ross brown

Fat bars added to '07 4RT using Hebo brackets.

Have a look at this 2013 BMW R1200GS launch video 2013 Trailer One World. One R 1200 GS You can see that they have made a series of short - under 30 seconds - videos from different camera positions around the bike, such as rearward facing at footpeg height looking at the rear tyre. Something that is difficult to do with a full-size camera. Having something that we, the viewer, recognises in the foreground such as the handlebars or the looking down on the front mudguard, adds perspective that make a POV (point of view) camera mount more engaging. When I get to borrow my son's Gopro, I think I might look to footpeg or boot mount looking at rear the tyre hit as it hits a log or a rock, or even getting some air. Looking at the tyre would show who's riding non-stop. (Oops. Lets not go there). Man-vs-Wild often uses a hand held that he holds up facing back down his arm at himself. You could try a left wrist attachment and see what facial expressions you use to get a clean. Or mount one facing rearward on the mudguard and then have a friend follow you at practice. This may not be the best way to get a 'feel for a trial', or a tasty 'pumpkin', for that matter, but it makes for some good coverage of how the bike moves cleanly over an obstacle. And isn't that what we are all about.

My secret's out... Added Montesa Mudgards.

December magazine issue Local Pub Live Dog No dogs were harmed or killed during the making of this Trailer.

I've been living with this 6x4 trailer for a few months now and am really happy with the wheel-trapped-by-tailgate approach. Loading a bike single-handed is the easiest I've come across as swinging the tail gate up holds the bike secure and perfectly upright while I walk around to the front and slap on 2 tie-downs.

New yokes give you Fatbars too.

Redder than a red thing.

And here's a brown and red one!

This thread needs photos. Alas, we're selling the house and the estate agents have said NO 1976 Honda trials projects should be on view! So the bike is off site for a couple of weeks. Anyway, thanks for asking - progress is good and I feel that adapting the RS seat is THE RIGHT approach. 1. I wasn't sure about whether to mount the seat base absolutely flat and lying along the top of the frame tubes (seems logical) or angled more upward the closer it gets to the tank (surprising how many bikes have non-flat seats once you start looking. An '86 RTL 250, for instance, starts off at the rear sloping down, then turns and climbs upward towards the tank). I've opted for the seat-lying-flat-on-the-frame RS250 look but this means that the seat base finishes about 1inch below where the TL did. (TL as it comes from the factory is flat from the rear for 70% of its length then turns its nose up). 2. I've discovered that a seat-lying-flat-on-the-frame also seals the airbox so the engine can't breath! Ill take a grinder to the top of the airbox where there is a 'chimney' that sticks up about a quarter of an inch. If I make four cuts and just fold thre of the sides down (left, right and the rear) then there should be sufficent airflow into the box and the front side will provide a barrier to water splashes. 3. I've taken a hack saw to the rear frame loop and have used the opp to drop the bike into a machine shop that can heat the tube ends that remain, squash them flat so they become new mudguard mounting points and weld themup along their edges to prevent water ingress. The new mounts will let me create a new loop on 25mm x3mm aluminum and push the height of the mudguard up almost 50mm. This makes the overall look more modern AND closes the 10mm gap that would otherwise exist between the top of the mudguard and the underside of the RS250 seat base. Killed two birds with this stone. 4. Oh, and a new 280i Ossa black front mudguard has arrived. I've mated this to a 4RT mudguard brace and am now working on fabricating aluminum brackets to fit the brace to the TL fork legs. Rear mount for the front mudguard needs to be 90mm high and the front 100mm high. I found this out after buying a TL125 ammy Miller mount and shipping it aroundt he world only to find it needed a minor adjustment with a major hammer. Photos in a week or so. Cheers Ross

For an alternative bearing solution search this Montesa forum for the thread' 4RT linkage bushes. I know they are running on an '05 and an '07. http://www.trialscen...linkage-bushes/

You can get adapters for single piece yoke and bottom clamps. Here's an up close shot of the Hebo Fatbar adapters on my '07 4RT. Adapters create slight to-the-rear and height changes. Didn't notice any difference. For me, the two big changes in feel were: a) moving to the Renthal bars. That bend just suits me better, and as Zippy said I cut my bars down by 2cm each side. A good friend suggested that 4cm off one side would have saved me one hacksaw cut and might have improved my riding more!

