dan williams

Mine didn't come with a bar pad. Just a rubber dingus that fits over the bar clamps.

The Keihin carbs are notorious for getting water bubbles or dirt flecks in the exit hole of the pilot circuit just behind the slide at the bottom of the bore. The actual hole is tiny. You have to disassemble the carb and blow it out with compressed air. I usually have to do it two or three times a year. You can take the tower off with a T20 torx security bit. Be very careful not to damage the little O-ring type gasket on the front face.

I put one of the gold S3 chambers on my 2013 as I was having issues holding on (realized later it wasn't bike, was Lyme disease) anyway the lower compression head makes the bike easier to start. Not easy but easier. Still grunts up slow hills like a 300 and will still jump when the throttle is whacked but the hit is less violent. I didn't find it necessary to change jetting. It may help the Beta's appetite for race gas, I don't know because I use VP C-12 anyway. I think it's a good mod for anybody below expert. I also recommend carbon reeds as they allow the bike to pull smoother and cleaner off the bottom.

I was also thinking the lack of need for a clutch opens the possibility for putting the rear brake on the bars like the Clake setup.

There is a bit of a compromise between pull and slip. For most of us bunny riders the immediate clutch response needed by the experts is not to our benefit. I used to pull two spings but had spacers made up that do roughly the same thing reducing the spring pressure. I don't get significant slip but others have reported it.

Easy, put your finger on the bearing cup by the frame and rock the bike. If you can feel movement it's the bearings. Nut needs tightening. The older Beta's usually took a few re-torques for the head bearings to completely seat in the aluminum headstock. Put your finger on the top triple clamp and the stem and rock the bike. If you feel movement it's the top stem hole clearance and the teflon tape works well but must be redone once in a while depending on how much you ride. Dado's suggestion of shim metal should work too. I just had Teflon tape handy so that's what I used. I now have some Teflon sheets of various thicknesses I got from an on-line plastics shop for a few bucks I'll try next time. Actually bought them as optical diffusers but that's another story. Just to be safe make sure your brake caliper isn't moving. I've seen forks damaged by loose caliper mounts.

Aside from making the motor an integrel frame element to save weight I don't see there being much to improve on as electric motor development is pretty advanced. I think most future improvment is squarely in the battery energy density. Still looking forward to seeing this bike though. Actually I can see one other big advantage to an electric bike and that is in the area of transport. Not having to deal with gasoline or gear oils a bike that easily breaks into two or three major pieces that can be transported in a small car without too much hassle would be a major change in the way most of us do trials. Plug the battery into the lighter for a last bit of charge on the way to ride, get to the venue, a few minutes to assemble and off you go.

Very cool. Thanks for posting that.

I'm waiting most impatiently to see this bike. It's not a matter of if I buy an electric bike but when.

Yeah and while you're at it smack around the person responsible for the whole damping/dampening thing.

I just looked at two parts lists and found the impeller on both. What year is your bike?

That would have to be a Monday bike. After an open bar party. Assembled by the "new" guy". There's no way for us to assess any damage but if you haven't seized it and it still seems to have plenty of power you might have got away with it. There are several threads where a 4T owner reports a missing impeller. Sounds very weird. Some believe it broke apart and may be wedged in pieces somewhere in the cooling system. Might be worth dropping the hoses and back flushing the radiator and cylinder. I replaced the impeller on my 2T with the aluminum Jitsie but the website says it won't fit the 4T.

I have a '13 300 with Vforce Carbon reeds and an S3 low compression head. For crawling around on the slow stuff the bike is very smooth and controllable. It still jumps like a scalded cat with a handful of throttle. What I love about the displacement is the pure grunt the thing has. Slow steep hill climbs are almost too easy.

I absolutely love these videos. The voiceover is perfect. It sounds so professional until an off hand comment makes you chuckle.

I know of at least one guy around here who could and would buy the Ti version and squeeze every ounce of performance out of it. So if Vertigo could sell one to every regional champion that's enough to justify production. I've also seen one of those $20,000 Montesas. Very pretty but kinda pointless. The guy who bought it is a dealer that doesn't ride events anymore. Buy hey, it makes him happy so why not. Life is short. Buy the bike.

I have a couple clutch baskets gathering dust in the garage. Want one? They were going to be part of a plating experiment I never got to. I think I've got the rivets somewhere too.

Ah and maybe a GasGas/Torrot electric becomes a possibility for my next bike.

Awesome Jamie. Welcome to the sport. A couple years of trials under your belt will make you a faster rider than just hopping on an MX bike and when the terrain gets ugly you'll have all the more advantage.

Head only and yes it feels about 20% easier to kick. Still a 300 that pulls like a freight train.

