charlie chitlins

After heating and quenching.

I suspect the folks who made the Seal Mate are from my generation (wouldn't surprise me if Cope is about the same age) and were addressing the lack of availability of film negatives in the digital age!! I bought a Seal Mate just to check it out...it was a bit pricey and, maybe mine had been on the shelf too long, but it was quite brittle and cracked easily. I'm back to my stash of negatives! AND...I just did fork seals on an '06 and an '08 Sherco and it's still pretty fresh in my mind. If anybody needs a bit of help, I'd be glad to walk you through it.

My son loves his '08! He's about 130 lbs (I don't know how many stone that is as the stones here in the US vary widely He glories in the fact that he has fattie bars and wavy rotors and my '06 doesn't. I like to ride the bike in first gear to get up hills and just about everything. It loves to rev! Being that he's light, it grunts him up stuff in about the same way my 2.9 grunts me up stuff. Oddly enough, it uses considerably more fuel than my 2.9 and we've run it out a few times back in the woods. I guess because it revs more. And it DOES seem much lighter...I have no idea why. When I finally let him try my 2.9, he thought it felt like a truck. Maybe something to do with the softer suspension. I wish 200 kits were more affordable!

Thanks, Andrew...I do get it. I struggle a bit with drop-offs, too! Been working on getting them really clean and well-timed. I still make the novices mistake of paying much more attention to the front wheel than the rear.

I'm all over the double blip! I'm compressing the suspension by either driving the front wheel into the obstacle or, if it's low enough, dropping the wheel on top of it and dipping my legs to compress...but as soon as the rear wheel hits...the front goes down. I think I'm not helping the rear wheel up enough. It's no biggy...at 51 with both knees held together with a clever array of screws, staples and elastic bands, my competition days are long over...just trying to add to the fun by improving bit...all while maintaining what's left of my dignity and trying to avoid the surgeon's knife.

Nice! I'd like to be able to pop my rear wheel up and land it on top of an 18" log, too!

HEY! Watch it there, young fella!

OK...I admit it...I suck and I'm flummoxed. What I can do, though, is get up onto obstacles that are big enough to make going down the other side front-wheel-first very scary. This is especially scary on logs that are up off the ground. Imagine a concrete highway divider...having the front wheel dive down when the rear hits would be a guaranteed trip over the bars. Don't ask how I know. How to carry the front wheel instead of nose diving off the other side? I can't even get it on small (18" or so) logs.

Nobody has mentioned that the bike should be started with the choke lever up and NO THROTTLE.

With the engine off, open the throttle and release it. Make sure you hear a good loud "clunk" of the slide bottoming. If not, check your cable routing and make sure the ends of the cable are properly seated in the throttle body and the elbow in the top of the carb.

Shirt?

Cassette transmission. Not new to motorcycling by any means, but new to trials. Good on Ossa for looking outside the world of trials. Amazing how much of this stuff takes awhile to cross over...an enduro guy I know (KTM and Kawasaki KDX) was shocked that I can change crank seals without splitting the engine. I was equally shocked! You have to split the engine to do crank seals?!?!?! Of course, a lot of those guys do crank bearings EVERY SEASON!

I should have mentioned...they run small! You need to buy a size larger. Also...my 13-year-old has about the same size feet as I do. I'll try his boots and give a report.

I recently bought my son a pair of Thor Blitz ATV boots. 3 buckles, firm, but not too stiff (he is comfortable walking around in them) and with a treaded sole that resembles a Vibram hiking boot sole. They were about $130 (less than half my Novogars) and I would definitely consider a pair for myself.

COOL!!! What did you ride in '76? Can you post some pics? Some of us remember that time well...or are just beginning to forget it!

Some VERY thoughtful design. It sure looks easy to service that shock linkage!

Most folks would prefer to adjust the shock while it's on the machine in order to fine-tune the results. If you got it right first time out, you might have mechanical skills that warrant a better tool kit! And...FYI...I have been a professional mechanic and have a pretty well outfitted shop. OTOH, I am a terrible cheapskate and, by no means, a tool collector. I have a bare minimum of tools and only buy a tool when absolutely necessary...or if I can't make it myself. Even I have a couple ring spanners.

My best buddy (and riding buddy) are hours apart and seldom get to ride together, but we went out this weekend and he brought his camera. Riding with my son and best friend made for an incredible day!

Steady throttle, lean the bike in toward the hill, weight on the downhill peg and grip. I forgot this briefly this weekend and almost slid into a giant hole left by a fallen tree I was trying to get around! Next time around worked beautifully...as I was heeding my own advice!

I was out yesterday on my 2.9 Sherco and a buddy was riding my '78 247C. When we switched, I couldn't wait to get off the damned thing. I have no idea how to ride that old bike. My buddy likes it, so I sold it to him....cheap. It is incredible to me, though, that modern trials was born on bikes like that. When I look at the stuff the guys from the '70's were doing, it blows my mind...I just don't want to do it myself!

VERY cool, Jay! Thank goodness for the kind of guys who have a few screws loose and want to do things like drag race VW's and make Bultaco's into trials bikes! Real creativity there. I have fond memories of riding a 125 Wombat on the MX corse in Unadilla, NY around 1974... I was getting SMOKED by CZ's, Bultacos, Montesas, an Elsinore or 2, and even a guy on a first-year Yamaha mono, whom I only beat because he grabbed a handful of that famously grabby front brake and went over the bars while trying to dive in under me in a corner. Man...the older I get, the faster I was! See what happens when you jog the memory of an aging throttle jockey?

Just label the switch "better" and "worse" and you'll always remember what it does! As an ItalJet-riding mate once advertised on his t-shirt: "It's an ItalJet thing...even I don't understand."

Anything you do to adjust that shock without the proper tool is going to be difficult, bugger up the adjuster, or both. What you're saying is, "I have all these phillips screws on my bike, but I don't want to buy a phillips screwdriver....any suggestions?" If you don't mind following in the burr covered, metal shard encrusted footsteps of the hammer-and-tongs men of the past, just put a screwdriver in the slots and hit it with a hammer; or better....a rock.

Keep trying.

Terribly! But you get all the overflow chicks! Unless there is no overflow... Or...actually...no chicks at all.... Uh, oh....