neonsurge

Pfffft, bloody southern poofs! My old bike has had a leaking fuel tap for the past 6 months which means it constantly drips into the carb and makes starting for the first time each ride an exercise in optimism and endurance. I just look(ed) at it as a bloody good warm-up for the legs! No choke, throttle wide open and 20-30 good solid kicks should sort it. Sheesh, what's up with you guys?!?

What do you mean "slotted them".... do you have a pic? I've never really had a problem with water in the flywheel cover myself but I'm all for preventative measures!

If the problem's still there after changing the oil, it's possible that the water pump seal (on the impeller shaft) has failed. It happened on both my old Gasser and my last Beta. Very easy and cheap to fix and it's a good idea to change the shaft at the same time in case it's some imperfection on the shaft surface that's chewing the seal.

The mixture screw is generally used for fine-tuning a bike and if adjusting it is resulting in dramatic differences in the performance or general running, this is probably an indication of a problem elsewhere. For example, is the air filter completely clogged (or holed)? Is there an air leak somewhere - maybe the rubber boots on the carb/airbox or carb/intake manifold have holes or spilts?

Yup, I had the same thing with my '03. Tried everything including replacing the cylinder seals after reading about r2w's problems but still couldn't get much of a rear brake. In the end I bit the bullet, bought a new master cylinder (

Funny you should mention that. The first time I rode this bike I stopped for a drink (used the kill switch) and it wouldn't start 5 minutes later. After several minutes of increasingly angry kicking I flicked the kill switch and it popped out a couple of mm and the bike started. On wednesday at a club evening trial, the bike started but died as soon as I cracked the throttle off idle. Once again, I gave the kill button a flick and everything was back to normal. I thought that maybe I'd just got a sticky switch but it appears that this is quite a common problem (translation: the standard Beta switchgear sucks). I think I'll swap it for a Yam one asap!

Um, no, the bike has one of those switch blocks in the middle of the bars with the kill button on the front (facing the front of the bike) and the light switch on the back (facing the rider). I think the problem must be in the block since if I put the horn back on, the kill button still doesn't work. From the wiring diagram it looks as though there's an earth to the bars inside there so perhaps that has become disconnected somehow... Thanks for the suggestion though!

I've just removed the horn from my new ('06) Rev3 and now the kill button doesn't work. All I did was remove the headlight unit, disconnect the horn block connector, remove all the horn gubbins (buzzer, wires and button) and put everything back together. Bike starts and runs fine, lights work, everything works apart from the kill switch. I printed out the wiring diagram from the owner's manual PDF, traced all the wires and everything looks OK to me - for flip's sake, all I've done is disconnect 2 wires!!!! Thoughts anyone?

I've always used PJ1 (550ml) although plenty of people use ATF with good results.

Interesting point, BUT... the real purpose of forums such as this is to glean the knowlege and experience of others who might have already been there and done that. This can be invaluable when there's no "official" documentation or where what documentation does exist is less than clear and can help avoid potentially expensive mistakes! Case in point: I've just bought a new Beta Rev3 (sorry) and the English section of the owner's manual appears to be a very poor translation from the original Italian. Out of interest I've just read the section on suspension setup and I can see how someone who's unfamiliar with the basic concepts of precompression and damping might be confused. For example, from the section on fork setup: "For a more controlled "slower" suspension setting, preload spring for about 4-5 turns on the adjusting screw and turning the knob by 15 clicks from the fully opened position, which is in the middle of the adjustement (sic)" If you know how suspension works (in which case you'd probably never read this section of the manual anyway), you'll understand what this is trying to say. If you don't, it's easy to see how this might make no sense at all.

I think the answer to this question will always be subjective - I like trials where the clubman sections are tricky but cleanable (for me) if I concentrate and ride to the best of my ability (which I almost never do of course). There's always going to be a significant difference in ability between the worst and best rider in any given class (especially in the lower classes) so one person's easy clean is another person's scrambling 3 or crash 5. I personally feel that the clubman B routes in my area tend to be on the difficult (but not impossible) side and that's fine for me, even though my name usually appears towards the bottom of the results!

This article explains trials suspension tuning (it's on GasGas USA's site but it's not Gasser-specific and the information can be applied to all bikes).

These guys have always been able to help me out with odd sized nuts and fixings: http://www.namrick.co.uk/ They have M7 bolts listed on the site.

After several years riding a succession of Betas (following a brief and unhappy start on a GasGas), I find myself in the exraordinarily rare (for me!) position of being able to buy myself a new bike. I mean proper new. So, after examining the pros and cons of each make and model in the context of the type of riding I do (very mediocre Clubman B standard in perpetually muddy North Yorkshire), talking to many different people and riding as many different bikes as possible I have this very day slapped down a wad of Melvins in full payment for.... ...another Beta. Sorry guys, looks like I'll be polluting this forum with dumb-ass questions and cynical curmudgeon-ness for the forseeable future.

