alan bechard

It would probably help if you had put your location in your profile, and folks assumed, as I did as well, when you posted here that you were an American. Thanks for answering.

Send me an e-mail with your adress. trialsalan atsign bellsouth.net

I think I am somewhere in all of those. Good one Ishy.

I will throw in here a little bit. My son currently rides a Sherco 80. I believe that the Beta has a cable clutch is that correct? They make a lever set called a raptor that has three adjustable points, and as previously discussed you are making a trade. Also, on the TY 80's we used to run I believe it was a Domino lever assembly that had a better leverage ratio. On the little Sherco 50's (cable brakes) I would run the take off Domino levers off the Polini MX bikes, and they had better leverage and pull then the stocks by a long shot. If it has a hydrualic clutch like Dean's 80, I would highly reccomend the ARC lever available from RYP. It has some extra adjusting capabilities to get the lever in closer to his hand and they feel great. Bring money, but I believe they are lifetime warrantied and I know Dean's have taken some good bounces. I will also add in, that Dean's has only 3 (1/2) the clutch springs in it, and you should see peoples faces when they pull his clutch for the first time. In all seriousness, mostly what you feel is the resistance from the plastic washers in the housing itself. It returns itself fine, and I do not believe that it has ever slipped. Not sure how much that helped, but thought I would throw that out there.

Clean or bust, which club are you a member of?

Wayne, where was that quote taken from? (the 100 riders per event) I remember reading it initially, and questioning the validity of the statements made, and thinking it was another one of those things someone threw in to stir the pot. I meant to question it where I originally saw it and now cannot find it. Anyway, I would be interested to know which club in the US has such high attendance.

God Ringo, come by at the WR and have a glass of apple juice with us... Just watch out for those guys from the wrong side of the pond...

He was a lot less concerned with the lubricant than I ever imagined. They spec grades etc. but not type or brand. They review some folks choices, and run tests to verify, but where not nearly as concerned with it as I would have thought. He did agree wholeheartedly though, that water and dirt intrusion where far greater concerns than any of the other maladies and that in our application overpacking would be the best way to go.

Because the bearings used are "off the shelf" or "Catalog Items" geared for general use, and these bearings in particular are rated for high speed use in the electric motor industry. Therefore, if you pull the side cover off of one, you will find that the bearing is roughly half full of grease and there is a considerable amount of air space in there. This allows for the grease to flow and fully lubricate the balls at the high speeds these bearings were designed to operate at. Also, by having the correct amount of grease in there, at the high speeds, the balls will roll around in the track and not slide through the track. Now, on your bike, the bearings never turn any where near high speed (3600 rpm ) I have never done the math, but they just do not spin that fast. And as you take out your old ones, I would bet that it will be obvious that what did the old bearings in was a combination of dirt and water that intruded into the sealed area of the bearing. Sometimes folks even used the sealed one sided bearings and put the open faces towards each other. Anyway, by pulling the seals, clean out the old grease (eliminating any possibility of grease problems from dissemelar thickening agents) and then fully greasing the bearings and popping the seals back in, you have made it so that the water has no where to go inside the bearings. If you speak with the bearing industry folks, or the grease folks, they will tell you that this is not proper procedure because the balls will probably slide in the grooves rather than roll, but again, look at what is the primary cause of failure in our application, and that is water and dirt intrusion. Anything that can be done to prevent that surely puts us a step ahead. Several very well respected folks reccomend using a combination of Antisieze and grease as the lubricant. I personally do not do this as I believe the likely hood of incompatible thickeners is too great and you could potentially degrade the product that you are trying to improve. Hope that makes sense. I just had the opportunity to visit the testing and verification section of FAG / INA bearings in Germany and speak with the lead engineer there at length about this question, as well as a couple of other motorcycle specific questions. It was facsinating too me to see the testing and development stuff that they do there. As a side note, RYP has an excellent set of drivers available for this task.

