Random Ramblings

On Saturday there was a trip out organised, heading to Alston and I decided to tag along. I decided to ride to the first meeting point and set off into the fog at about 8am. Despite the visor being useless and my glasses becoming covered in water all too quickly, I made it there. Descripbing it as freezing fog was accurate as these photos of my gloves and jacket show:

Recently I’ve noticed that the front wheel on the bike was twisted and sat about 3″ to the left of the centreline of the back wheel. I’ve spent an age trying to find the source of this and found interesting things like tiny metal fatigue cracks in the headstock. They were not serious though, just a sign of the bikes age and the fact it will not last forever. The alignment problem turned out to be one fork leg 1″ longer than the other. This seems to have been due to an upsidedown spacer inside the forks and a service and fresh oil resulted in two forks of the same length. The only problem left is that my brain is now wired to ride a bike with its wheels out of line, not a straight one.

So I met up with three others and we continued on to the second meeting point via some lanes. On one of the lanes I managed to drop it, possibly due to the different handling. The GPS fell off but I noticed and collected it and there was no damage done. The green lanes weren’t too bad but you had to be careful the watch for the patches of ice. There was then some tarmac sections as we climbed the hillside and rose above the fog. This meant sheet ice on the untreated roads. The others were waiting for me to catch up having nearly slid on a nasty corner and someome was saying “I bet he manages to fall off on that” just as I came into view, lost my footing and put the bike on its side.

The mist returned causing visibility problems but the ice remained. Along a section of road I realised too late there was 2″ thick ice ahead and when I tried to avoid it, I picked the wrong patch to aim for hitting the edge of the block of ice instead of what I thought was tarmac. Apparently the mini tsumami I caused as I slid though the puddle next to the ice was impressive. I picked the bike up, got to the edge of the road and the bike promptly slid from vertical on the sheet ice again. Slippy? Just a little. No real damage apart from the now shredded waterproof trousers and the fact I was now soaked down one side. I put on the spare pair of gloves.

The others all disappeared, not daring to look back as at least one of them had nearly fallen off doing that. I eventually got the bike started and followed. A short while later I came around a bend to a steep give way junction totally covered in sheet ice. I wasn’t going quickly but there was no way I’d stop on that much ice so falling off again seemed like the safest option and I did stop short of the junction, albeit with the bike on its side. Again. On the plus side I was having trouble getting the bike going and was given a tip which really did help after it had been on its side.

The journey to the second meeting point continued, slowly and carefully and I made it there without any further incident. We suggested to the rest of the group that they might want to be careful although it was obvious they didn’t quite understand what we were talking about.

From this point on it turned out the worst of the ice was behind us as the sun was starting to make its mark. The way some of the rest of the group were riding, it can only have been a good thing. Personally, I was riding extremely slowly, determined not to come around bends to find sheet ice at an inappropriate speed, or follow anyone else too closely. The destination was Alston, the highest market town in England, a place known for its snow, ice, mist and general weather (as well as its nice tarmac roads for road bikes and its green ones which were the days objective).

The next few lanes were fine and eventually we were at the bottom of the trail up to Long Cross. This is an ascent I’ve mentioned before, steep, rocky and today, covered in snow and ice. I did make it about two thirds of the way up on the rocky route itself but after having the bike slip and slide a lot and with total sheet ice ahead, I joined the others and rode up the grass bank which was much easier. We found a gate buried in a deep snow drift next but this wasn’t much of a problem as you could just ride over it. After Long Cross we crossed the A686 the bike stalled and wouldn’t start. I bumped it down the rocky ice covered trail with little success. At the bottom I realised it was out of fuel so switched onto reserve at which point it started much to my relief. It was then into Alston for lunch. The usual Cafe was shut so we tried somewhere new and it seemed appropriate to have cumberland sausage .

Looking back at the top of the ascent, little ice/snow here – Click to zoom the picture – lovely view of the mist and sky!

After lunch, Tynehead. Steve was grinning at the thought. There are ski slopes just above that trail. Its a really tricky route, requiring crossing several streams with the odd waterfall and several steep drops and whilst it was slow tricky work, we managed to get a fair way along past several obstacles. There is a section which consists of a path with a drop off the edge into the South Tyne and the lead up to this bit is a stream crossing followed by a steep climb up a hill where I remember stalling the bike before causing myself a few problems. Today it was 2ft deep in “old” solid snow and the rest of the path along the “cliff” was equally covered. A couple of people did try and get bikes up it but it was hard work and it was unlikely the whole group would make it. In the end, we admitted defeat and got to the main road a different way. This was probably wise given what I know of the route further on from that point.

