dan williams

Yes similar You're never sure you're turning it the right way until the jaws move.

Close but not quite American. adjustable wrench

Really imposssible to know over the web how your bike compares. The air cooled bikes are not as crisp as the water cooled bikes but it should run cleanly down at the bottom of the rev range. Things to check on the older bike are rings. After about three years the rings are due for a change. Because they wear so gradually a bike will seem to run fine but is actually quite a bit weaker which becomes obvious once the new ones are in. Check your ignition timing with a timing light. Retarded timing will make the bike run soft off the bottom. Carb jetting is something you can only figure out by trial and error. Sorry but jetting is a time consuming process. No way around it. Also check your exhaust is clear. Gunk can build up in the muffler and suffocate the engine as well as carbon building up in the header pipe. Good luck and let us know what you find.

Engine Ice, basically propylene glycol and water. I figured with the '08 Beta magnesium cases I'd play it safe.

Heh heh they kill me too. I'm one of those oddballs who is a lousy rider but a good teacher/minder because I've studied the mechanics of riding. I also had the advantage of spending a lot of time with Ron Commo Jr. who I still regard as one of the best trials teachers I've ever seen.

Dremel tool. Indispensable Big fire extinguisher. You won't need it until you NEED it. Set of combination wrenches. i.e. box on one side open end on other. Add extras of the most used like 10mm, 13mm, and 17mm Set of T-handle allen wrenches. Set of angle allen keys Set of 3/8 in sockets. Add deep sockets for most used sizes. Two 3/8 inch fine tooth ratchets. 1/2 inch ratchet. Set of 3/8 inch ratchet extensions. Phillips head socket. Annoying but useful. Angle/swivel socket thingy. Can't remember what it's called. Screwdriver set. Hammer. Tire plug kit. 3/8 and 1/2 inch breaker bar. 1/2 inch sockets for big nuts on bike. Axle, steering stem... Did I mention fire extinguisher?

Good gas is essential due to the high compression ratio. If you can live with a little less pop from the engine you can throw another base gasket in to drop the compression ratio a bit. Adjusting the pilot or retarding the ignition will also lower the tendancy to knock but they will have the effect of making the bike somewhat less responsive. Octane booster will probably work but you're dealing with an unknown quantity there. Personally I like race gas because it's consistant. But yeah it's expensive too.

Sounds like a great idea to me. For years in New England we had debate about standard difficulty in section design and that has proved impossible to quantify but standard marking is easy to implement. Parallel to that was the idea of how do observers know what line each rider is supposd to ride. Currently, on our plates, we are supposed to have an A, B or C after the riding number. One suggestion to make it easier on the observer was to make plate color match the line to be ridden. The suggestion never passed at our rules meeting but it could work very well with the color marking scheme the SACU has instituted. Hmmm, maybe next year I'll bring this up at our annual meeting.

Just for the sake of research (and because I have an '08) what coolant did the dealer recommend and did you dilute it with water and was it de-ionized water or tap water or spring water? Yes I know spring water is an odd choice but there have been times when that was all that was in the truck so I have used it before. I'm thinking it might be worth pulling my cover to take a look and possibly seeing how difficult it would be to plate the magnesium with some less chemically active metal like gold. Just the surfaces that contact the water not the outside. I provide enough comedy to my buddies with my riding. I might have lucked out with mine as it had an electrical fault when I first got it so I had to drain the coolant to get at the wiring with only a few hours on the bike and refilled it with engine ice. It'll be interesting to see if that protected my case.

My Diadora's did the same after the first ride I noticed one of the seams in the front of the boot had ripped open. Garne for me from now on. Yeah they wear out in the back but only after about four years of abuse. The feel of the rear brake in the Garne is also a lot better.

Agreed a choppy clutch makes it much harder on two fronts. First the grabby clutch applies too much power to the rear wheel which lifts the front wheel. Second the rapid acceleration causes the rider to get "behind" the bike by a fraction of a second. Not only is your weight back but the effect is amplified by the need to pull on the bars to regain centering causing the front to be even lighter. If you compound this with the natural tendancy to clamp the legs in to hold on to the bike when it starts to get ahead of you it's the perfect recipe for going straight.