I thought it was only Sherco owners who felt the need to troll the Beta forum?

This is important - I've had problems with wikis being effectively rendered useless by spambots. Wiki evangelists will say that it's against the spirit of the wiki ethos but the only workable solution is to make it only editable by nominated persons (TC members only.) Depending on which package is chosen it might be quite a bit of effort to integrate it with the TC user database but it'll mean far less of an administrative overhead in the long term. Actually: http://www.ipbwiki.com/Ipb_Wiki:Integratio..._with_MediaWiki

Would another giant black pud (or two) be in order?

Me and th' boy, lastplacebrad and dect69 will all be there.

Didn't know I was opening a can of worms! The only reasons I'm considering a 4RT are (1) I fancy a change of bike and the only brands I'd consider are Beta or Montesa (personal reasons, don't read too much into that!) and (2) this particular 4RT came along at the right time (and there's not many used ones around). I think the reason that there's so many bling bits available for the 4RT is the fact that it's a Honda and the Japanse are mad for their customising. If you look at a few of the Jap trials web sites you'll find that there's almost the same amount of trick bits available for the Scorpa (or Yamaha as it is over there). Nothing more to it than that. And sticking loads of carbon-fibre and billet parts to your bike isn't compulsory you know

Ask 'em: http://www.trailbikemag.com/forum/

I currently own a Beta Rev-3 which I love to bits but is getting to the point where it's going to need quite a lot of money spent on it to keep it in tip-top condition (it's had a hard life!) I have the opportunity to buy a used (2005) 4RT and I'm tempted by the apprently bulletproof reliability and the fact that it's the latest technology and all that. Is there anyone else here who has switched from Beta? How do the two compare (for reasons that I won't go into I haven't actually ridden a 4RT yet)? What should I look out for on a used 4RT? All comments gratefully received. I need to make a decision in the next 24 hours or so....

Those are indeed the facts but as I understand it from talking to people indirectly involved, it's not quite the whole truth (if what they say is to believed). The story goes that Trialsworld (TMX) was rushed to the market with the primary intention of killing YOU HAVE USED WORDS OR A PHRASE WHICH ARE NOT PERMITTED ON THIS WEBSITE. PLEASE DELETE YOUR POST/TOPIC. DO NOT TRY TO CIRCUMVENT THE FILTERS IN PLACE ON THIS WEBSITE (the TBM spin-off). They did this buy hugely undercutting the advertising rates that TM was offering, effectively making TM commercially impossible to produce. The fact that this also meant that Trialsworld was operating at a loss was irrelevant since there was never any intention of it being a long-term publication - as soon as the competition was crushed, the job was done and the magazine was wound up. As a long-term TBM reader, I found this particuarly annoying since the TBM boys have a well-earned reputation for "telling it like it is" to the extent of p***ing off their advertisers (Yamaha WR400 anyone?). Their 5-bike trials shootout last year (which I believe you were involved with Mr Rapley) was the first time that I can remember anything similar being done and is exactly the kind of thing that TMX would never, ever do for fear of offending advertisers. As a consequence (and as has been expressed here many times), TMX's bike "tests" are almost completely worthless - every bike is the best bike in the world.... until next week when the bike on test then is the best in the world etc. etc. I have absolutely no doubt that YOU HAVE USED WORDS OR A PHRASE WHICH ARE NOT PERMITTED ON THIS WEBSITE. PLEASE DELETE YOUR POST/TOPIC. DO NOT TRY TO CIRCUMVENT THE FILTERS IN PLACE ON THIS WEBSITE would have walked all over Trialsworld in terms of REAL CONTENT AND REAL TESTS but unfortunately we'll never know. Which is a shame 'cos it means that the UK trials community was cynically deprived of a regular publication that does justice to our great sport. Let's face it, Trialsworld simply wasn't that great - pages and pages of photos with a few lines of text in the corner - typical TMX-style "tests" (not the fault of the guest test riders by the way) - the best thing in it was Dougie's column. (This is my opinion ONLY and I have absolutely nothing to do with TBM, YOU HAVE USED WORDS OR A PHRASE WHICH ARE NOT PERMITTED ON THIS WEBSITE. PLEASE DELETE YOUR POST/TOPIC. DO NOT TRY TO CIRCUMVENT THE FILTERS IN PLACE ON THIS WEBSITE or Trialsworld.)

Shaun is gonna p*ss himself when he sees this....

I'm not going to criticise Laia's riding either - she's undoubtedly an inspiration to female trials riders all over the world (not to mention more than a few guys ) but she really needs to work on that temper 'cos it ain't doing her any favours. At Hawkstone last year I witnessed an amazing Sanz meltdown where she really laid into one of the observers with a stream of screamed Spanish obscenities that made several Spanish-speakers nearby go white. Behaviour like this does not provide a good example to younger riders, especially when on the world stage. There is NO excuse. PERIOD.

Dead fan? Seems the most likely answer.