An example stream crossing. Note the steep drop and waterfall below the crossing and the snow just where you don’t want it. Sadly the photos of the hill we couldn’t make it up haven’t come out.

The ski slopes!

Crossing a snow drift to head to Coldberry End.

Riding along the A689, there was 3ft snow at the sides of the road. Coldberry end was next to cross from the Tees valley into Ireshopeburn in Weardale. The southern face of this was covered in deep snow and it took a bit of ploughing through but eventually we all made it up to the top where the going was easier. Watching where others struggle helps a lot. There was a gate which people were having problems getting through. I took a run at it, kept moderate power on and made it through with sheer will power and a little help from conservation of momentum.

There was much less snow down the other side and I was riding on the snow filling one of the ditches at the side of the main track since the track itself was covered in patchy ice. I slowed and was making a move to get off the ditch as the main track was clear when the front end of the bike fell into the snow stopping the bike dead. I did not stop and flew over the bars headfirst. Something from school PE lessons obviously kicked in as I turned it into a forward roll and flipped myself back onto my feet, standing in front of the bike. From a distance, Steve had just seen my legs in the air and had come back, worried.

Where’s the front wheel? (Fuzzy, not much light, sorry)

After this there was an interesting lane with deep ruts filled with snow or covered in thick ice with odd snow drifts thrown in. I did slow and steady apart from the bits where I saw people having problems where moderate momentum was once again order of the day. The problem now was the fact that it was late and getting dark rapidly. We planned tarmac back from here but my fears about ice returned. This is the first time I’ve used the bike in true darkness and the bikes headlight is useless and effectively lights up the mudguard. What followed was a slow trip back to civilization as the fog returned. I was pleased I went slowly as I found one sharp bend with ice on it, and a section of road covered in 2″ thick solid ice. I was at the back but caught the group up in blanchland. I was slow at setting off and they left me behind though meaning I didn’t know which way to turn at the next junction. I took a best guess but eventually it became obvious I’d lost them. I didn’t have a phone signal so continued on and joined the A68. Heading along there I found the group again as whilst we’d taken different routes, we’d ended up in the same place. The group split up with me leading a couple of others back into Swalwell, Newcastle and home.

Some really enjoyed the day, I did in some ways but had a few too many incidents to be entirely happy. Its certainly a day out I will remember for a long time to come and as always, it was a learning experience. Today, I ache all over and can barely move but it beats going to the gym!

Since last week its snowed heavily. Logic dictated we should therefore
go out on the bikes again.

The sign says “Unsuitable for motor vehicles” – Rubbish!

As last time, the camera phone did well and there are pictures on flickr.

This time I decided to ride from home to the meeting/starting point which is 20 miles of tarmac. This turned out to be fine and I arrived on time for the meetup. The bike coped with the icy roads very well.

Eventually we set off being four in number at this point. We followed the same route as last weekend off up a trail that climbs the hillside. One of us, a relatively new TRF member struggled a lot on this section with him and his bike overheating and being difficult to start and it having no traction. It being 525cc and a MX bike variant by no means helped. I ended up going on ahead to tell the others what was going on, we U turned and took him back down. We then tried a simpler lane but he kept stalling due to the cold and in the end he decided to head home as he wasn’t enjoying it. A good call as if he struggled then, he’d have hated the rest of the day.

We continued on ending up at another residence and picking up two more riders, then we were five.

Upon departing Stocksfield on approach to a paved ford someone binned it due to ice on the road and nearly got soaked. He seemed to be enjoying himself though. Riding on a little further Steve pointed down a lane and suggested I go on ahead. Nobody overtook me which was unusual and I arrived at the next tarmac junction and waited. And waited. Eventually they turned up, apparently someone had to push his bike up some hill as there wasn’t enough traction to ride it. I must have rode up it but it didn’t register and I have no recollection of it. This was when the group photo was taken.

Moving onwards we now needed to cross a field thick with untouched snow. I had my doubts about it but as always, if someone can show me its possible, I’ll try. I found bringing up the rear at this point quite tricky as it meant following some elses deep rut in the snow. Creating them is hard on the bike, following them is hard on the rider as you end up bouncing foot to foot. In this case the back wheel did lots of spinning and the bike didn’t do much moving forwards. The bike temperature warning light came on, it made suitable hissing noises and generally was not happy. I let it cool off.

Things didn’t seem to be working as everyone was making much better progress than me through this field. Why? Good question. I stopped and let some air out the rear tyre in case it would give me some better traction. It might have marginally but this was not the problem. I’d been trying smooth engine revs, I tried pulsing throttle as an experiment. This is something I need to play with more and no doubt has its uses but didn’t do much here. I suddenly realised I was never leaving 1st gear. Trying to get some (any) speed up, and balance the bike long enough to change gear whilst riding along a twisted rut in deep snow isn’t as easy as it sounds but it didn’t half make a difference in this case. I’ve hence learnt a new way to torture the bike. Pulling away in higher gears actually worked reasonably well too.

