biffsgasgas

A good heat gun is the trick. The air box was the hardest part and as it turns out its starting to crack a bit after about 30 rides. We will have to redo. --Biff

See ya there. I will bring some great Michigan beer. --Biff

I will summon the gods of "company vehicle" Miata will have to remain in the stable for the weekend. We have some designated / underage drivers to assist with the transport.... --Biff

Lookin good Ed! My roommate and I were at the sign shop the other day and we had some of our team logo stickers made up. Printed on vinyl. I have done my tank in 17 mil thick carbon fiber looking vinyl. I will grab some more pictures tonight. I still haven't purchased my plotter yet but it will come. I have been powder coating a bunch. The exhaust is powder coated with the masked flames and such. And from about a month ago before i started scratching things up. The swing arm decals are not as pretty but i noticed that they do stand up better than standard vinyl. I also did the carbon decal on the rims. Its starting to come up so I am going to use the same stuff that i use for the boot scuff as it seems to be a bit tougher. Of course if you go you have to go in style... Top down of course. I used two packages of this and my trusty heat gun to get it to flex. Carbon fiber sheets --Biff

Mitchell, Kutchey, Ryan Roosen and Krystof from poland in one car. In a second car Pete Hatch and his kids (dont know if you remember them) We will see ya down there Jim. Early saturday morning is our departure just for a short weekend. --Biff

I have welded neumerous fenders in the past some good some not so good. The real trick is to get the dirt out and to use the correct rod. PP welding rod Specialty welders are pretty cheap too. Plastic welder I have yet to find a modern trials bike that does not have a poly propylene fender. If you look on the underside for the markings cast into the remaining parts of the fenders you will probably find a date stamp and a material stamp. PP = poly propylene ABS = Butyle styrene PE = Polyethlene. Most of the time if its all the way broken across you need to add reinforcement under neath. --Biff

Has the pending threat of litigation snuffed the Xispa??? Not that I am intrested to purchase but I do want to see the legend. Will there be one at the world round in the States? --Biff

See you down there Jim. About 10 of us are caravaning down starting at about 3 am on saturday to be down by 11 or noon on saturday. Then we are back north after the events over on sunday. Lots of us have work to tend to on friday. Indoor pool maybe but knowing me I wont be there too often. Come on Cope get on over to Chatanooga and enjoy a beer with me... We will certainly say hello. Zippy backed out at the last second due to some "Adult responsabilities..." Psshhhh who needs a new house anyways? It better have some land for me to ride on. --Biff

We are staying at the days in Chatanooga look out mountain. Sixty bucks a night for two doubles. Not that bad. Close to the property as well. --Biff

Finally some videos. I didnt get much of the actual event itself but after the event joe kutchey went out and played around. Super Sam and his Lovely wife Laura helping with sign up. And the sign up tent slash bomb shelter. Then perusing the pits we found my rig and zippy around. My gasgas of course stole the show. Heres Zippy living the dream. Moving on down to the warm up people. We had tons of people from Trials Incorporated show up. Here is Jon warming up. Show off.... Lets see some sections. Section 1 on day 1 was a nice hill climb. It has some rolley polley little rocks but as soon as you got on the hill side tons of traction. Section 6 on the second day was very tricky and very cool. The intermediate line had a pretty sweet hill climb. Here is an example of the expert line being riden. Next to that he had a tons of tires and this silly rock that plauged us all day. Of course Joe clears it on the first try. This section also had a bunch of sewer tubes or something along those lines. Very tricky. Next to that section there were some huge oil drums. One of which i decided to break my upper tripple tree on. Oh well WGASA that is trials... Not only did we have Steel drums to ride on but plastic as well... very diverse. Then we had tons of rocks in section 10. Thanks again Sam for a great trials. Ok i think we filled up this post. Time to start another one. I suggest bent fenders 3rd mota event. --Biff

