dan williams

A wise decision. I've been using the full length plastic covers on my Betas for years. The only time I didn't was riding a brand new bike. I let a friend try it for five minutes and within 60 seconds he slid the fork leg down the side of a rock. Wasn't even necessary, he just wasn't paying attention. Nice big scratches down the aluminum slider.

Rode yesterday. It’s good. Bike shifts easily. Stays in gear. Is still a pain to find neutral but no worse than stock. I think I’m done. ?

Haven’t updated in a while. Too busy. The “final” iteration is now in the bike. Reverse 16mm bearing with custom cam. Several events were run with 14mm bearing with custom indexer/custom cam on shortened pivot pin. Bike hasn’t popped out in months. I’ll make some of these available in a bit. The hot setup with the stock cam appears to be the 13mm bearing on the custom indexer with the shortened pin. Or the 13mm bearing with the reversed indexer. EDIT: With the stock cam before 2019 (or 2018 factory) as they have different cams which may require the 16mm bearing. Anxiously awaiting feedback from the Beta beta tester with a 2019.

You’re a half hour from the Meriden motorcycle club. One of the best trials areas in New England. Former stomping ground of 10 time US champion Geoff Aaron.

Not just new, “bold” new graphics! Beta better up their game or TRS is going to convert everyone. You can't swing a Beta kick stand around here without hitting a TRS.

Makes sense. Freezing will kill most bacteria. Ice crystals destroy the cell walls. Not sure of the effect of repeated heat cool cycles. Usually wreaks havoc on adhesive joints like the liner to shell in most helmets.

Look if it doesn’t work for you don’t do it. Not everything has to be debated ad nauseam.

Killing the bacteria that cause the smell.

Two words, college students. Essentially pure ethanol. Used for making your own fortified wine, liqueur, ER visit for alcohol poisoning....

Last time I machine washed a liner I pulled a mass of threads and foam pads out of the machine.

Yeah but the residual smell of vinegar or Lysol would drive me crazy. This stuff dries leaving only a residue of water. I’ve been using it for a year or so on the new carbon Jitsie my wife got me and it seems to work the best of anything I’ve tried. Pretty much de-stank my old NZIs too. Supposedly illegal where I live but the local store has it on the shelf so...

Cheaper than those piddly little cans of helmet mousse. Highly flammable! Illegal in many jurisdictions. Extremely effective. Yes I know you can buy cans of denatured alcohol much cheaper but they have acetone and methylated ketones and who knows what else to make them poisonous, well more poisonous, and I’m not sure how those additives affect the helmet materials. edit: turns out acetone is a solvent for polystyrene.

Not quite sure what you’re asking but the way I understand this the white wires are ac feed from the stator lighting coils. The black is “ground” and the two red wires are +12V. The red wires feed the LED headlight (small connector), the fan thermo switch and the CDI. The yellow/brown wires from the map switch go down to the CDI box.

So, you don’t want one? ?

I heard the same reason but it never made sense to me. Once the gear is chased into engagement there is minimal torque to deflect the shift forks. One other thing that was suspect is wear on the drum causing play in the fork tracks. Since installing the uprated bearing/arm in my bike stopped it popping out of gear without changing any internal gearbox components I’m now fairly certain it’s simply a crappy bearing/too light pressure/low cam lobe issue. Fix any one and it improves dramatically. Fix all three and it’s pretty solid so far. Anybody else want to give it a try?

I took a putt on a friend’s 200 last week. Damn that thing is good!

I agree not everybody should get a trophy but everybody should be able to play. Hence some want/need electric starters. Plenty of people who have trouble kicking a bike over at the end of the day are perfectly capable of kicking my ass in the sections. The relative merits are not the issue I was trying to elevate. Merely that I think it can be done better. The same attitudes were on full display when radial tires came out. Same for water cooled engines.

Snowball’s chance in Canoga I’ll start the Beta by hand.

Understand that. My wife had a lovely little ttr125l that she didn’t ride because she hated kickstarting it. I could start it by hand? she replaced it with a CRF150f because it has electric start. It also weights 80lbs more than my Beta. She’s added a KLX140g with electric start and I came home Thursday to find her in the garage with the primary drive side cover off installing a Rekluse! To be expected when you marry another engineer. We both spend more time redesigning than riding.

Still experimenting but the 13mm bearing seems to work well with the stock cam. (As long as the idiot installing it uses loctite on the screws) I have the 14mm bearing in now with the custom cam and it’s really good. I will try the 16mm bearing with the reverse indexer next time I get around to cracking it open. Unfortunately unlike the clutch fix this one requires some parts swapping.

I remember reading about that. Of course the RD400 wasn’t meant to spend a lot of time at low rpm so maybe the effect would be more noticeable on a plonker. I do like the different responses to the post. Your measured engineering response and the inevitable “Just kick it you wuss!” “We don’t need no steeenking electric start.” Are both expected and entertaining. Though your thoughts are a bit more useful.?

Well that’s a bit harsh. I’m pretty sure the trials manufacturers are not rolling in dough and willfully holding back technology just to spite us. I think it more likely their R&D budgets don’t extend to components they can buy on the open market.

Yup and technology has moved on a bit since then? Well magnets are stronger.

Kudos to TRS for thinking outside the box and designing an electric start that drives the ignition side of the crank. My question is why do we need a separate starter motor at all? Current designs use a high speed starter motor geared down to provide starting torque which is engaged and then disengaged becoming dead weight when not in use. With the lighting coils we have an array of coils in a mass of spinning permanent magnets already. If used for a starter motor and then switched to generate power once the engine is started there is no mechanical interface and none of the animal is wasted as the saying goes. The concept of a motor/generator is old. Real old. Starter/generators have been used on aircraft for decades. So is it now time for this to be applied to trials bikes or are we just waiting for the electrics to catch up and not really developing internal combustion any more. I know the margins on trials bikes are pretty thin and most manufacturers have bins full of ignition systems to use up but... For old guys like me that find kicking the beast to be less "fun" than it once was an electric start looks better and better. If it can be done in such a way that the penalty is simply the weight of a LIPo battery and electronics to commutate the motor signal I think it'd sell quite a lot of bikes. The strength of rare earth magnets could make for a very light weight flywheel. Weight could be added to the primary drive side so engine characteristics wouldn't feel significantly different and the twisting force on the crank due to wheel loads would be reduced. Just throwing it out there.

Obsessed? Me? No, why do you ask?