Ahead, the others had been having fun whilst having a break with Nick demonstrating how to run in an engine. The fountains of snow were impressive, especially as he seemed the most nervous on the icy roads.

We moved onto Slaley forest itself. The first part of the route we’d taken last time where I got stuck in the bog wasn’t accessible as the gate was frozen into ice several inches thick so we bypassed that bit and onto the forest proper. I was at the back so I stopped and watched, making a note of where people were getting stuck. I then made sure I had more momentum and less mechanical sympathy for those bits .

The bike continued to get hot and require rests which was fine with the rider. This whole section was badly rutted, you never knew what you were going to hit under the snow and hence feet down bouncing from foot to foot to keep it upright was order of the day. This zaps energy and tortures muscles, the strain was showing on us all at the back, two of whom are a bit older than me. After various breaks, they were struggling and it got to the point where it was hard work following them so I overtook. It also meant the rut I was following wasn’t as churned up.

I was pleased that I did manage to find bits where I could start to keep my feet on the pegs around this time too.

We’d covered no where near the distance we had last weekend but time was getting on and everyone’s energy was expended so we decided to head homeward. Lots of icy tarmac country backroads followed but the bike behaved itself well. In the forest the wheels had filled the spokes area with snow and every now and again bits would break off, fire out the mudguard into the air and hit the rider. This left the wheel unbalanced and at one point it was actually oscillating the front suspension which was a weird feeling.

With only a few miles back to the start point I noticed a whirring from the front end. Handling and brakes seemed unaffected so I assumed it was the current road surface. The bike then stuttered and died, distracting me to the more urgent lack of fuel. Switching it to reserve dealt with that but I didn’t want to lose the others so pressed on, thinking the noise was in my mind. The others returned home, I headed off to the village fuel station where I noticed the front tyre was now totally flat. I rode it up to Steve and tried to pump it up which failed. From here it was 20 miles of tarmac through the centre of Newcastle to get home. I therefore wimped out and summoned a van. I could have attempted to fix it but in the freezing cold it wouldn’t have been fun.

It was all good fun, albeit very hard work at times and very draining on energy. I’ve learnt some new stuff about riding on snow and ice, its amazing whats possible.

I was surprised to realise that I never fell off which has to be a record. Also, I only ever had to get off the bike once to resolve an issue (to shove the front end down a hole to join the rear in a different rut). Makes a change!

Over the holidays there was plenty of snow here both on and before New Years Day and there were weather warnings in place in Northumberland and North Tyneside with people being advised not to travel unless essential. Obviously when invited out in the snow on the CRM on Saturday (2nd January), I therefore said yes!

The camera phone did well with the photos for a change and there are some pictures of the day on flickr.

Setting off at 7:30am the roads weren’t too good but were passable, particularly once onto major ones. I was taking the bike to a meeting place in the Tyne valley in the van and was pleased I’d loaded it the night before. I put the many layers of clothing on and then tried to get the bike going which it refused to do. I was at the top of a steep hill and it took most of the length of it to bump start it but it did fire up at the bottom, thankfully and I met up with three other riders, two of them who’d travelled from Yorkshire.

200m of road and then onto the first lane which didn’t seem too bad. You couldn’t tell what you were riding on but the bike can cope with most things so it wasn’t a problem. Suddenly crashing through ice into a rut was an interesting experience.

Short bits of tarmac and more lanes followed gradually climbing out the Tyne valley and the higher you got, the deeper the snow. It was interesting to be riding through villages where people could barely stand on the pavements/roads – some gave us rather funny looks. We made it to one of the TRF members residences and then there were five.

The tarmac roads were as interesting as some of the lanes being covered in ice and snow in varying proportions. We decided going too far wasn’t sensible so headed for Slaley forest. At some point I managed to fall off in a field but nothing serious. Coming up to the forest I managed to sink the CRM into a rather unfrozen wet soggy bog and had to pull it out with some help some of the routes were variations I’ve not used before too.

When the leader stops and invites someone else to do the next bit you know its going to be interesting. Thankfully the skilled volunteer found a safe line through a rather badly rutted section. I took the lead for a bit and found it was actually easier riding the fresh snow that following the rut left by someone else.

We had wondered about going onto the exposed moorland beyond the forest and tried to do so where we thought the turning might be but the snow was too deep for our small number to plough through and be fun. It was also near lunch time and it started snowing at this point quite heavily.

