smokey125

Steve, after the various threads on forum about flywheel weights I was interested in trying all the combinations except the heaviest one with both weights. The more I think about the way the bike feels the more I think it would be better without the weight, but a lot of the events close to me are real mud pluggers so I could see me swapping weights depending on venue. It's just about experimenting at this point.

Yes that's the big weight the picture is from the Fantic manual.

Could you make a bracket which fits through the standard mount but has a U mount on the outside to take wide pegs, or possibly modify standard footrests to do the same thing?

Do you have contact details for Bill as I can't find anything on the web that current!

Not sure if Bill is still trading his website seems to off disappeared. If I know the size and weight I can easily make one.

Seeing as there are lots of questions about flywheel weights has anybody got a 247, 307, 309 etc with a full set of flywheel weights? I would like to know what the size and weight of the small weight is? The manual gives figures for them in Kg cm² which is not very helpful! There should be four options. Rotor on its own, rotor + small weight, rotor + big weight and rotor + small weight + big weight. I’ve got the big weight but would like to have a bit of a play and would love to know what the original options are.

Me on a Ducati at the Classic TT.

I've used West Country Windings a couple of times and found them to be good. The blue coils are original equipment on the later aircooled Fantics. From what I was told when I had problems with mine there are several different versions of this coil for different applications the most common being scooters. As axulsuv said Steve Goode will be able to sort you one of those.

I had very similar on my 309. The most common cause seems to be one of the coils on the stator getting old and breaking down under heat. Having said that, the problem on mine turned out to be the blue HT coil/CDI box that you’ve pictured. Unfortunately there is no way of testing the HT coil.

I would suggest you contact HMRC (Her Majesties Revenue and Customs) direct to clarify what you can/can’t do and how much it costs. I believe that the import duties are different if you are relocating to the UK rather than just bringing goods in. This is a link to the government site it implies that you probably won’t need to pay import duties, https://www.gov.uk/importing-vehicles-into-the-uk/vat-duty-and-tax-vehicles-from-outside-the-eu If you’re going to be filling a container with all your stuff it might be cheaper to sling the bikes in as well rather than buying replacements over here. If you've got to ship them separately its probably not worth it.

Really can’t see a reason for Ohlins to bother with trials forks. Rear units are all much the same in terms of construction but the Ohlins forks are significantly different to your average fork. Trials forks are unusual in their own right with separate damping systems in each leg. With Ohlins being OEM for a lot of the high end (expensive) road bike market and seemingly being the suspension of choice across the whole MotoGP paddock. Would they really want to put a load of R&D resource into the small trials market, which probably wouldn’t be prepared to spend the money on their forks? From memory the Ohlins Moto3 forks would set you back about €6000.

Fair collection of bikes your have Spen. It's surprising how many races are useful tails riders as well.

For the first BEMSEE meeting of the year it will cost £145 for one day. That would get you one practice session and two races of about 10 minutes. Both days and the practice day before will cost you £400. Spen I'm fully aware of what road racing costs I was third in the 350 classic TT last year.

Guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one! I've never had a problem getting a race bike to work properly. With one expection when it took about 3 weekends before we figured out the fork springs were shot. Everyone involved with road racing knows the importance of correct setup, because of this there is a massive amount of information and a lot of people that actually know what there doing. Most bikes can be got to a point where they are better than there riders ability quite quickly. It's also much more obvious when your riding against someone on track if there bike is performing better than yours. This thread has highlighted how a lot of trials riders don't consider suspension settings at all. It seems there is a lot less knowledge amongst rides. So who do you turn to for advice? Personally I think since your riding the section on your own it's much harder to judge how well your bike is working compared to others. At the end of the day your final position in a trial is dictated by what happens riding on your own, if the bikes not working at its best and you lose points because of this there's nothing you can do about it. When your racing even if your bikes not working as well as people your racing with you can still beat them with cleaver racing.

It depends on what you can get hold of easily. When my brother and I were kids we had a couple of old tractor tyres, old oils drums, a few piles of pallets, some chunks of log and we dug a ditch which we put a section of old wooden garage door across the end of the keep the step nice and square. Good because they were all free. We used to use stakes and straps to stop stuff moving when we were riding over it. It also meant you could rearrange stuff to things if you were getting too used to the current configuration.

The amount of oil depends on how your using the engine. Classic air cooled race bike steel liner 20:1 on R. Modern watercooled race bike plated barrel 30:1 semi. We used to run our TY175 at 50:1 synthetic. My Fantic, air cooled plated barrel 70:1 synthetic. To be honest I think you could probably run a TY with a less oil than a 50:1 mix but in all the time we ran the TY we never had a problem at 50:1.