here are sundays scores. EXPERT Score 1 Aaron Bandenburg 51 2 Jim Gawne 55 3 Paul Rousseau 61 4 Brad Howard 71 5 Yuki Watanabe 82 6 David Knapp 107 <WOO Biff 7 Mike Deleersnyder 111 8 Jonathon McMullen 124 ADVANCED 1 Adam Blumhorst 28 2 Gray Howard 37 3 Scott DeBolt 41 4 Joe Kutchey 43 5 Jeremy Mason 45 6 Robert Roosen 52 7 Kenny Sprague 70 16/0 8 Jim Zuroske 70 12/0 9 John Mason 76 10 Andy Sprague 79 11 Joseph Mason 95 12 Jeff Staniszeski 103 13 Travis Daniels 106 14 Kip LaBelle 134 <WOO Zippy SPORTSMAN 1 Joe Klein 31 2 Doug Hodgdon 36 3 Bill Super 39 4 Kunio Watanabe 43 7/2 5 Martin Kerr 43 5/2 6 Mark Spring 45 7 Eric McWhinney 46 8 Tom Brandenburg 48 9 Dylan Kerr 51 10 Paul Zalak 55 11 Ryan Roosen 56 12 Paul LaGrand 74 13 Gary Grobbel 75 10/0 14 Tim Pettingill 75 7/0 15 Krystof Buniewcz 80 16 Anthony Pettingill 101 17 Bart Tope 106 18 Chris Gaby 111 SENIOR 1 Bob Capistrant 2 2 Don Keener 4 3 Chuck Jones 7 4 Mark Staniszeski 9 36/0 5 Jim Watson 9 35/0 6 Bill Smith 11*<<<Point for point tie... wow 6 Steve Williams 11*<<< 8 Dick DeBolt 14 35/0 9 Scott Findlay 14 31/0 10 Brian Aherne 15 11 Royce Klein 18 12 Graham Staffen 19 13 Lester Mason 21 14 Martin Meida 23 15 Scott Beattie 24 16 Steve Widman 25 17 Craig Boardman 28 18 Randy Misner 41 19 Cal Blumhorst 57 - Paul Crowder dnf NC Chuck Howard dnf INTERMEDIATE 1 Steve Weimer 6 2 Josh Mohre 10 3 Greg Blair 13 4 Josh Aspell 14 5 Randy Arndt 17 6 Patrick Mitchell 18 7 Mason DeBolt 20 28/0 8 Terry McGran 20 22/0 9 Don Tuethout 26 10 Andrew Thomas 28 11 Joe Kutchey 37 12 Robert Haines 56 13 Deb Boardman 57 14 Dennis Arning 65 - Frank Nagy dnf - Bryan Halsey dnf - Ed Rich dnf NOVICE 1 Peggy Harrison 3 2 Jonathon Funkhouser 4 3 William Spring 7 35/0 4 Steve Aspell 7 34/0 5 Travis Howard 8 6 Jim Schooley 9 7 Jacob Aspell 11 36/0 8 Devin Kerr 11 32/0 9 Brad Grobbel 12 10 Christian Blair 20 11 Randy Keene 29 12 Isaiah LaGrand 38 13 Wendy Staniszeski 48 14 Julie Childress 53 15 Greg Schooley dnf BEGINNER 1 Chris Peters 5 2 Will Gaby 6 VINTAGE 1 Jan Warner 7 YOUTH 1 Kori Blair 6 2 Lexie Blair 10 3 Tyler Owen 13

Another update! Riding this weekend was awesome! My clutch hand absolutely loved the 06 spring. 6 people offered to buy the lipse spring off of me but it has intentions on an 03 280 for now. Mr Jack will be getting calls from Michigan riders as I brought the stock spring and the modified to the event and we had over 105 and 100 riders for the first and second day... My clutch hand never gave out and the bike hooked up even in 6th down the trail. I will get some clutch pull numbers when i measure them all. I have some already. --Biff

Whollyyyyyyy cow.... <<<edited to be pc. Against all odds super SAM came through with a great event!!!! MOTA trials are usually 40-50 riders however through the power of advertising 105 showed up the first day and 100 showed up the second. Hats off, gloves off, helmets off, to the whole (mind you brand new crew) michigana trials club. Bow down to the gods of trials!!! There were so many who rode they ran out of score cards on day one. There were so many spectators they ran out of wrist bands. Scoreing got a little tedious as the sun was going down but we made due. I dont think we expected all of trials incorporated to show up but it was good riding with the crew from down south. Not only did super SAM have a cold and his cat ran away (but then came back) and he managed to hold a complete trials on single handedly. You could not wish for a nicer piece of property and a greater selection of sections. From those stupid rolly polly rocks to some of the biggest tires to huge barrels (both metal and plastic) to gaps to hill climbs with rocks to drop offs to mud to dry to logs..... very very very cool. I will agree with Zippy that the day one sections were extremely hard however i had so many lines to choose from in Expert i couldn't decide on just one so i tried them all. I was so tired on day one that my arm cramped up shifting the car on the way to the hotel. Day 2 was as it should be a little easier but enough to still get points. Absolutely hands down some of the most fun i have had in a long long time..... We got some videos for youtube from the pits. I will work on that tonight. Weather is in the 60s and my camp fire in the back yard is calling me but i will resist the temptation to get-er done! I hope that i can return the favor in Flint.... I have work to do now.... I am thinking splatter..... hmmmm maybe some cement..... Ut oh now Biffs brain is running wild... --Biff