The next long climb uphill was by far my worst part of the day as the bike would not go in a straight line and required feet down, bouncing from leg to leg the whole way up, zapping my energy. The following fire road was straight and level and proved interesting as the bike would not follow the rut in the snow left by someone else but would go along it with the rear wheel if (and only if) the front was left to run over the edge of the rut by an inch or two in fresh snow on the left side. I mentioned this to others and it was dismissed as the camber of the road but more on that in another post.

By this point vision was the main problem as the visor was covered in water/ice/snow and useless after about 5 seconds of riding. I left it half raised but this meant driving snow going into my face with my eyes only protected by my glasses.

Thankfully lunch followed (gammon, egg and chips) whilst it continued to snow and the bikes had snow on them upon exiting the pub. Given the time, the weather and the distance some people had to get home it was decided that we’d had enough fun for the day and it was time to make it homeward. The backroads we used to get back were the ever changing mix of snow, ice of varying compaction but the CRM seemed to take it in its stride.

All in all, quite an enjoyable day!

The days are short and the weather has changed so its cold, wet and muddy. Obviously I’ve therefore been out on the CRM .

Typical Northmberland!

A week ago was the local TRF’s bottle and turkey run which involved delivering some Christmas spirit to those landowners who have either been extremely helpful over the year, or have had issues with the rights of way over their land. It gives an opportunity to talk to them about the routes and the TRF’s responsible use policies.

It was an early start ending up at the Travellers Rest near Slaley for a very enjoyable Christmas dinner. I’d not been out for a while and it was nice to see that some new recruits have joined the local group. The Travellers Rest has a ford close by so naturally we went through it both outbound and inbound again. Its not just me who got a baptism of fire that way then (on the same ford as it happens)! The new recruits managed really well.

On Saturday I was out again, heading deeper into Northumberland. I thoroughly enjoyed it and we covered some routes in the Simonburn area which I’ve seen before but only from the other directly (which is harder). I only came off once and than was a comedy stall of momentum on the top of an earth ridge where all my feet could find was thin air at the side of the bike .

Most interesting moment of the day was one of the fords which was fast flowing deep water. I was at the back from gate duty so missed the first few people going through and having difficulties. Unknown to me several of them just pushed it through. Had I known Steve had done this (unheard of), I’d have probably done things differently. At its deepest, the water was covering the mudguards of the bikes and was at least up to the tops of my legs and also very cold. For the shorter group members this meant waist high.

I had a go at riding through and I think I got further than anyone else that way and was mostly across but in the deepest bit when I let the revs drop low and it stalled. I kept it upright and didn’t get any water into the engine but had to pull the bike out and it was a pain to get it going again. Not as much of a pain as the 525 which also stalled mid river with the race plug in it though.

While others were helping get that going again, someone else wanted some washers to space his footpeg out to stop his kickstart hitting it. Nobody had any but I suggested making some fibre ones out of some reed with this result:

All in all, a couple of very enjoyable trips out!

Saturday saw me head for Wales in the van, taking about 6 hours to get to the hotel. In Wales, filling up with diesel I said hello to Brian Eland at the next pump who lives locally – small world. That evening I never did make it to the official social but I did meet up with several Ixies and shared food, beer and banter which is always good.

We remembered to account for daylight savings time changes, had breakfast, travelled the few miles to Sweet Lamb, unloaded the bike, signed on, got the bike scrut’ed and then just had to wait for our start times.

The rally consists of 2.5 laps of a circuit with 3 special stages of which you only do 2 on the final lap covering about ~110 miles. Also, the first lap and first time through each stage is untimed as a sighting lap. There are set times you have to arrive at the times sections by though.

I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive but it was good to finally get going. It was pretty much straight into the first stage but even though a small section went through an MX track it was nothing too worrying. The one double crossed arrows bit descending a rocky path, I felt right at home on.

We eventually we came to the second stage and first time around, it seemed ok. To keep some of the more experienced riders amused, there were some optional excursions marked in between the stages. At this point the group decided it was time to try one. I decided I might as well join them, how hard can it be? It turned out to be fine and an interesting diversion. It did make time for the next section a little tight though. Of minor note was that at some point I did end up stopping and leaning the bike against a tree but that doesn’t count as falling
off.

The lap seemed to go on forever and had some fun moments like when I found some sudden large bumps/dips in the track whilst travelling at speed and just had to ride them out, hoping the bike could deal with them which it could . Eventually the Sweet Lamb complex came into view and I could fuel the bike, grab something quick to eat/drink and then off again.