Sorry I have to completely disagree with you on this. The reason it makes such a noticeable difference on MX or road race bikes is because you are making the bike suit you and you riding style and maintian grip. It's actually much easier to ride round a minor issue on a road race setup than it is on a trials bike. If the bikes kicking of obstacles you've got no grip or no steering. Loosing marks becomes very easy. Your riding on your own it's not like racing where cleaver tactics can keep people behind you!

You could try something like this, http://www.rickswoodshopcreations.com/miscellaneous/rust_removal.htm we've done it on a couple of tanks. Works quite well if the tanks not too badly corroded. You don't have to put the tank in a container but you can fill it with the solution and hang your anode in the filler hole. If it's very bad your best bet is to cut the bottom out of the tank and get it shot blasted and weld the bottom back in and coat it with an one of the ethanol proof liners.

I won't tell you how much road racing costs!!!!

Thanks for that all very interesting. Steve, I'm not so worried about upgrading the bike, I'm not going to be able to shed enough weight from it to be worthwhile and it would probably be better to start with the discs which were never great from new. Which means I could make it bigger to at least cover the pad fully! Never could understand the idea of the small rear disc! The engineer in me was struggling to understand where the improvement came from. The main advantages of 4 and 6 piston calipers on race bikes don't apply to trials bikes and I was trying to work out where the gain was. Ive looked at the monoblock calipers but had to wonder if a two piece billet caliper would be a better option for a trials bike. I'm also quite surprised that nobody's tried a radial style master cylinder I would of thought that would of offered an improvement over a conventional one! Thanks for the sizes oni nou gives me something to work with. I'm surprised how small the master cylinder pistons are especially for the front! One question about the rear calipers, what pads do they use, is it the same as the older Brembo's? They look the same in the pictures I've found.

Thanks it's useful to know. I will have add a tyre clamp when I change tyre.

Last question about bike changes, I promise! Trying to get my head round the improvement in brakes. Does anyone know what size the pistons in either calliper or master cylinder, front and back on any of the current bikes are? They seem to be unchanged from around 2005 onwards, depending on model. Alternatively has anyone had to service/replace pistons and/or seals in either calliper or master cylinder on any of the current bikes? If so would you be able to tell me the sizes of the various pistons? I’m interested to see what ratio the current brakes run.

A lot of domestic dehumidifiers have heaters as well. Although how well these work in a shed or garage compared to an oil filled radiator or storage heater I don't know. DPC will only help with rising damp, it wont do anything with humidity. A cavity brick garage is a lot better than some of the other options, but when you compare it to your house it requires insulation and heating to get anywhere near the same internal temperature. If you've got a plain metal garage door this will be a major source of lost heat. They can be insulated with Kingspan, expanded polystyrene or similar sheet type insulation with lightweight sheet (plastic) over the top to protect it but you will needs to change the spring to help balance the extra weight.

Still trying to catch up with everything that's changed since I was last riding! I have a question about tyres. My Fantic 309 has tubeless tyres front and back. Having read the various threads about the best tyre etc and looked at various web sites selling tyres. I have seen rear tubeless and tube type tyres and front tube type tyres but no tubeless. Have front tubeless tyres fallen out of favor, are they not available anymore?

Tom, It sounds like you might have been chasing two separate problems that have manifested themselves at the same time. Through you various posts you’ve had it a dry plug, a wet plug, no fuel and would have to assume form the wet plug plenty of fuel, either that or no spark. To me these opposing problems would indicate that there is more than one thing wrong! You are fixing a problem X only for the bike not to run because of problem Y. You then start working on problem Y only for problem X to thwart you! This can be incredibly frustrating I know I’ve been there myself! It might help to go back to the start and write down what happened at each stage eg ran for minute died, dry plug. Also write down anything you found, float sticking and anything you changed in-between each attempt to get it running. This will help you follow the changing problems and help identify all of them. The other thing you could do is see if there a very kind and helpful person near you with the same bike who is happy to help you and swap parts between bikes until you find what’s causing it! The last thing to look at is go over some of the things you’ve already done. I had a problem with a road bike years ago, the first thing I changed was the plug. After going round and round the problems I took it to a mate of mine that runs a bike shop (the sort of bloke that can fix a bike by looking at it but never actually touches it!). Tried to start it, nothing, his first suggestion was a new plug, said I’d already done that but changed it anyway. First kick away it went! Turned out the brand new plug I’d brought sparked perfectly out of the engine but was failing under pressure inside the engine. Sometimes it can be the simplest things!!!