trapezeartist

I feel your pain. Having just done my first trial (well, for 47 years) I fully recognise that feeling when you look at the first section. Competing and practising are just not the same thing at all.

I just poke the breather tube down the hole in the middle of the steering head. I can't speak for your micro-wheelies, but my nano-wheelies don't cause a problem.

I can see a marginal possibility of a camera causing increased injury, but it is a pretty obscure risk. After all, riding a motorbike is dangerous. (Falling off one is even more dangerous .) Come to think of it, just existing is dangerous. Few of us are likely to get out alive.

Thanks. Confirmation that it's a drain screw. Now I just have to find a way of sealing it. O ring? Thread sealant?

Why???!!! That just smacks of crusty old blazer-wearing colonels banning anything that wasn't invented in the 19th century.

A good looking man walked into an agent's office in Hollywood and said "I want to be a movie star." Tall, handsome and with experience on Broadway, he had the right credentials. The agent asked, "What's your name?" The guy said, "My name is Penis van Lesbian." The agent said, "Sir, I hate to tell you this, but in order to get into Hollywood, you are going to have to change your name." "I will NOT change my name! The van Lesbian name is centuries old, I will not disrespect my grandfather by changing my name. Not ever." The agent said, "Sir, I have worked in Hollywood for years... you will NEVER go far in Hollywood with a name like Penis van Lesbian! I'm telling you, you will HAVE TO change your name or I will not be able to represent you." "So be it! I guess we will not do business together" the guy said and he left the agent's office. FIVE YEARS LATER..... The agent opens an envelope sent to his office. Inside the envelope is a letter and a cheque for $50,000. The agent is awe-struck, who would possibly send him $50,000? He reads the letter enclosed... "Dear Sir, Five years ago, I came into your office wanting to become an actor in Hollywood, you told me I needed to change my name. Determined to make it with my God-given birth name, I refused. You told me I would never make it in Hollywood with a name like Penis van Lesbian. After I left your office, I thought about what you said and I decided you were right, I had to change my name. I had too much pride to return to your office, so I signed with another agent. I would never have made it without changing my name, so the enclosed cheque is a token of my appreciation. Thank you for your advice. Sincerely, Dick van Dyke

Here we go again! After rather more than a few hours in the workshop and the inestimable advice of some Trialscentral forumites, my carburettor woes are reduced to a small fuel leak. Not a bad leak but an annoying one as the garage and car both smell of petrol. I've traced the leak to the screw in the bottom of the float chamber. It's the one that's readily visible and accessible on the lefthand side (that's a first!) after removing the exhaust. It doesn't appear to perform any useful function, so I have to assume it's just a drain screw. (Though why anyone would want to drain the contents of their float chamber over the top of their gearbox is beyond me, and if you've taken the carb off you can empty it any way without needing a special drain screw.) Am I right? Or am I missing something? The reason for the leak now becomes obvious. The screw has a tapered end that is just rammed into a hole in the float chamber casting as the screw is tightened. Sealing petrol with a metal-to-metal joint? I don't think so! Should the screw have an O ring on it? If so, what size? Or could I get away with aralditing the screw into place? Or maybe Loctite thread sealant?

Good luck!

I finally managed to go out for a bit of a ride-around this morning. Straight out of the box I thought it was getting worse. The cold stick was really bad and took quite a lot of brute force to finally unstick the clutch. Then pottering about it was quite draggy: I could hold the clutch in in first gear and keep going forever. It did slip if I blipped the throttle though. After ten minutes it finally felt as if it was behaving properly. It is now possible (though not easy) to get neutral with the engine running. Further proving of the cold stick situation will have to wait until the trial next weekend. Unfortunately, with engine, gearbox and clutch all sharing the same oil, there's less scope for experimenting with different oils.

Something lost in translation perhaps?

As I've always suspected, the most dangerous part of any motorbike is the nut holding the handlebars.

I'm sure I've just done that as I've done the first oil change in my ownership so unless by accident I've picked the same brand.... Whether I've made it better or worse is yet to be determined.

Sorry to horn in. Are the frames really chrome-plated? If so, hydrogen embrittlement would seem like a likely cause of cracking. I would have expected nickel-plating instead.

Dan, thanks for telling what I was hoping to hear . I've been a bit distracted by No 1 Favourite Son's wedding over the last few days so will stick it back together this week and go for a burble.

