What A Twit

[jtrials31]

When I first got my Sherco 250, I did the same exact thing. Kept running out of gas in sections! Finally figured it out. Didn't tell anybody about it for a long time!

[fester]

i did that last weekend

Last Saturday I was due to take part in a local trial with the Waltham Chase club at a venue in the New Forest.

I was to be riding my Beta 270 along with my lad on his TY80.

On the morning of the trial, we decided to run the bikes up on my drive just to have a shake down and get my lad used to the bike again after not rideing for a while.

My back brake seized and would not apply so a hurried hour spent trying to strip it and bleed it through proved fruitless so I dropped it off at Inchains in Ringwood for repair and I had resigned myself not to ride.

When I was booking my lad on, I was offered a loan of a Sherco 250 as it's owner had a 'hangover from hell' and wouldn't be riding. "Great! " I thought and hurried over to pick the bike up. The owner was looking slightly worse for wear but offered me the loan of his machine, even filling it up with a fresh fuel mix and I scarpered off to get going.

The bike felt good at first but was very fluffy at the bottom end and took a bit of reving to clear itself. It then started to stall a lot and it was causing me allsorts of problems leading to me dropping marks left right and centre and getting 5's at every other section. I persevered on and put it down to being a new bike to me and not used to the 250.

I had completed about two thirds of the trial when I noticed that it was using a lot of fuel and was getting very low and was thinking about returning to the pits to fill up again when it conked out completley and refused to restart. I was resigned to pushing the bike back to it's owner and thanking him kindly for the very generous use of his bike even though now it wasn't running

He was puzzled as it was running fine before I got hold of it. He had a look around and started to grin.

"You know why it's not running right?" he queried.

"No" I responded

"It doesn't like running with the choke full on"

"That will be the problem then!"

What a bloody wally! I don't believe that I didn't put the choke back off and had struggled all that time on a bike which was fluffy and lunging all over the place. A mate commented that he thought it was "a bit smokey on the exhaust" .

A valueable lesson learn't and one that I won't repeat again!

The guy who lent me the bike wouldn't let me give him any money for the fuel that I had used - I think that I had cheered him up out of his hangover.

And to be honest - I don't think that there are many other sports where you'll find people like that, willing to help you out in such a generous manner.

Shaun.

Edited July 27, 2008 by FESTER

[yoyo]

Late last year Steve Saunders invited me up to one of his training days to ride his new 300 Rev 4t... as he sorted out his pupils for the riding training he said that he didn't need the bike for half an hour... go and play. I pulled the choke on and kicked it up, bargain... a 4 stroke that started first time. After a short time i nudged the choke down and off i went.

.... 10 minutes later i was just about to take it back to Steve and say "frankly it's crap, i will stick to 2 strokes" when i stalled it about 20 metres from him and then spent 5 minutes trying to kick it back into life. Not wishing to look the pillock i know i am i tried all methods of starting it, gentle with no throttle, full throttle and huge kick, hot start knob out... everything. Steve wondered over and pointed out that the choke had two notches and I had been riding with it still in the middle one for the last 10 minutes... he was going to say something after seeing the black smoke and hearing the chugging but couldn't get away from his students to slap me around the head!!!

Push the choke all the way down and what a lovely bike................. dick!!!!

i think that you'll find that it was back in Jan/Feb of this year. I was a pupil at that day - my rear brake packed up so I spent some time back at the van sorting it. .......

I remember you flipping the 300 about inbetween Steve showing us what to do. I'm fairly sure that it was your first time upon the bike and you did your write up for it on your site shortly afterwards.

Steve found a huge steep incline to run up over which had some tree roots to navigate near the top and just picked 3rd and nailed it from the bottom. There were a lot of dropped jaws at the bottom of that climb watching him belt up over it with a little flip at the top just for the camera!

Shaun.

Edited July 27, 2008 by YoYo

[tt5th]

Washed my road bike tonight, went to start it to put it away and nothing, kept turning but not catching. Spent 20 minutes or so checking plugs, HT leads, fuel, carbs etc only to realise i'd left the exhaust bung in DUH! Sure we've all done it once!