dan williams

Worth pointing out two tools that are extremely useful and hardly thought of. Hemostats are those locking tweezer thingys that are used in surgery. I use them (depending on size) for holding components for soldering to chasing rubber boots onto carbs to retrieving small parts from inaccessible places. You don’t need them often but once you do you’ll be glad you have them. Places like Amazon or Harbor Freight sell cheap sets. Other surgical tools are also handy like small angled scissors. The other weird tools that have proven really useful are dental picks. Stainless steel picks bent at various angles with sharp points. I used one yesterday to clear dirt from around an air screw on a carb. Also useful for picking o-rings out of recessed grooves or cleaning silt out of calipers during rebuild.

Squirt some WD40 or similar lube on the inside of the rubber manifolds. The best way to get the carb off is to remove all the clamps and slide the rear air boot all the way back until it bottoms on the air box. It’s easy to pivot the carb out. It takes some force but not so much you’ll be worried. Same to reinstall. Twist carb into engine side manifold first and rotate into position. This will collapse the rear boot. Use a thin tool (I use my comically long curved hemostat but a screwdriver works in a pinch as long as you’re careful not to puncture the air boot or shave metal off the carb) to chase it around the intake bell and once it’s on slide the boot onto the carb until it seats. Reinstall the clamps. Lubing the rubber makes a huge difference just like changing a tire.

It’s a fairly simple idea. There is only a small amount of throw in the clutch mechanism and tolerances and wear can cause freeplay before engagement which just wastes some of that travel. Hydraulic clutch actuators should compensate to some degree but they seem to not quite get it done. Bultacos used to have a screw to adjust the position of the throwout bearing to compensate for this. Maybe time to see if it’s possible to implement on the EVO. I feel another custom part coming on!

The world guys used to stuff steel wool into the silencer for sound test. The Betas are a fairly high compression engine which is why the need for high octane fuel. Also why you get that pop when the exhaust port opens. Restricting flow in the exhaust will slow down the top end of the engine as well as make it quieter. You could try blocking some of the holes in the silencer core to achieve this. A piece of thin sheet metal should suffice. Alternately you could buy a low compression head to reduce the pop and the need for race gas. One thing to keep in mind though is despite how loud it seems standing behind the bike the sound of trials bikes doesn’t seem to carry. Honestly. Losing track of your friends in the woods is a common problem as if you can’t see them you usually can’t hear them. Only know where they are when they yell.

Anything really different with the 2020? Aside from the bold new graphics that is.?

Snug em. The springs will keep them from backing out.

Yes it comes up from the underside of the card throat oriented opposite the picture.

4T has all six of the 3mm thick plates. I haven’t got one to play with so I’ve got no idea how to smooth out the engagement. Swapping plates might work either with some of the thinner plates or the kevlar plates from Barnett but it’s pure speculation.

Yeah the more screwy the behavior usually the simpler the fix. Your intuition was correct all along.

Be careful with air pressure on the Keihin as there’s a gasket at the base of the float tower that is impossible to find a replacement for. One other thing that can happen is putting the needle jet in upside down. Sounds ridiculous but I’ve done it.? The tapered hole goes up.

Keihins are prone to needing an occasional cleaning. The exit hole for the pilot circuit is tiny as in microscopic. Yes it looks bigger if you eyeball it (the little hole in the bottom of the carb bore behind the slide) but it necks down significantly. Even a tiny bubble of water in that hole will make it bog coming off idle. Best to pull it apart and run some carb spray through the holes. Usually clears it up.

Fans, and electric motors in general, have a very high starting current. If jumping across the temp switch makes the fan run every time then I think you’ve identified a bad switch. If you have an ohm meter handy you could let the bike heat up and disconnect the switch and throw the ohm meter across the switch terminals. It wouldn’t take more than a few ohms of resistance to limit the starting current to the point the fan won’t start running but would keep running once started. I did take a Beta fan into the lab once to measure the running current and it was about 0.5 amp but if I limited the supply to anything under 10 amps the fan would not start. I think you’re up for a new switch.

Machine wash warm/warm. Pretreat with stain stick according to instructions on the stick. Let the stain stick sit for a bit before washing to do its thing. Do NOT dry in dryer. The heat will set the stains. Also the heat will shrink the spandex. Air dry.

All on hold due to corona virus. Will update when the world starts spinning again.

New England Trials Association has cancelled all events until further notice. Pretty much everyone is in agreement that it is unfortunate but prudent.

Unfortunately they are not doing an event this year. At least not an NETA event.

I'm not dead yet. Still looking for another gig. Would you like cheese on that sir?

4/26 RITC Training School 5/3 KPTR Wrentham 5/17 Meriden MC 6/7 Springfield MC 6/21 Rhode Island TC 7/19 State Line Riders (NY) 9/27 Rhode Island TC 10/10 CATRA 10/11 CATRA ** Meriden MC are still scheduling 1 more even

I’ve had two of the 300s and my experience matches mcman56’s most closely. They can be made softer off the bottom with modifications. Proper jetting, gear down a bit, low compression head and carbon reeds on mine. Purrs like a kitten and grunts like a pig. But... it is still a 300 and will remind you of that fact if you get sloppy with the throttle. Lose focus and you better have a quick clutch finger. I haven’t tried super smooth but I have had Betas with added flywheel weight and I just don’t care for the run-on you get with a flywheel. I also like feeling for traction with a more responsive engine but to each their own.

Yeah but we buy them anyway?

I considered this.The problem is my bike was popping out of first and second into neutral. That it usually occurred when I bounced the bike (intentionally or unintentionally) started me toward the shifter but I came to realize it wasn't synchronous with just a bounce but a bounce that unloaded the transmission. I'm sure there are nuances that I'm missing. The other thing that pushed me away from the lever being the root cause is it takes (or should) a fairly decent amount of force to roll that bearing up the cam slope far enough to de-index the thing. More than is likely to be generated by that light weight shifter just bouncing on the pegs in my novice sections.Third was that my bike was the best shifting Beta I've owned until about six months in. Then it started getting funky. First the occasional pop into neutral and progressing to two-three times per event. Really rattled me. So far with the latest revision of the mod I have half a season of riding on the bike with the custom cam and reverse cam indexer and it is still working as it should. I know when I do a crappy shift and now I can hear and feel the gearbox snap into gear after a split second. Just using the indexer with the proper bearing stopped it from popping out but the slightly steeper cam with flats on top has just changed the feel to what is expected from a Japanese street bike. I'll tear it down in spring just to make sure it is not wearing abnormally or anything weird is happening like the pins backing out of the cam but to be honest it's so good right now I don't really want to mess with it any further. Without evidence to the contrary I'm still sticking with the crappy, oversized OEM bearing, under-sprung indexer as the root cause.

Congrats and welcome to the loony bin?

Not quite sure what that phrase means but... You might want to pull the primary drive and have a look to see if something is interfering with the clutch basket. Typically a loose muffler core won’r make the bike vibrate.

Looks like I’ll have more time to play with this stuff. Just got made redundant. Can’t complain though. It was a good 37 year run.

But? But the new Beta has bold new graphics! BOLD NEW GRAPHICS!!! How could you?!! ?