Got a call yesterday to say that my newly widened seat base was ready to be picked up. The firm has been busy making carbon-fibre canoes /kayaks for Olympic rowers so a 36 year old trails bike seat is rather low on their priorities until today. And it works! You start by taking one shiny new RS250 seat base from Shedworks. Pick up a hacksaw, breath deeply and begin to cut lengthwise through your new seat base. Then insert a 25mm (1 inch) plug right down the middle. Constant width from head to tail. Good old Honda must have just wound out the jig in the factory by an inch when they came to building the TL. The excellent news is that the seat is significantly narrower at the tank as the orginal side covers flared outward to cover the frame tubes and the airbox. Looks like the previous owner - the one who twisted the swingarm - must have 'dressed to the left' judging by the top of the tank. While the RS250 has the carb protruding on the right hand side of the bike, the TL250 has a very cube-like airbox sticking out on the left. So the flare in the new seat base is on the wrong side! I've had to trim some material away from the leading edge of the seat on the left hand side to clear the top of the airbox. Next step, with the seat width and length just perfect I now have to consider what to do with the sides to finish off the bike cosmetically. I like the shallow sides of the RS seat compared to the deep original side covers. In the pic below you can see the three brackets and their holes where the original side covers push-fitted into rubber grommets (when you see that the third one is at the bottom of the airbox you realise just how far down the covers went). I think I will now try and build up the sides with fibreglass myself so that the seat butts up to the base of the tank to try and capture some of that '80s works look.

I've seen a TY not too long ago on the web ( it might have been at www.thetwinshockshop.co.uk ) that had black rims. Makes the bike look much more modern. Cutting the rear frame loop off was a mod that quite few Hondas had in the '80s too. Lay-down shock looks good but suspect that you might end up needing to brace the frame around the upper mount. Nice to see 'something a little different' other than restoring it back to original condition.

"Just finished my project TL270 and I must say I am more than thrilled with the result." Photos please.

New Seat Attempt - Take II. The aluminium seat base was just too abrupt for my liking at the point of the seat and tank junction. So this morning a lovely new shiny glassfibre seat arrived from Shedworks. Don't worry about the black look. Black was my colour of choice. I thought about white (late '70s HRC racing) or red ('80s RS and RTLs) but I'm going for a different look. The hardest bit was taking a hacksaw to cut it straight down the middle. RS250 seat overall length is good. but width is out as the TL has much wider hips than an RS. Don't have exact size yet of the new fibreglass 'plug' I have to make to insert between the two halves. It is going to be about 1cm at the front expanding to approx 3cm at the rear. I can't get the exact measurement because if you look closely there is a raised horizontal cross-strut back from the tank that needs to be cut off the frame before the seat base will sit flat. This strut is the original forward seat mount where the Honda seat tongue slips under it. I've got to cut this off as the RS seat sits flat on the frame rails. This will lower the seat height but will make for a less than smooth tank-to-seat junction (will deal with that when I get around to the tank cosmetics). Having the seat base sit flat on the frame rails will also constrict the airbox breathing, so I now need to rethink the airflow into the airbox. It could breath be straight up through the seat top as that works for 4RTs and 315Rs mudguards/seats. Or I could cut a hole into the top of the box and let it suck in air through the side. I'll post a pic when the new wide-seat is done.

The "Praying Mantis". Red front brake cable-stay equally non-standard. Is that a solid cover (green) over your radiator?