Ok so i am in the midst of my greeves/honda project. Taking a honda tl125 engine and transplanting it into a greeves (what i think is a pathfinder) chassis. I call it Gronda.... I have heard of Hondeeves projects but i wanted to be different. So while it was down to bare chassis I decided that this thing needs a proper skid plate. My dad has another path finder and two other Anglians and his designs were not to my liking. This frame was my christmas present from him. I cant start to tell you how excited i was... <<<i am such a trials nerd! So here is what I did. I acutally did this earlier this winter but just getting around to posting it. I did this with steel because of my lack of aluminum welding skills but aluminum would be better for weight. First you need to start out with the bare frame. Then get yourself some 1/16" angle iron and clamp it to the frame. Then i grab my trusty straight edge and try to eye ball the straight edge on the frame. Then I made a second mark perpendicular to the angle iron. After i cut out that chunk, I bent the iron then lined it up with my frame. Now i am leaving about 1/8 inch of space so that my frame and my pan are close to even. You can change it to suit your needs. I repeated this process untill i had 2 bends for my iron. I bring my newly bent iron over to the bench and weld her up. Flip it around to verify that i had good penetration and to verify that the back side was nice and flat. I didnt want to bolt up to any welds. In this case i didnt have good penetration so i patched it up later on. Now this is where i got either way to excited or I had a few beers in me... I dont know but some how i didn't get a picture of me welding my plate onto the angle iron. I took 1/8" plate steel and clamped it to the bottom of the angle iron. I left a bit of a gap at the frame as i was welding on both sides. I would weld down the length of the iron on onside then down the other. After a length was completed I used clamps to help bend the plate steel to the next length of iron. Weld that up and continue untill the plate was securely attached. I curved down the end of the plate on the front edge to make it pretty. I removed the front and rear frame bolts. Then i marked and drilled the plate to use the oem fasteners. To make it just a bit stronger i added one bolt in the middle which required me to drill a hole in the oem frame. Heres the pic of the welded piece. After that i repeated the process for the other side then powder coated them both in flat black. Both sides are independant of each other so one is a bit forward of the other..... ehhh its functional is my thoughts. It should be solid enough to ride trials. It took me a solid weekend of tinkering to get this done. I will update the project as it gets closer to completion. Have a great day. --Biff

I did the ERE ones before i sold my 2000 280. They are completely different than a pro. Looked great! Having a heat gun made it a lot easier. Cleaning the old goo off was a pain but not too bad with mineral spirits. Highly recommended. --Biff

Thanks from the whole organization for going through this Sam. We appreciate the fact that you are allowing us to ride on your land and setup the trials for us. If you need any help or if your going to blow another gasket give me or any of us a call and we will try and help as much as possible. Saturday night we will chill by the fire enjoy a brew and remember that damn section that nagged us all day. See you saturday morning bright and early. --Biff

Update! Got the parts in at work and paraded around the office all happy as a pig in poo.... Put in the disc from Jack and I could not believe how incredibly light it felt. night and day!!!! Fired it up and got it warm 10 mins or so of ballancing in the back yard. The engagement was long and smooth even with type F (probably hasnt soaked into the plates yet) Got on the rear brake and popped the clutch in 1st gear. stall..... SWEET! Started it up on the rear brake in 2nd gear at idle... Stall very SWEET! Again in 3rd and 4th Launch in 1st gear can pogo on the rear (mind you only 1 or 2 pogos is my limit) flat ground. Launch in 2nd gear better but i thought i felt her slip. maybe.... Go to launch in 3rd gear and she slipps.... hmmm Ok no biggie this is what testing is all about. I have the 06 spring and i am putting that in the bike tomorrow night. I left my fish scale at work so i will get some numbers asap. We are putting the LiPSE spring in Roberts 03 280 that his son rides (not as agressive as me) probably next week. Stay tuned. --Biff

