2stroke4stroke

Did anyone ever get the carburetion sorted on the 320?

The very early ones, as I recall, had a different gearbox spec with later versions having a change that lowered third and top slightly. A bit hard to tell in your situation though.

I assume EM (a business that has to have profit to survive) are selling all they can make, so why bother spending a lot of money for no commercial return? Works specials have existed for decades, perhaps not as extreme as the Honda, and are part of what makes trials what it is. I suspect many (most?) trials bike purchasers see the WTC as an irrelevance anyway. I know I do but also feel that trials is important enough to have a world championship; a bit of a dichotomy, I know.

If you can get more than a couple of inches through the hole then buy a lottety ticket as it is your lucky week. The packing needs to be evenly distributed and not too tightly packed - impossible to do without a large access. The rope is the wrong stuff anyway. I have used the same bag of loft insulation for years so it works out cheap, you could even borrow some from your attic? Ease of repacking was one reason why I bought a Beta and, given the importance of a correctly packed exhaust, then frankly any bike that can't easily be repacked has a design flaw in my opinion. I can't be alone in that.

Once you get in to the confines of a "proper" section you may find the bike seems somewhat snappier than you currently think?. Let us know how it goes.

The Dalesman is what it is, a product of the difficulties of the time, and it's good to see a piece of history in use; I did wonder if any would surface in trials. However, most folk found there was only one really worthwhile upgrade.......... a Bultaco.

Don't worry, Breagh is a Fifer so an expert on value and will have spotted that. In the Ossa context there is not that much difference using exchange rates, but "market value" depends on other, local, factors too.

What would you reckon in the UK Breagh, sounds optimistic to me? If you could find anyone willing to take one on.

That was my first reaction, but it is a lot cheaper than having a pistonless bike sitting doing nothing, so priced accordingly.

MX gear is a lot baggier to allow for full armour beneath - and is even more garish than trials gear.

No, the NE Centre and I never did the Little Bear. Might have been at Woodburn (west of the A68).

I seem to remember enjoying the occasional six lapper in the NE Centre in the Seventies. Is my memory playing tricks?

You're missing my point - it's not legal if you're not insured, which now would appear to be the case with certain policies.

I notice that some insurers are now requiring vehicles to have a current "MOT". Whether in response to the law change for older vehicles or not I don't know. It does raise the point of how you get a vehicle with an expired certificate to a test station though.

Just cheaper than the only obvious competitor, the 125 Scorpa, though the Scorpa silencer does seem to actually do something by way of noise reduction. You pays your money, you takes your choice.

You're possibly right; how many folk do an oil change every day at the Scottish, if at all during the event? However it does give the opportunity for a look inside. Apart from size, what's different between the filter and one doing thousands of miles on a road bike after all. As you say, with the oil changed every six trials per the manual there's not much to filter out. After the first time, I now find the filter easy enough to remove and refit (every second oil change) but it is a design glitch by Honda - a fraction off the back of the flywheel by way of a chamfer would remove the difficulty and, if critical, the weight could be added elsewhere on the flywheel.

I don't know about bhp figures but it is about as far as you could get from an Alpina equivalent, being based on the motocrosser in both motor and cycle. It's more a Frontera equivalent.

Is it not still referred to as motor spirit in UK legislation?

I just used Royal Mail - seemed reasonably priced.

The prices seemed high for the age when I was looking, no doubt due to the conversion cost. However, I lost interest when I read reports that insurance companies loaded the premiums quite substantially for such altered vehicles. Seems like disability discrimination to me.

That's basically what I was saying - with the ACU covering the event aspect you can take out a policy that does not cover trials use, thus opening up choices in the market in order to tax the bike.

I would imagine the longer springs, if suited to MX or YZ, will be far too stiff for trials use, ditto the damping control set up. 15w is far too heavy an oil anyway. You don't say what your bike actually is, what is it? There was an implication of it being a trailified TY but then you mention an expansion chamber which points to something else. I can't, in that case, help but feel that it would be better and cheaper in the long run to take cleanorbust's advice about getting a trials bike - you haven't even started on rear suspension or footrest position queries yet, let alone the unsuitability of an expansion chamber equipped motor.

The answer to your question is - nobody knows or can know. Since, by and large, trials bikes no longer get registered (or maintain registration a few owners down the line once sold), very few machines have any verifiable provenance. Where once an ace might have had a well known number they seem to get a new bike every six months now so it is very hard to say which exact bike did what. The same applies to old "works" numbers which were shuffled from bike to bike. Whilst many on here might be able to list reg numbers for Miller, Rathmell and others of that era I think we have, alas, lost a valuable part of trials history since. Who could state the reg number of, as a random example, the bike Graham Jarvis rode to SSDT victory? It's unlikely any photos captured what passed for a rear number plate.

I have tried various oils, don't have the gear selection problems, and neutral is sometimes hard to find (as on many trials bikes) but don't have actual clutch drag in that I have to release the lever a fair way before drive starts to be taken up. Having said that, I long ago gave up any expectation of the thing starting in gear. It will do once in a while for no apparent reason but generally I don't bother trying. It beats me how the might of Honda can't produce a clutch that consistently permits starting in gear but you may just have to get used to living with it.

You'll need to wait, it's kept secret until the prizegiving. Though I daresay the whole of the Fort will know.