Compared to other brands Shercos are light in the front end but there are a whole host of things that will make the front end push. So yes check the fork height in the triple clamps and make sure there isn't too much air pressure in your tires and make sure the suspension is balanced and you don't have much more preload on one suspension then the other but the best advice is get used to steering with those big connecting rods that make you 6' 2". Bar position is usually not one of the biggies as there is a wide range of bar positions used by the top riders and they can make them all work. If your bars are vertical to slightly forward of vertical that's a fairly common position. Contrary to intuition having the bars further forward doesn't necessarily put more pressure on the front end. The opposite is true because you will be sticking your rear counter weight out and unless you look like Popeye (in which case a thyroid exam is a good idea) your butt weighs more then your arms. If anything beginners tend to wash out the front end by not turning with their feet. The bike will go where you tell it with your feet. I take it you are coming to trials from another type of riding. You are used to leaning into a turn with your whole body. That ain't gonna work with trials bucky. Here's the easy exercise to help illustrate. Find an off camber and go stand on it facing along the direction of the camber so one foot is higher then the other. Carefully observe how your body is positioned. Your torso and shoulders are level. The difference in height between your feet is taken up by your knees. Your weight is centered over your center of gravity and you can be pushed and still resist falling over. That is exactly the position you should take when the bike is leaning for a turn. The torso and shoulders are straight and level and the inside knee for the turn is straighter then the outside knee which is bent to allow the footpeg to come up. Same with the arms, the inside arm straightens and the outside arm bends to allow the handlebar to come up. This is how you see the good riders picking their way through a section able to stop at any time still in balance. What most beginners do is keep their legs too straight leaning the whole body into the turn as you would turning a bike at speed. After not being able to turn at a slow speed for a while they learn to compensate for the difference in peg height by twisting their bodies and sticking their tails over to the side of the bike to counter weight their twisted torsos. Try this standing on the off camber. Go from your normal balanced leg bent position to one where you try to keep both legs the same length. All you can do is twist to compensate and that is extremely limited. It's a very weak position and a passing squirrel could knock you over. The ability to compensate in this position is marginal at best and in a section where everything is designed to knock you off balance you are at a serious disadvantage. So what does this have to do with pushing? Well extend the logic here. When you turn the front wheel and don't allow the bike to lean because your legs are straight and usually tucked into the frame you are forcing the bike to go straight. No matter how much you turn the front wheel the driving wheel at the back is going to dominate. This whole problem can be fixed with some driveway practice. Get out and try to do slow figure eights being consious of the lean of the bike and your center of gravity over a center line between the two contact patches of the wheels. Think pressure rather then weight. Pressure one side of the bike then the other as you transition from left to right to left turn. You'll know when you've got it wrong because you'll dab to the inside. That's a sign that you're not bending your knees to make the bike turn. When you have it right you'll know that too because you'll be able to stop at any point in the turn in balance. Like those fancy turning wheelies you see the pros do? Ever wonder how they steer around on just one wheel? Hate shooting through the bushes in the corner at the top of a climb? Me too. Once you get the centering and steering with your feet as a natural part of your riding having the front wheel come off the ground is no big whoop as the bike will continue to turn and be controllable simply with peg pressure. You actually have an advantage. Since you're new to trials you don't have years of bad habit to unlearn.

Sweet!! If the noise didn't go away with the bike running, stopped, in-gear, with the clutch pulled it's not transmission. That essentially keeps the gear shafts from spinning so it sounds like someting much less serious. Check that all your engine bolts are tight. Make sure nothing is loose on the frame and that the carb is not touching the exhaust system. On the older Rev3s it wasn't uncommon for the exhaust to rattle on the frame. I stuffed a piece of silicone pot holder under the middle chamber on my '05. You could have a very small leak at the exhaust header gasket. The practical upshot is as long as the noise didn't go away with the above test worst case is pulling off the primary side cover and ignition cover and looking for something rubbing or broken and chasing around the frame looking for something loose. The bit about washing the bike could be metal to metal rubbing that got lubed by the wash water and so stopped making noise. A few strategic squirts of WD-40 at frame junctions can track that down. Usual culprit is aluminum to aluminum like where the skid plate attaches. Beta frames squeak when they're relatively new. After a while you just accept it and ignore it.

I hate to say it but that could be a compromised gear tooth. There have been reports on here of gearbox failures. Does it make the sound when running in neutral? Clutch basket and hub, primary gearshaft spinning/secondary shaft not spinning Does it make the sound when stopped with the bike in gear and the clutch pulled in? Clutch basket spinning/ clutch hub, primary shaft not spinning Does it make the sound when rolling, clutch out? Clutch basket, primary shaft, secondary shaft, drive chain spinning First do the clutch in/in-gear test. If it still makes the noise when the bike isn't moving in-gear then it isn't in the transmission and you've eliminated everything after the clutch basket. If it still makes the noise do the in-neutral clutch released not moving test. This will eliminate the final drive train and point squarely at the transmission. One of the problems with a constant mesh transmission is the gears are always engaged even though they are not driving the shafts so you can't just shift through the gears and hear a gear noise go away. Drain the gearbox oil and make sure there are no pieces of metal on the drain plug magnet. Pull the side cover and inspect the primary side drive gears and the kick start idler gear. Check the inside of the primary case for any scrape marks. Occassionally a clutch screw will back out and scrape on the cover. If you havent identified the cause by this point a center case teardown may be in order. If it is a bad gear the risk for further damage is fairly high. Let us know what you find.