I didn't on mine. Actually I did and it ran lousy so I went back to where it was. It will depend on your bike. You are going to have to ride and figure it out for yourself. There is no magic recipe for jetting.

That's the zap. Heffergm is quite correct that hitting the front wheel compresses and stores energy in the suspension. The other critical part is getting off the gas to let the suspension release that energy. Most people fail to zap properly because they stay on the gas too long, the suspension never decompresses and the rear wheel never leaves the ground. When done properly the rear wheel hits the obstacle close to the impact point of the front wheel. It's a violent maneuver and the first few times you do it you'll scare yourself as everything happens so fast you are on top of the obstacle before you know it. It's also unnerving to purposely ram your front wheel into an obstacle but that's how it's done. Approach at slow speed. Weight slightly back Blip the throttle to lift the front wheel to an impact point on the face of the obstacle. On impact with the front wheel blip the throttle again and jump forward and up snapping the throttle off. Bend your knees to let the bike come up while pushing forward on the bars. If done properly the bars will whack you in the chest. Don't aim for too high a spot to hit the front wheel on the face of the obstacle. Optimum seems to be with the frame at about a 45 degree angle to the ground.

I just meant in general the projected tip shouldn't be a problem. You never really know why some things get incrementally changed Maybe Beta got a deal on a big box of one type of plug or the other.

As Billy observed you can't go wrong with the stock plug. The resistor plugs actually came about to suppress radio noise in autos. By reducing the edge rate of the spark the resistor plugs reduced the radio waves generated by the ignition firing. They also slightly increase the duration of the spark while dissipating a small part of the available energy. Performance wise there is virtually no difference. Cleaning your air filter will make a much larger difference. Can you blow up your CDI with a non-resistor plug? Very unlikely. Consider how the CDI works. A coil charges a capacitor up to around 300V. The charge in this capacitor is dumped through the primary of the ignition coil by triggering an SCR. The SCR is similar to a transistor that acts like a switch. A pulse of current from the trigger coil (yeah the bit that usually fails on a Beta stator) shorts the SCR. I admit that's a bit simplistic as the modern CDI has a microcontroller in it that senses the trigger pulse and adds a delay to the trigger based on engine speed (which is how you can have programmable ignition curves). So this large current of respectable voltage gets dumped into the ignition coil which is actually two coils with a common core A.K.A. a transformer. The primary winding which is thicker wire with less turns to build up a nice strong magnetic field, and a secondary winding with lots of turns of smaller wire to build up a nice high voltage in the tens of thousands of volts at a still respectable knock you on your ass current. The spark plug gap in the cylinder is what's called a negative resistance device like a flash bulb or a lightning bolt. With no voltage across it presents a resistance of many giga Ohms. As the current in the ignition coil secondary builds up it has nowhere to go causing a voltage to build across the plug gap. It's worth noting at this point that the 10kOhm resistance of the plug cap and/or resistor plug in series with the giga Ohm resistance of the gap is insignificant. As the voltage builds up the air fuel mixture in the plug gap starts to ionize. Electrons are stripped away from the atoms in the gap and a path of ionized gas is created between the electrodes. Once this happens the resistance of the plug gap effectively goes to zero. When this happens the energy stored in the magnetic field of the coil is dumped across the gap. Since the resistance of the gap is now nominally zero the voltage out of the coil drops as the current is dumped across the gap creating the hot part of the spark. Now the plug/cap resistance come into play limiting the peak current the secondary winding can dump across the gap and extending the duration of the spark. Current will continue to flow until the voltage of the secondary drops to the point where the mixture in the gap is no longer able to maintain an ionization path. The only possible mechanisms I can see for a non-resistor plug to damage a CDI is if a larger inductive kickback to the primary coil occurs. I think that's pretty unlikely though as the impedance looking back into the SCR is fairly low The projected tip plug is a similar story. In the early days the wide temperature swings of air cooled bikes running 32:1 mixtures had better plug longevity with projected tips because they are better at cleaning residue off the insulator. Modern water-cooled, electro-fusion cylinder bikes running at 80:1 - 100:1 oil ratios with higher compression ratios don't have the fouling problems so a projected tip plug isn't necessary. Will it hurt the engine? Not unless there is an interference with the piston.

Main jet tower is in the center of the float bowl to make it relatively insensitive to acceleration/deceleration. The float center of buoyancy is also centered along the side axis of the carb for the same reason. This helps with the angle of the carb as well but it's not the main reason as most designs are really throw backs to street bike design. I've often thought it would be fun to design an actual "trials" carb. Something that was completely insensitive to angle. It looks to me that these mods actually are intended to help with issues caused by fuel aeration.

I guess we know what Beta did with the leftover stock of kill switches.