Ridge, greatly respect the work that you do and the ideas you put forth, but I think this one will end up too complicated to execute well. I tried just a shotgun start like in golf. We gave you a section number that you started at every loop (very small loop, easy to start in the middle of) and you started there each time. That way, all 10 sections were fully occupied and the riders groups were spread out so that they would hopefully flow along smoothly. You would be amazed how jacked up this got. The sum of it was at the end when trying to resolve a tie breaker, "Oh, well I was told to start on section 3 but decided I wanted to do section 6 then start on 1" And I went Can you say "RIDE OFF" Several folks did not like not riding will all the other (fill in the class) riders to see what lines they used. I think it is a good idea, but I believe that if it takes more than a line or two to explain it, you will start having problems. Please, please, please do not feel like I am just poking holes in your thoughts, I think it is how we will progress the sport by looking at other ways of doing things, I just personally do not think I could pull that one off.

At least here, that is a pretty darn expenssive seal to not take the time to get yourself a well fitted installation driver. (pipe) I would spend a bit of time hunting for one, before I spent the money buying another new seal.

I cannot answer for Dan, but I will throw in 2 cents. Your club may decide not to change, but the positive aspect of changing to a standardized system would be that it would make it easier for riders to ride between different clubs and groups. It would also aid in the progression of riders towards the national level and allow some form of standardization of things at a national level to determine where a person fits. Your club is one of the lucky few still able to obtain private insurance without going through the AMA. That would certainly make a large impact on your decisions. Many clubs have found themselves with only the AMA insurance as an option. As a sidebar, I believe all riders should support the AMA and their work to keep our riding area's open, If it has not impacted you yet, it will in time, and the more momentum that the Green and the Government have, the more precedents that are set, the harder it will be to keep your riding area's open. (I know it is a sidebar, but thought it appropriate to mention) As to the classes, if 4 classes meet the needs of your riders, than that is all you would run, just because the class is available, does not mean you must find a rider to fill it. It would be handy though if as you rode in different area's of the country, if the class levels, structures names and relative difficulty were constant. Who know's what is best? I do not think anyone does (except for maybe Lane) I think the idea of the USMTA is to pull together and look at ideas from all around our very large area of land and see if other area's cannot benefit from experiences and success had in other parts of the country. We need to take the disadvantage of being spread out over an extremely large land mass and capitalize on it as best we can. The NATC has no interest in promoting trials or establishing guidelines for local competition. Their mission statement clearly defines that they are there for the sole purpose of running the national series and they have actively stuck to that position. The USMTA is more on the side of trying to promote trials and make it a larger and more popular sport in the US. That is it's stated mission and it intends to accomplish that initially by the different committes providing some standardized resources for clubs to work with. I am impressed that your club has it spot on. I am sure that the rest of us have something to learn from you then, unfortunately I have difficulty finding this information on how yours is done, could you point me in the right direction and share this information?

That one is going to be rough no matter how you go about it. I would pursue finding someone in the MX field that does it regularly and see if they would takle it at a reasonable cost. I could point you to some folks in the US, but that would not be a lot of help.

I am at the home of the "Apple Juice" producers now,,,,, Man is it rough.... You can pick up that apple juice of the grocery store shelves for about 3

I thought I already had that option installed last time you saw it Hope you are ready, I am hunting some clear refreshing liquid to help you get through that Jet Lag,,,, Heck, after a quart or so I bet you forget what continent you are on See you soon.

Sorry I cannot give a direct answer to your question, the only problems I had with mine was understanding the petcock backwards and filling the cylinder with gas and breaking the kickstarter. As a suggestion though, if you do not find a good answer here, they use that same motor in the little KTM's. Those guys tear into their motors all the time so you may find more luck on thier discussion boards.