Two systems to be concerned about. The "low" voltage side of the ignition that has the primary side of the ignition coil/kill switch/stator and the secondary side of the ignition coil/spark plug. The primary side is operating at hundreds of volts and the secondary at thousands. The first suspect for me would be the kill switch as the stock Beta units are notoriously bad. Another suspect on the primary side would be the connectors inside of the headstock/frame junction as these are not sealed connectors and can let water in but they are unlikely to cause a short because here is quite a bit of separation between the conductors and water that is relatively pure is not that great a conductor. The only other primary side suspect is the wiring that goes to the connector that connects the stator to the CDI box. You can pull the top tank plastic piece and peek in to see if those wires have not rubbed through and check the place where they emerge by the bars to make sure there is no rub spots there as well. On the secondary side the spark plug wire can cause problems when wet if it has any cracks or pin holes in it. This usually only occurs on very old bikes but check to see if the routing has caused any wear on the wire. The plug cap is unlikely to be an issue unless the internal resistor is broken and intermittant as there's really no place for it to short out to. It is possible to get contamination on the plug insulator that can cause high speed mifires and possibly spraying oil on the engine caused this but that is pretty unlikely as WD-40 is a pretty good insulator. Spraying it directly on the plug is probably not the best idea. If you sprayed it inside the business end of the plug that's certainly a bad idea. As a last resort if you can't isolate the problem you can, with a dry bike, spray on what's called "conformal coating" available at do it youself type of electronics stores. Essentially this stuff is clear spray paint that has a very high dielectric strength. I'd call this a last resort though as it can be messy and is only a band aid. Even though it dosen't relate to this problem I'll say again it's important to make sure the kill switch ground is separated from the lighting system ground as the standard grounding scheme is asking for trouble. The kill switch ground wire should be disconnected from the ground mecca at the bottom of the wireing harness and reconnected to one of the ignition coil frame lugs.

My friends and I rode a hill climb years ago on our Betas. It was fun and we did OK against the bikes with swingams as long as my whole bike. What was funny to me is after running out of momentum and stopping I just pulled in the clutch and prepared to turn it around to ride the off camber over to the access road on the side of the hill. The hill helpers were most agitated. They started screaming Turn it off! TURN IT OFF!!! I guess they're used to 150hp monsters going out of control. My favorite part was the announcer at the bottom when my buddy rolled up to the starting line, "The next rider is on a Beta...Whatever the hell that is."

I remember seeing an interview with Christopher Walken where, when asked about his unusual delivery of lines, he said the first thing he does with a script is remove all punctuation. For a guy who plays such scary roles Walken is a riot. One of the funniest episodes of "Inside the actors studio" I've seen.

Wow, somebody needs to switch to decafe.

They're made by a company called Colder Products http://www.colder.com/

A big factor in the corrosion is the ionic contaminants in the water you throw into the cooling system. Don't use tap water. Either use de-ionized water or one of the premixed varieties like engine ice or Maxima Pro-cool. They're cheap enough compared to an engine case. I have yet to see a corrosion issue on a Beta and I've had all of mine for at least two years and some up to five years. Don't use spring water either, it isn't the same as the de-ionized. My guess is that the guys with the big corrosion issues all used tap water that is rather nasty. Basically forming a battery by providing an electrolyte (contaminated water) with the magnesium as the sacrificial terminal and aluminum/steel for the other. It would be interesting to do a scan on the other components the coolant touches to see where that magnesium deposits. OK so I geeked out. Sorry.

The best method is still a timing light.

Check the basics first like stuck kill switch, shorts in the wiring (rubs to frame), poor contact for grounds, whisker of carbon on the plug tip.

You're welcome but remember the fluid has a lot to do with it as well. Some fluids like ATF contain friction enhancers which can make the clutch very abrupt too. Having said that though I can tell you I love the modified clutch on my '08 as much as I loved the clutch on the '05 with the modification. They behave exactly the same which is unusual for Betas with the clutch in stock form. Finding two Beta clutches that act the same is like finding two peanuts exactly the same shape. It happens but it's pretty rare. Having a 2000 you might also want to have a look at your clutch basket for wear from the fiber plate tabs as well. If you do the modification it will take the plates a few hours to settle in as they have to wear in slightly to the basket grooves again. The optimum would be to have a jig that exactly matched the basket dimensions and dress the fiber plate tabs as a pack to precisely match the basket but that was way too much effort and money for me to get into. Just dressing the tabs and cleaning up the plates gets you 90% of the way there.

Tough call. You really need to go see it for yourself. It could be a case where the original owner put really bad fuel in it or the ignition is too far advanced or there is a blocked needle jet in which case you get a good bike from somebody that is just clueless how to adjust. The other case is a mechanical issue where there is a bad bearing or a broken gear tooth or some other mechanical malady that will require many quid to fix. Impossible for anyone to know without seeing the bike first hand. My advice would be, if it's near enough, to take an experianced mechanic with you to check it out.