowhere is that far to go once you get in and start driving! Where/what are the events you do? It does seem a little difficult to locate sidecar events as opposed to solo's!

Hi I’m after some help and advice on several different fronts with my 309. I’ve had it from new. It served me well through the end of my schoolboy trials days including 4-5 national A trials, done the Manx 2 day twice on it, as well as a lot of club, combine and centre events. Well used but well looked after. A week ago after what must be 4 years sat in the shed I got her out to get ready for my schoolboys club 40th anniversary/reunion fun event. Amazingly enough after a few kicks she started up and ran abet not very well. Stripped the cab, float bowl was caked in gummed up mix. Got it cleaned put it back together and first kick started beautifully. Got to the trial ran ok at first but didn’t really want to rev out and seemed very sluggish mid range. I put this down to the needle being knackered (have a new one on order didn’t turn up before weekend). After 8 sections it died completely mid section like someone had hit the kill switch. Back to the van, disconnected kill switch still nothing. Took out plug very black, sooty and wet, no spark. Quick trip down the road (we were only a few miles from local trial shop) new plug and new plug cap. Put back together and started, great. Did another 8 sections and died. Again it felt like someone had hit the kill switch. At this point I gave up with if for the day. When we got home and washed off bikes I tried starting it second kick and off we go! It seems like something is breaking down as it gets hot! I’ve hunted around as best I can; I’ve found some with a 307 with similar problem but no solutions, a wiring diagram with some resistance and lots of comments about problems on FM300 etc. I’m going to check out everything I’ve seen so far but does anyone know of a common problem with the 307 or 309 ignition system that could cause this sort of failure? Next one should be easy! I always used to run this 50:1 PJ1. I know my brother had problems with his JTR Gas Gas and went over the Castrol TTS at 75:1. What oils do people recon is best in these and what ratio do you use? The rear Marzocchi unit is weeping slightly round the damper rod and does feel and bit uncontrolled! Who can rebuild/recondition these units? Last question which might be best in a different forum section but what brake pads do people recommend? I couldn’t believe how little feel the brakes gave, I do remember when I was riding regularly that we put new pads in and they were very wooden compared to what came out, but it was so long ago I’ve got no idea what was what. At the end of the day I would really like to get the old girl sorted out. I forgot how much I enjoyed trials riding. For the level I am I will have plenty of fun so long as I can sort the problems and with road racing getting ever more expensive I can really see me getting back into trials. Sorry for rambling on so much hope somebody got to the end!

Just to let people know where we got to with this. Managed to find a local supplier for Nau helmets (section 5 web site but they are just up to road from us so we could go and try them, thanks Roger) only had a small in at the time which was a little big. They got an XS in for us which fitted. So I now have a very happy wife. For anybody who has problems with small helmets I would certainly recommend looking at the Nau they definitely come up smaller than most other makes. Thanks for the advice guys it was really useful.

Thanks for the info. Nice to know we aren't the only ones stuggling! Splatshop, how do the Jitsie helmets compare to the Wolf ones they look very simular! Are they simular size? Also how do Nau sizes compare to Jitsie? Do the Nau come up smaller than the Jitsie?

I was after a bit of advice from any one who might of had the same problem! We are trying to find a helmet for my wife. In a Shoei road helmet she takes an XXS and it fits really nice. The current Shoei catalogue doesn't seem to list an open face helmet! We have tried Wolf XS too big, Hebo S too big. I know a trials helmet is never going to fit like a face helmet but we need to find something that doesn't fall off with the strap done up as the above sizes have done. Does anybody know of any helmets that might come up smaller than the one's I've mentioned?

I'm busy this weekend but I'll be there next weekend.

I have seen the website before. It's only about 30 minutes from where I live so easy to get to. I was surprised by your video as the only other reference I had was the quarry behind Betchworth station a few miles up the road that was nothing like a varied as it looks there. Will be perfect to go get some prectice in and try and remember what I'm supposed to do!

Good suggestion about the bike the chair was mounted on before. I will ask when I pick up. I was wondering how people went about adjusting the mounting to get it to handle right! It's really hard to tell from pictures where the adjustment is! I can see you have adjustable rods at the rear unit and front engine mount. Guess I will have to get along to another event and have a close look at some of the other outfits! By the way that is a nice looking little outfit.

Is this is the one just outside Dorking? Seen it advertised, that's the first video I've seen of it, it looks really good.

Thanks for that every idea helps. I suppose the biggest thing is having the biggest capacity with two of you to pull round!

Hi to all of you chair enthusiasts, I'm after some advice to get us going. I've ridden solo's to a reasonable level in the past but have been road racing for the last 20 years. For some reason my wife has desiceded that having a go a trials both solo and sidecar would be fun, (probably got something to do with me having two big crashes at the Manx Grand Prix in the last four years) we get a chair next week. I still have my old Fantic 309, my original plan was to bolt the chair onto this just to start with. However having looked round this site for a bit I am starting to realise how old it is! Since it's registered as a solo I'm thinking that I will leave it as is and get a different bike to add the chair to. It also means we always have a solo to use if we want to. My question is what bike would people recommend for this? The long term plan was to give the Manx two day a go if we got on well enough with it. We are on a budget to start with and I have no problems with swapping the chair between bikes if we take to it. I was thinking of something like a Montesa 315 of Scorpa around year 2000. Would either of these be good to start with or should I be looking for something completely different? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.