wherry

Thanks for replying MV, it's reassuring to know I'm not the only one with this problem. I have replaced the master cylinder seals on my bike and it definitely helped to make the brake feel more positive. Whilst, with the benefit of experience, I would never 100% rule anything out, I don't think that the varying bite point is down to the m/c seals. If they were faulty, or if there was a score on the m/c bore I think the performance of the brake would be repeatably poor wouldn't it? I have had a chance since my last post to have a look at the disc and caliper. I cut some little rings of thin card out and put them under the rims of the disc mounting bobbins to reduce the disc movement. This made no difference whatsoever to the brake bite point problem but did enable me to see that the disc was being pushed over from it's rest position by the inner caliper piston when the brake was applied. This led me to take the caliper off to have a look. With the caliper upside down in my hand and an old file between the pads, when the brake was applied the inner caliper piston pushed out nicely but the outer wasn't moving. I took the pads out and got the piston moving but it's definitely sticky compared to the inner one so I think this is probably the problem. I'll rebuild the caliper in the next week or so and see if that improves matters.

Good question. I'll be interested to see what people think as well. I've always used the Elf oil mail-order from BVM and never had a problem. I understand from a previous owner of my bike that it's had a new clutch at some point, although I don't know whether it's a Honda one or a pattern one. It can be a bit grabby on occasions and changing the oil definitely makes it smoother.

Since I've had my Mont I've been a bit underwhelmed by the Grimeca single piston front brake's performance. It's always been less powerful than I'd like it to be and lacked bite. I've bled it repeatedly, changed the master cylinder seals and put new mounting bobbins on the disc. These have all helped and it's actually not been too bad for a while. However, we had an extremely wet, sandy and muddy trial the other day and towards the end of the day I started losing the front brake almost completely from time to time which really didn't help my score. I've cleaned it all up now and it's not too bad again but the bite point changes from one application to the next whilst you're riding which just isn't any good. You go for a dab of brake and the lever almost comes back to your fingers and you haven't actually slowed down. Other times it's where it normally is. It's no good. I'm going to strip it all down and rebuild the caliper and put some new pads in. Does anyone know which of the available pads work best with the solid disc and single piston caliper? The bigger question, however, is where the varying bite point is coming from? One of my theories is that the disc, which is very loose on it's mounting bobbins, wobbles about and pushes one of the pistons in, so your first squeeze of the lever just takes up the play generated by that, without putting any real pressure on the pads. Should the disc be really loose? I can experiment with reducing the play on the disc mounting and see what difference that makes but does anyone have any thoughts or experience they can share with this? Cheers.

OK. I've got a mate who has been trying to get his Yam 250 mono to run right for about the last couple of years. He has rebuilt the engine, with new seals and bearings etc, and rebored with new piston and rings. He's cut the back out of the middle exhaust box and cleaned all the crud out and repacked it all nicely. He's got a nice new WES tail pipe and a new irridium plug. He's replaced the ignition coils I think and just now bought a 26mm OKO for it as we thought the only thing left was that the Teikei carb on it was worn out. Whatever we try it just rattles it's guts out on the over-run. So questions - Can anybody give us an idea of what jets might work as a starting point for the new OKO just in case the one's we've got are widely different for some reason? And just what in the name of all that is holy causes these engines to knock so badly now when they patently didn't when they were current? Is it down to the petrol these days or some other thing that has changed? I really can't bring myself to accept that it's any sort of inherrent design deficiency. It's been discussed before but anymore thoughts anyone?

Hi and welcome to TC. The central screw on your carb is the tickover adjuster. If you screw it in it lifts the throttle slide a bit to give you a faster tickover. Vice versa for unscrewing it. Screw it in until the revs rise and then back it out slowly until you've got the tickover speed you like. The other screw is the fuel/air (mixture) screw that allows you to get the mixture just right for a smooth pick-up from low revs. The earlier Dellorto carbs, and most older carbs this adjusts the air in the fuel/air ratio. On your carb this screw adjusts the fuel in the fuel/air ratio and is normally set at around 3 to 4 turns out from fully in. Screw it in a bit to get less fuel so the mixture will be a bit weaker, out will give more fuel and a richer mixture. When you adjust the mixture screw the tickover will probably change so you balance that out with the tickover screw. You're looking for a slow, smooth tickover with a nice clean, instant pick-up from tickover to part-throttle. I like mine a bit richer (more fuel, or less air on the earlier carb) off the bottom than some people so I would try it at 4 turns out and then go back in 1/4 turn at a time until I was happy with it.

Dan You may not have thought of it as it's too obvious but your best bet is to contact Aplinestars themselves. They have a very good customer services department who will do their best to sort you out. When I started riding again after a 20 year lay-off I wanted to use my old Alpinestars boots again but the straps had all perished and broken. I sent them an email asking if they could supply the straps still. They couldn't but had a hunt round and sent me the closest ones they did have, with the fixing rivots, from Italy, for FREE. Now that is great customer care. I'm nothing to do with them but that kind of service deserves a plug IMO. Try the General Enquiries email at the bottom. http://alpinestarsinc.com/contact

JMLFin. Yes these can seize up as fastducs says. However, I've just freed off the adjuster on my '99 315 and the thing that made it difficult was knowing which way to turn it, in case it was at the end of it's travel one way. Now that it's freed off it is obvious however. If you've got only about 1 -2mm between the inside of the adjuster wheel and the shock body then it is fully wound in so you need to undo it - turn it to the left. If there is more like 8mm then it's fully out and you'll need to wind it in - turn to the right. If you're somewhere in between then you can probably go either way. I took the airbox off mine to properly get at it, cleaned around the adjuster shaft as much as possible and soaked it in WD40 (penetrating oil/paraffin) for a few days. Mine has got a slot in the end of the adjuster shaft, in the middle of the purple wheel, so I applied a bit of steady force with a small screwdriver. After a few goes it suddenly creaked and is now going fully in and out and miraculously actually does alter the damping. I hope you manage to get yours going - I've been thinking of all sorts including buying a new replacement shock but thankfully I don't need to now. Best of luck. Oh yes and after reading back through this you might also need to know that with the adjuster fully wound in you're on maximum damping, and vice versa with the adjuster fully out. Cheers.

italjetfan I've got the pics hosted on my free webspace and there should be links through from my post. Not too sure why you can't see them, unless it's got something to do with the size maybe, although they're not that big really. I'll pm the URLs through to you direct if you like.

Any more Kermit pictures? Hmmmm. Try these for size. It was some considerable time ago I can tell you - May 1985 apparently according to the back of them.

Sorry pazz. Bit of morning confusion. Insert 'trialsurfer' where I've got 'pazz' in my last post.

Ross/Pazz. Do you have any free webspace from your Internet Provider? With Virgin Media here in the UK I've got 55MB that I can do what I like with. I use free FTP software from Terrapin to upload files like pictures or webpages from my computer to my free webspace. There are other ways of doing it, and I think you can do it straight from Internet Explorer, but I've always used Terrapin so I'm not familiar with them. If you then want to insert a picture on here it will ask you for the URL so you need to add the address of your picture - something like http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosspazzfreespace/315r (you'll be able to see it in the address bar in Internet Explorer when you look at your own picture on your webspace - copy it from there and paste it into the text box asking for your URL). If you've got all the details correct your picture should then appear as if by magic on here, or anywhere else that you send the picture URL to. In summary the key is to upload your picture to some free webspace, then use the URL of your picture in the Insert Image text box.

Nowhere near as nice as the others on here, but I'm not too embarrassed to show you mine . '99 315R