I just did the fix on my 2012 Evo 4T. The basket was in perfect order and the drive tags on the fibre plates were nicely finished so I just gave the corners the lightest lick with a file. The glue between the fibre pads was not as bad as some of the photos in this thread, but there was a nice little pile of filings by the time I finished. I have the stepped washers on the springs and they were already in the light setting so I left them that way. It's all back together now, generously oiled as I reassembled. I haven't been able to fire up as the carb and exhaust are still on the bench. I was disappointed to find that rocking to and fro in gear still exhibits the same cold stick. Or will it be free when it has been run for a few minutes and then left again? It was a mind-numbing job, and I would probably have given up after the first plate if I hadn't read so much enthusiastic praise for the job. I know my bike didn't start as bad as some earlier 2Ts so I'm not expecting such a great leap forward as them. If I can solve the cold stick and make it possible to get neutral with the engine running, I would call that a result.

That's where the "Sorry" comes in.

"Sorry but that's a 5. "

Of course weight is an easier thing to judge than a momentary stop, but moving/ stopped is easier to discriminate than less/more than some arbitrary allowable pause. But my main point was that a clear rule, rigorously and universally applied, will be obeyed and respected by competitors. If the rule is woolly and inconsistently applied, competitors will try to take advantage and will argue the toss.

As a recent returner, I think I'm missing something here. What is "stop for a 1"? I really do think "no stop" should be interpreted literally. It's the only way for consistency, and everyone will soon get used to it. In karting, every class has a minimum weight limit. Every race, several people are selected to be weighed as they come off the track. If you're 0.1kg under, that's exclusion. Everyone accepts it. There are never any arguments. No-one cheats. The few exclusions that there are are down to mistakes.

Well the thing about an old twinshock is, you don't have to stand up the whole time. It has a seat. You only need to stand up to get the control in the nadgery bits. But if you want to go thrashing around at speed in open spaces, it's not the bike for you.

It's a little tinkling noise from the engine under load, "pink, pink, pink,.......". It's the result of the fuel mixture igniting due to excessive heat in the cylinder before the spark plug sparks. As it happens while the piston is still going up it causes very high loads on the piston, small end, etc and a loss of power. The root causes are excessively high compression ratio, poor quality (low octane) fuel or a build-up of carbon in the combustion chamber.

With my riding skills, top end power is of negligible interest. My main concern is "driveability". I would like to think that my riding is getting better, so it can be easy to confuse improvements to the bike and improvements to the rider. Nevertheless a slow throttle, adjusting the slow-running mixture, adjusting the idle speed and (possibly) sorting out the breather pipes have been the things that have brought the improvements.

Well done! It was too tricky for me. But one bolt for shock, one for the CDI and two for the regulator just seemed easier than even more knuckle-skinning wiggling. And an opportunity to clean behind/under/around the said parts too.

Some people have suggested to me that I should use 127.5 main jet but 120 seems to be working fine for me. There's nothing tricky about the spring. The difficult bit is removing and refitting the carb on the engine. I wouldn't suggest this is definitive, but it goes something like this: Remove rear mudguard. Remove airbox (The jubilee clip may be difficult to access and there are two hidden rubber pipes under the main part.) Disconnect the top of the rear shock and lean it back. Remove CDI unit on right hand side. Remove the finned aluminium ignition box that lies on top of the gearbox. Remove the rubber connector to the carb. (Another tricky jubilee clip). Disconnect the fuel pipe and throttle cable. Undo the jubilee clip fixing the carb to the engine stub (this one may be easier). Twist, fiddle, wiggle and turn the carb until it comes out, probably on the left side. When you come to refit the carb, take care to make sure none of the breather pipes are going to touch the exhaust and try to point the jubilee clips in the direction that is easiest for access. I found it was easiest to leave all the jubilee clips loose until everything was together, then tighten them all. It helps with the alignment.

This is the table I found somewhere with the recommended settings: I followed the 300 competition settings and got a lot of popping in the exhaust. I've now wound the idle mixture out from 2 to 2.5 turns (it's actually a "fuel screw", not an "air screw") and that stopped it. The engine is obviously a lot happier as the idle speed went way up, and had to be adjusted down with the normal idle adjustment screw. As you can see there is no allowance for altitude. I would guess that these would work up to 1000m. Above that, you're on your own. Taking the carb off is a pig of a job, but once it's out the rest is easy. Remove the plastic top cover (2 screws) to get to the spring and diaphragm. Remove four screws on the bottom to drop off the float chamber and get access to the jets.