I probably wont be riding the nationals. Both of them are 24 hour drives. Cost has gone up with the event and travel and work has me pretty tied down. I went to the fun in the sun and will be going to the world round with zippy and we have 14 events in michigan this year so my travel has been pretty tapped. I do plan on going to munsville to take you on mr cody. My land lord in my present house moved to baldwinsville and sold his trials bike in the process. I told him that i would ride a 3d trials and make more travels to 3d trials to hang if he buys a bike again. I told him that my rent money should be going towards a new gasgas or what ever Komer has in stock. So you will see me around this year. Dad wants me to come back and ride too. All politics aside i hope that California does not destory our sport for their state. You west coast guys have some great terrain. --Biff

One thing that most euopeans forget is that the US has 50 independant states all with their own theory on what "green" is. Sure he government has some blanket laws that we all must abide by but my state (Michigan) is a pollar opposite to (California) when it comes to emissions. We have vehicles specifically built for the California market only with more stringent emissions laws. They have infrasturcture to enforce those laws as well. Each state also has their own rules as to property and off road riding laws. My father by law is not allowed to ride his trials bike up and down his driveway in new york (he does anyway). Each state has their own speed limit's. Each state has their own government. Each state has their own police organizations. Each state has their own rivalry's when it comes to sports. It would take 9 hours to drive from one end of my state to the other. In California i think it takes about 14 hours (correct me if i am wrong). This country is absolutely huge and there is no one consensus regarding any topic. Enviroment, politics, trials, ect.... --Biff

Hmmm type F.... As I have lots of that around (look at where i am located and put two and two together) I might run a test with that too. I have used type f in some of our transmissions to fix engagement issues. I am using regular mercon/dex from the shelf and have not had a problem with slipping. I did a master cylinder rebuild and pulled appart the slave with no scuffs found. Jack is sending me new slave orings as they apparently have a coating. I think i am going to be in business here. --Biff

By the way i came from a 2000 280 txt to this bike. On that bike i removed 2 of the springs out of the 6 and never had a problem with slipping. Remove the bolts springs and washers from opposite sides. Works like a champ! --Biff

Your dad rules! We talked and i have a couple of springs on the way (both an 06 and his special spring). If it slips then we will know. He has never tested it on the 300. We discussed the 16mm height and it shouldnt be an issue so i am giong to remove my shim. I am going to grab video and pictures of pull strength with a fish scale before durring and after. I will keep you updated. Thanks for the fast repsonse guys. I knew i went to the correct place. --Biff

Oooo good point. When I tore it back down last week i was checking for any scuffing of the slave cylinder and found none. I did measure finger height at 16 mm so i used a 1 mm shim behind the bearing to get it to be related to 17mm. Is this the proper way to adjust for finger variation? If not then how do you adjust for it. All of my fingers are dead flat and even across the board. I checked them versus some fordson blocks we have here at work. 06 not 05 got it! --Biff

Hey thanks Laser1, Acutally the main reason why i am looking into this is because I rode your dads bike yesterday and last weekend. Robert Roosen bought his 06 off of him a couple of months ago. We were bike swapping and your dads old bike is worlds of difference compared to mine in the clutch. BTW your dads 06 used mineral oil according to the resivoir cap. Robert also has a 2003 280 and wanted to lighten up the clutch on. So I slept on my plan of action. I will probably buy both an 05 and this spring and some gaskets and do some of my own testing. Then if the LiPSE does not work well I will give it to Robert. I am an agressive expert rider who is out of control most of the time but for 40 bucks i really have more to gain then to loose. --Biff

I have a bit of a time sensitive question for any of the gu ru's out there. I have heard of a lighter clutch spring for the pro's. I have found this one and will probably call Jack in the morning (currently sunday and i am pooped from riding all day) http://www.jackscycles.com/lpse.html Has anybody tried using this on a 300 pro. It does not mention this cc. Does anybody know of another way to reduce my pull. Before you ask i have measured the stack height at .380 inches which is 9.65 mm from my calculations. I replaced the clutch due to the old one slipping and having a stack height of .310 inches wayyy out of spec. I am using atf and change it every three rides. I am using dot 4 and not mineral oil. I have heard mixed emotions about mineral oil. If i have to order parts i want to tomorrow (monday) so i can have them by Friday (ride on saturday and sunday) (thus the time sensitive) Thanks in advance! --Biff