dan williams

Congrats!

Sorry your having all these troubles griff. You'll get it sorted eventually.

Good point TLTEL.

Did you pull the flywheel to see if you sheared the key again?

The flywheel has play in and out!? That can't be good. It won't change your timing but your crank bearings are shot. The usual running backwards problem is a sheared woodruff key and a shifted flywheel.

To be honest I've never measured just set it back to the middle of the groove and adjusted from feel if I didn't think it was good.

Andy saves the day. Now if he could just keep us all from looking daft on the bike.

Unlike a points ignition that wears and changes timing the electronic ignition shouldn't need to be adjusted. Of course this means you are out of luck as far as adjusting the beastie for fine tuning. If you look at the inside of the flywheel you'll see one or two magnets are different. That is the magnet that triggers the ignition when it passes the trigger coil because the trigger coil is oriented 90 degrees from the lighting and CDI charging coils. Because of the orientation of the trigger coil the other magnets don't generate a current in the trigger coil but the zigzag looking magnet does in the form of a pulse. A microcontroller in the CDI reads the trigger signal and fires an SCR which dumps the current from a capacitor (CDI Capacitor Discharge Ignition)into the ignition coil generating a spark. I have a CDI that I de-potted (fancy word for picked the rubber goo out of) and there are programming contacts for the CDI. Too bad they don't give you access to those as you could program your own ignition curve. Probably bung it up right proper but that's how you learn. Or at least that's how I learn.

Mikuni carb, mixture screw (small one) 1.5 turns out from bottomed. Idle screw adjust until it idles where you like it. No absolute right or wrong. The mixture screw may adjust ~+/-1 turn depending on jetting and temperature.

103ft/lbs if I remember correctly. Seems quite a lot the first time you torque one on. That's why the holder tool, I reloaded the picture of in the other thread, is necessary.

I hope you got on the flywheel with a torque wrench. It takes quite a lot to keep it together.

Clutch fix pinned to the top of the Beta forum may help. They're all basically the same except for the GasGas clutch.

I think the race pack is what's standard on the 300 and I swapped mine for the older pack with all six plates the same. I like it much better.

The procedure is pinned to the top of the Beta forum in PDF form. Basically clean the glue out from between the pads and smooth the sides of the tabs on the aluminum plates that ride in the grooves of the clutch basket. It's made many happy Beta owners.

I have VForce on my Beta with the Keihin. Love 'em. The bike can pull a gear higher without stalling. It literally is the first mod I do to a new bike. The second being the clutch fix but that's a Beta thang.

Heh heh that should be '95 kickstarter. After so many Betas I lose track. One other good thing for the '95 is a fork brace. Not sure where you'd find one now but it stiffened up the USD forks and made the bike track a little better. I did like the USD forks though.

I seem to remember some of the red high temp silicone sealant on my '02 and I was the original owner.

When the mains on my '05 went bad it sounded like a rock crusher. Still ran good but I figured it wouldn't be long before it didn't.

The one key element for the lower classes is danger. Make the penalty for failure in a section a crash especially a bad one and people quit the sport before they get good enough to enjoy a little danger. The penalty for failure in the lower classes should be a dab or a five. It's not necessary to make a section full of big hits when a small off camber on the setup for a medium size hit causes wobblies without the scare factor. Experienced riders are often lousy at setting up sections because they are no longer scared of what the beginners are scared of so they leave in obstacles that cause the sudden brake grab or the two foot down panic or pulling in the clutch at just the wrong time crash. Experts? Go ahead and beat them up, they've got an E on that plate they should know what they're doing but the lower classes need to be more tuned to the beginners and fun riders because the fun riders pay the freight and the beginners are on their way to being experts if they're not driven out of the sport first.

All depends on the instantaneous torque of the motor. A clutch lets you release energy stored in the rotating flywheels of the crank and ignition. Necessary because a gasoline engine won't make high torque at low RPM. An electric motor is different. Torque at any RPM is dependent on the magnetic field strength generated by current and the stator/rotor configuration. You can generate maximum torque at 0RPM with an electric motor. That'll take some getting used to. A virtual clutch could be programmed. Pull the lever and the field strength goes away and the engine freewheels. Twist the grip and let the lever go and wham, instant torque. The only difference is the visceral feedback of a buzzing, vibrating motor. Again easily synthesized. Engine drag could also be simulated for down hills and such by putting the motor in generator mode when sensed load goes negative. Increase the field in generator mode using a brake pedal and the whole rear brake assembly becomes redundant. This would allow regeneration braking to recharge the battery. It wouldn't get you much recovery but something is better than just burning up that energy in a brake disk. The only difference in the operation of the chassis would be the unloading of the rear suspension would feel slightly different due to the braking torque being fed through the chain rather than a disk concentric to the rear axle.

Check out the clutch fix pinned to the top of the Beta forum.

Never said it was easy. The primary flywheel is pretty close to the sight glass and I don't see it. Obviously to be certain you can drop the side cover. That being said the older bikes do rev up slower than the new ones. Look at the bright side. Once we all go back to no stop and heavier bikes you'll be ahead of the curve.

This is one of those red herrings that gets thrown up from time to time. Ew bad image. The problem isn't one of easy vs. hard. For the lower classes a section can't be too easy. If a rider needs more challenge they can move up. The problem is consistency through a series. If the section difficulty is kept within a narrow range it's easy to pick the class that's right for you. If the section difficulty is too variable from event to event you get the Goldilocks and the three bears problem as riders shuffle back and forth trying to figure out where they belong based on their ability and penchant for abuse. This was a major problem in NETA when I was an officer and I made it a point to have someone I trusted, or myself, inspect and tweak section difficulty before each event. It was a pain in the ass but the end result was the classes settled down after a few years and there were very few gripes about section difficulty. The downside is the need for an experienced section designer who knows what to look for and the resultant wailing and gnashing of teeth by the trials masters insulted by your critique of their baby. But really, if ensuring a quality of experience for the membership isn't the function of a sanctioning body what is?

Back in the early days of importing cars into the US, Japanese manufacturers’ advertisements extoled the performance and quality of their cars with specifications and real data. They sold poorly. Being the clever fellows they are they took a step back and looked at the American advertisements and realized that only engineers like themselves actually looked at the numbers. The buying public was more into image, The Heartbeat of America! Chevy, Mopar and Ford weren’t engineering companies they were style merchants and tribal affiliations that just happened to build cars. You think the majority of Harley owners can tell you the torque peak of their engine or the iPhone user tell you his phone is a quad band GSM handset? Honda got the message early with their bikes. “You meet the nicest people on a Honda!” Toyota hit it exactly with the Prius. The jury is still out whether it is actually good or bad for the environment and it would probably go faster if it had pedals but people who buy one don’t care. They are part of the eco tribe with their neatly packaged image intensifier. Now I can read specifications and believe they are relevant to real world performance since writing data sheets is one of the ways I make my living but on a bike I can tell more in a minute of riding than an hour of geeking out on specs. I’m sure you can too. Most riders will never spend the time it takes to properly set up their bikes to get the stated performance anyway. For the manufacturers what’s the point. If BHP isn’t a major selling point why bother with the expense and time of measuring? I’ve ridden factory trials bikes. On paper they look awesome. For me, in a section they were suboptimal (read terrifying) and maybe that’s the real variable that makes bike data irrelevant, the variability of the rider.

Just don't start rioting.