It was a great day for traction. The farm pasture was lush and the cows had processed their share of it to leave behind voluminous 'cow pats'. However it shaped up to be an unpleasant end to the day when I had to sling my boots into the back of the car for a two hour drive home. The stinking boots couldn't go into the trailer along with the bike as the trailer has no tail gate (see pic below). This is because the rear tyre of the bike overhangs the end of the trailer and I'd had to remove the tailgate completely as it would not close. Not a problem for carrying a bike, but a nuisance when trying to carry loose items such as smelly wet boots as without the tailgate everything in the back is sucked out over the trailing edge and onto the road. It was time to put a fix in on the standard 6x4 garden trailer (the Mrs thinks it's primary purpose is still as a 'garden' trailer). The new tailgate replaces my heavy wooden loading ramp and it locates the rear wheel firmly. Wheel is held by the verticals touching the tyre, not the rim. Many thanks to "Stkman" for three hours of extra welding around the mesh; you can see his home-built trailer in the TC garage section. I used the opportunity to mount a high-level100mmm square LED brake light. As the rear wheel still protrudes beyond the trailer this adds some peace-of-mind to avoid being rear ended. And if only one bike is on board, the 'hole' for the other bike is plugged with crisscrossed nylon line from kayak left overs. Next job: The trailer has cart springs–I know it is the wrong choice for a bike trailer but we live with what we have spent our money on– and is sprung for an all up weight including load of 1,000kg. Even with a fat 4RT on board I don't think it weighs more than a third of that when heading to a trial. At the 1,000Kg spring rate, the damn trailer approaches every speed bump as if it is a ski jumper looking for altitude. When I asked the manufacturer why the springing was so heavy handed and he said, 'everyone overloads a trailer sometime'. His attitude seemed to be that one day I would forget and overload the trailer to failure and then it would reflect badly on the manufacturer. Better to over-spring it and destroy the ride for 99% of its towing life. So with a view to 'gliding along' smoothly the next job is to the smallest (most rigid) of the two small leaf springs, of which there are two large and two small fitted as standard, and drop the spring rate by at least half.

What you might experiemce is the innate desire to protect the damaged leg eg when walking DOWN stairs; up is easy. So be careful during recovery not to over compensate and stress the 'good' knee. Returning to trials shouldn't be a problem. After my ACL I found the balance came back almost immediately, but asymmetrical leg strength was lol. When you are back on the bike, its all too easy to think "Ouch I don't want to mess up going over that step/rock/tree/bank and have to put my leg down there?" And of course in thinking like that, you have almost set that exact train of events in motion.

Do post some pics when you are done. And while you are there, have you considered jumping straight 35 years into the future and putting on fat bars.

Hi Justin FYI, my experience is this. I have a Honda CRV with a detachable swan neck towbar and a Dave Cooper bike rack. Rack fits great and is easy to load but... there is movement in the set up once the bike is loaded on. While the detachable swan neck bar only wobbles a few mm (movement is in the roll axis) at the towbar, out at the ends of the bike its like a pendulum and there is enough movement while driving that I never feel the bike is 100% secure whenever I go over a bump. So I've gone for a trailer. Next car will NOT have a detachable towbar. Suggest before you buy a new rack you try and get a drive with someone else's set up with a detachable bar. Cheers. Ross

No, really we do.

Those rainbow forks do it for me everytime!

And here's another set of 'plastic' linkage bushes going in to a 4RT. The bushes on Stkman's 4RT seem to be working out after almost five months of constant use. So when the bearing failed on mine (localised pressure applied by a gnarly old tree root in Section 6) I opted to use the same type of replacement. They came as a set of three with O-rings and with an installation tool as suppled by 'www.blaymiresengineering.co.nz'. Peter at Blaymires has been using them in his own Repsol. Cost is about 60% of a new tyre or 60% of a new set of fatbars. Photo of my newly installed bushings is below. Note compression damage on the outer edge of lower (rear) dogbone. Photo makes it look worse than it really is. The damage is to one corner only and no doubt the impact or blow was what did in the original bearing. A thicker and longer bash plate - of the sort that H&D sell - will be on my Xmas list. But I don't expect the wife will take the hint.

Rideable - Yes. Just add lightness and ride. Competitive- You might take a vintage P51 Mustang into an air race, but you wouldn't enter a fat and slow DC3/C47 now would you.