dan williams

Yeah I talked to a friend Sunday with a new 200 that mentioned his has started jumping out of gear occasionally. Just like mine he said it was great to start with but over time it’s starting to be more prevalent.. I don’t think the custom cam and reverse spacer is necessary. They are just test vehicles for me. Replacing the bearing and machining down the pivot pin to align the bearing with the cam are all that appears to be needed.

Ah the machined spacer to let me flip the indexer bearing arm has arrived. And my wife is in the garage installing a Rekluse in her KLX 140G. It’s good to have an engineer wife who enjoys wrenching. My wench with a wrench?

There is a common issue with the Keihin on big Betas where if you hold the throttle on full for about 20 seconds the carb starves for fuel. I’ve experienced this on my 2008, 2013 and 2018. Usually only notice it on fast fire roads but it does happen. The Keihin doesn’t have a float valve seat. Just a drilled hole in the carb body which is fine for the use the carb was intended, small bore bikes like the KTM 85. Someday I’ll get around to drilling the valve seat bigger To see if that fixes it.

Probably best to ask Ohlins.

Two days with the new cam and 14mm bearing. Awesome! Shifting effort is slightly higher but when the shift is initiated the gearbox snaps into gear with an audible click. Neutral can be found easily with a light tap from second. Almost impossible to find from first. Now to run it for a while to check reliability.

Excellent write-ups on fuel. There is one other factor with ethanol that must be considered and that is its affinity for water. I've noticed that any fuel with ethanol stored for a while where there is exposure to air seems to deposit a waxy buildup. I've seen this in carbs and fuel bottles. My suspicion is this is hydrogenation of the olefins in the compound gasoline component as they steal hydrogen from the water trapped by the ethanol. Any thoughts on this my imaginary friend.

All this talk of restricting tires and making bikes heavier/fatter/older is missing the point. The problem isn't the bikes or rider skill level. The problem is the mindset of the people designing sections. When I was doing section design for my club events years ago I had the usual cast of New England riders plus Geoff Aaron 10 time US champion. I noticed a trend with the other trialsmasters. They'd set up these insane hits to get Geoff to drop points which were so intimidating to anyone else nobody else would ride the champ class. It wouldn't matter because Geoff would eat these hits for breakfast. My club had a different approach. We would have hits doable by the class below (expert) but the approach for the hits would be different for the different classes. Experts could go straight up while Geoff had to turn on rolly rocks in a stream bed or launch from an off camber slippery rock or have almost zero setup space. We'd always get him for points. But the other effect was the class below could see it was doable for them which is a tremendous confidence booster. World trials now isn't a test of skill. It's a circus to see who can stop Bou and Raga while selling the most tee shirts. I believe the effort to monetize trials by making it gladiatorial games hasn't been healthy for the sport. The growth driver for trials has always been the grass roots efforts of the local clubs and riders welcoming new riders and making the sport accessible. I've seen trials grow and contract and grow again and been surprised how the lessons learned are unlearned and relearned. Through it all I've seen one consistent thread. Trials is a weed. After it dies out the seeds spread and take root. Individual riders talk a few friends into getting bikes and find a place to ride. The few friends becomes a club. The club starts holding events drawing in more individual riders who talk a few friends into getting bikes and finding places to ride... So the real question is how does the world trials scene support that growth engine. It certainly doesn't in it's current form.

That was wonderful. Thank you for posting that!

It's not the money that hurts from bad decisions. It's the time and effort to correct the damage from the bad decisions. I guess you could say that's the real valuable experience. A bad decision itself is merely an opportunity. Otherwise you just keep making the same bad decisions over and over. I've noticed those that don't have to clean up their own mistakes don't really learn anything. But it's a new world and everybody gets a trophy and somebody else will fix it. If you're looking for me I'll be in my safe space.

So update on the gear popping fun. I put in the custom indexer with the 13mm bearing on the stock cam to try it out for a few months and it didn't pop out of gear into neutral except for the few half hearted loop stabs at the shifter that weren't really properly done. My intent was to ride the final event in June and tear the bike down to install the custom cam during a lull here in July. The bike had other ideas as my failure to use Loctite on the screw holding the cam caused said screw to back out chewing up the rivets on the back side of the clutch the day before the event. So off came the clutch basket and the stock cam. I also pulled the pin the indexer pivots on. So changes made (after cleaning up the back of the clutch basket) A new indexer with a 14mm bearing replacing the 13mm bearing that worked for the stock cam profile. I shortened the case facing side of the pivot pin by ~2mm (as suggested by guy53) so the bearing rides more fully on the cam profile. This should help with bearing wear. Install custom cam (yes I left neutral between 1-2). Bolt it back up and ride. After about four hours on the bike yesterday the shifting is perfect. You can hear the gearbox snap into gear. Not like the stock cam which seems to go in rather lazily. Effort to shift seems unchanged which surprises me as I thought it would be harder. With the neutral pedestal higher on this cam, neutral is still a pain to find. Can't really get it from first but a light tap from second finds it fairly consistently. Certainly no worse than the stock cam. So I'm going to run this setup for a few weeks to properly vet its performance. After I'll tear it apart again to check that things are behaving. Something I should have done before but... I have one other custom part being fabricated. Rather than cutting down the pivot pin I'm having a spacer made to flip the bearing on the indexer to fully engage the cam lobes. This pivot spacer will sit on a bolt that screws into the hole where the pivot pin now sits. There should be enough clearance. While I have it apart I'll properly fix the backside of the clutch assembly since all I did was clean up the scratched bits with a polishing stone. I know, lazy, but I wanted to ride some. The difference in the custom cam is a higher neutral pedestal, deeper lows and the top of the lobes are flat (relative to the center) so the profile is steeper. There are also extra holes allowing neutral to be put between any two gears. The custom indexer has a slightly deeper reach so the spring has more preload than normal.