Have done those several ways, although I have never actually welded up the end of the pipe nor seen it done that way. We had shop made tools that pinched the sides of the pipe with 3 bolts and then screwed an endcap onto the end of the pipe to make it air tight. Welding would work, and if you had to do just one it might be the most practical way but I would not do it. If you go to a plumbing store or whatever you guys call it where the commercial plumbers buy there stuff you can get a variety of plugs and test fittings with common shrader valves in them. Short version is that you close both ends of the pipe, and have a shrader valve and a gauge inline. Apply about 50 psi to the pipe and heat the area that you want to come out with an acytelene torch. Some words of caution here, often if there is goop in the pipe, as it is heated it will start expanding and overpressurize and blow your caps off. This is scary. If you go to someone that rebuilds automotive engines (at least here in the US) they will have a box to superheat this part and turn all that oil and grease to ash and blow it out. It only costs a couple of bucks and is well worth it. Also sometimes you can get the area too hot and it all blows out in your face, This is REALLY scary! Dull red usually makes it go. Be wary of what is going to come apart and try and stay clear of any flying shrapnel. One of the things we added in was a pressure relief valve from a hot water heater to keep from overpressurizing if we were not paying attention. I did one or two TY pipes and the seam always gave me fits and never came out real well. It would blow apart or leak or whatever and never really come back into shape for me. I think on one I ended up drilling some holes, and putting in a dent puller, pulling into shape after some heating and welding the holes back closed. I was never over impressed with my work on these, the results always worked but nowhere near the work we did on on the MX bikes. I would suggest talking to some MX guys. Last time I was playing that game with Bobby (going to the tracks doing mobile Machine and welding) the big guys had taken Bobby's deal and were doing it, FMF, and Pro Circuit both, someone else was there selling pipes for like $50 and that was impossible to compete with. Point being, if you go to a large MX you may find someone in the pits set up with the stuff to do this, and the practiced eye that it takes to do a nice job.

I would probably opt for the allen bolt and nut routine myself. The rear swingarms do weld well though. 5356 if you go that way.

Cool, thanks for the help guys, that nails it.

Looking for a good clear picture of a 98 techno beta. Something like a sales add or such to help us positively identify. 98% certain, but would just feel a bit better, or serial # sequences would be better. Did not find it on the australian or lampkin site. Thanks

I liked them better, but not sure I would spend the money on the rear again. At that point I was having tremendous problems getting them to bleed. I had the galfer sets, and had too add some shims to the rear axle to get everything too line up. I did ride that bike about two weeks ago and they still work well.

It looks like it was a clogged pilot jet. It also has a 27.5 pilot in it which looks a touch lean. It is running ok now though. Typing on the German keyboard is a bit different as well, they swapped some of the dang letters around! Anyway, I think we will order a new throttle cable, a 30 pilot, and am about to dig into the rear end and see what I find there. I am having a bit of knock on initial throttle opening, I think I will try bringing in the airscrew a touch, needle is in middle position, may bring it up a notch as well. Not sure if it is the idle circuit or the needle that is the problem, feels about in the middle or transition area so I will fool around with both. Thanks for the help, hopefully we will get this thing sorted and crisp. One of the problems is that I do not think it will ever feel as crisp as my 03 Sherco. I wish I had another to compare what it feels like when it is right. I think I will just get it as crisp as I can until I start to knock. I also am not sure about the octane here, if I remember right, they use a different system than we do to measure it, but really, as long as it is the most expensive, it is probably the best.

I do not know how it is where you are at, but I have a small bearing separator that I paid the money and bought a good one (OTC) for about $30. It is a great tool to have for these and crank bearings and other general pressing duties around the house. Here at least you can buy the cheap harbor freight one for $10 or so I think. Not sure, but I bet it is less than the price of a good quality tapered roller bearing. And once you have it, you will find other uses for it as well. So that we are speaking of the same item, this is what I would use, it is $12 here, probably $6 when it goes on sale. I would think they would ship too you but I do not really know, might be worth an e-mail. http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Disp...itemnumber=7343

Lane you paint quite a picture. How long did you spend living there? Ringo, you going to be at TTC on the 7th Jan for the banquet?

Wow Ish, simple and sweet, TI has something similar, but I like the looks of your's better. I assume you do not mind if others brazenly steal that idea? I posted it over on the STRA site as food for thought. And I know you will sleep better tonight now that Lane said you were correct...... on how they mark trials where you came from Well, maybe Mrs. Ish will be 15 minutes late tomorrow :santa1: Maybe that is a route to take, just try and develop more local riders doing the run what you brung thing. Only problem there is that as bikes have progressed, they have gone further and further from the middle. You should have seen some of the crashes we had with Enduro guys in our sections at my last event..... Some of it was truly scary..