Considering the number of GasGas faithful that are now TRS faithful here in New England it might just be too late. Dealers and customers aren’t really interested in investing their resources in a “maybe” survive company.

Today I learned the importance of loctite. Since we have a month long layoff for events in July I was going to tear into my shifter mods and check for wear and whatnot after tomorrow’s trial. Well trail riding with my wife and a friend today the EVO started making an ugly sound. Just disassembled the primary drive to find the cam screw backed out and was hitting the rivets on the back of the clutch basket. The good thing is it’s an easy fix. Also the custom indexer still looks great. Bearing is tight. Phew! Lucked out this time. This is why I don’t offer anybody these parts until I’ve run them in for a while. Never know what you’re gonna learn until it happens. (But yeah I’m an idiot for not using loctite)

Thanks for letting us know. Please let us know if that fixes it. Knowledge shared is knowledge multiplied.

With the VForce reeds when I first started using them I’d pull the carb and “fine tune” the jetting only to end up exactly where I started out. Now I just bolt them in and go riding. Aside from a better primary case charge at low rpm there’s really not anything about carbon reeds that should affect the jetting. If your jetting is correct to start with it’s all good.

I’m pretty sure that what Bernie will be starting with is basics that will improve your riding no matter how your bike is set up. At 210 you could do with heavier springs but in reality the bike is 25+ years old and technology has moved on so just adjust it to where you’re happy and ride the snot out of it and enjoy it until you can upgrade to a newer bike.

One other failure that happens is the plastic impeller in the water pump breaks. I highly recommend the high capacity metal impeller from Jitsie.

And that you have coolant.

There's lots of knowledge on here. Granted it's a bit of a slog to get through. It's pretty typical for newbies to worry about how their suspension is set up though the usual thing that happens is they mess with it until it really does need adjustment. One thing that will make the forks not travel properly is if there is too much oil in the fork legs. It's not uncommon for rookie mechanics to overfill Betas. The end result is the fork travel is short and ends like hitting a rock. Tough on the wrists. So if your forks are a bit stiff then you can probably tweak the preload. If they just suddenly stop halfway through the travel they may be overfilled. The way Beta specs oil level in their forks is frustrating. With the spring out and the fork compressed the oil should be some distance from the top of the leg. The other thing that I found weird on my 2018 is the oil is spec'd at 7wt which is pretty thick. I changed it to 5wt and am happy with it. Also the forks are now made by Sachs and are a bear to get back together if you pull them apart. My recommendation for draining the oil is take off the front wheel, take off the brake caliper, loosen the top triple clamp pinch bolts so you can loosen the top caps and then loosen the bottom triple clamp pinch bolts to drop the fork tubes. Then just turn them upside-down to drain them. You'll have to pump the cartridge damper side to get most of the oil out. Stick them back in the triple clamps and refill to Betas spec. The fill levels should be in your manual and if you need to see a manual on-line look here, https://www.betausa.com/content/support

Ignore the videos. Your weight is fine for the stock springs. There are two adjustments at the top of the fork. The large allen head bolt is spring preload. The slotted screw is rebound damping. Always start any adjustment of damping with the adjuster all the way to the right. Turn it until it stops clicking and back it out ten clicks. Adjust the fork preload so when you bounce on the bike the fork and shock compress the same. Then go ride some sections and tell us what problems you are having. Front end won’t track on bumpy turns, can’t get enough lift from the rear on hits... There is no one size fits all answer and the setting of sag is a ridiculous over simplification.

Go here and look for the Trials Service Manuals at the bottom of the page. They are for newer bikes but they may give you some insight as Beta haven’t significantly changed their design for years. https://www.betausa.com/content/support

I was thinking about guy’s need to pee on trees. I think it’s natural selection at work. My theory is ancestors who didn’t pee on trees all died in forest fires.

Yeah me too for about 6 months but there’s no denying the convenience of just being able to park it without finding a tree.

To be honest I didn’t crawl under to look. But I suspect they do as I screwed in stainless replacement bolts to check the threads and pulled out some steel thread material that didn’t come from the stainless bolts or the OEM bolts.

It would help but there’s a lot of torque required.

I had to pull the footpeg brackets and drop the bottom suspension linkage. Was still a pain in the derrière.