The first proper timed section must have been ok, I remember little about it. The second timed section was where things went wrong as I came across Russell blocking an uphill bit, mostly made it round him, stalled, got going, looked back to see if he was ok, overbalanced and flooded the bike. Eventually got going then later on an uphill bit I managed fine the first time around, I lost momentum, started to struggle and then had the guy behind plough into me. It took a while to untangle everyone and get moving again but I stayed on the bike throughout. At the end of stage 2 I also managed to crash into one of the the stage exit posts in front of everyone but it was after the timing line so could have been worse .

About this time my energy was running low and I slowed down to stop myself making too many mistakes. Eventually Sweet Lamb appeared again, yay, 2 laps completed. Only a few minutes until I had to be at the next gate so no time for a rest.

Strangely I had more energy and felt more optimistic about this lap. Stage 1 was fine. Stage 2 turned into a disaster as I dropped the bike several times, mostly getting away with it until in the clay I properly lay it on its side. Could I kick it back to life? Not for what seemed like an eternity, all just 200 yards from the stage end. I did get it started and finished however

Thanks to Shez, Gary, Andy, Russell, Jon and Pete for keeping an eye on me, that and just the company in general was much appreciated.

Did I enjoy it? Yes! What have I learnt? I’m hopeless on clay and fire roads. The track is different after 700 motorcycles have been over it pays not to make assumptions. Would I do it again? I’d not rule it out. Wales is a long way away but who knows

The trip back home was much faster, I guess the roads were just quieter and so I’ve got a few hours to recover before heading to the airport for 4am!

Last week I was in London and Grenoble due to arrive home on Saturday. Sadly there was a human+train interface in France which delayed trains for hours including the one I was on meaning I missed my train to Newcastle in London and had to stay there overnight arriving back here Sunday.

The Embedded Linux conference was interesting with 8 different presentations on build systems. The common thought was “how can we reduce the number and concentrate the effort into making them better?”. A hard question but OpenEmbedded and Poky seem to be leading the way in the areas of features and userbase size. It was interesting to hear how Montavista are using OE. Learning the way others do things is interesting and I have some new ideas for bitbake too!

Bike wise I’ve been traveling too much to get out on it but next weekend I’m booked into the Hafren rally in Wales in preparation I changed the tyres on the CRM. Whilst doing so I found:

which is a crack running through the sidewall of the rear wheel rim about 10mm in length. Getting another rim is looking difficult and the two on ebay are broken in a similar way so it looks like I’ll have to resort to finding someone with an aluminum welder. Things never seem straightforward.

This weekend I took part in run into Kielder forest with permission from the forestry commission. People were invited to camp in a field near Hexham, travel up to the forest in small groups, be led through the forest as one large group with guides spacing it out and then split into groups again to travel back to the campsite. I was asked to and agreed to act as a guide for one of the easy groups.

I arrived early before the weekend to help with the setup of the projector screen for the nighttime entertainment, collecting firewood and so on. A pleasant evening was spent around a campfire. On Friday people started arriving I met far too many new faces and names.

The Big Screen and fires

Saturday was an early start and ~60 bikes were assembled and dispatched in groups. The first half of the day went well, I got my group to the right place at the right time and we set off into the forest. The slower/easy groups were first in the combined pack with me following behind them to deal with any issues. Early on there was a fast flowing ford that nearly caught a couple of my group out but thankfully they made it through. Most of the roads were forest fire roads and fairly solid albeit with a loose surface in places. In Kershope forest we came across some challenging terrain and ended up diverting the second half of the group around via an alternative route.

The most trail bikes I’ve seen in one place!

A couple of people had mechanical issues which the tail runners dealt with and we redeployed the guides accordingly with me ending up back marking the main group. This was fine until we came to a grassy steep ascent which there was no way around. For those that ran into real difficulties, we had some experienced riders who helped get bikes to the top. Being the back marshal I got to be last up after everyone else which made things more of a challenge. There were offers to get the bike up for me but I gave it a go myself and did eventually make the top with a couple of breaks on the way up, one forced to let the overheating bike cool down. I did get some assistance in places which was appreciated. I also managed to twist my knee when my foot was stuck in mud at one point feeling it kind of go pop. Thankfully I was able to take weight off it and stop the twisting quickly and think I just strained it and didn’t do more serious damage. I need to investigate knee braces.

The group stopped at a clearing/junction

At this point our rear group caught back up so I redeployed 2/3rds through the group and this is where the day took a turn for the worse. As I understand it there was a collision between two bikes and then concerns about broken bones.

The incident happened behind me and I spent a while waiting at a junction wondering why there were no bikes following before doubling back carefully to investigate. I didn’t get to the incident before I met a messenger heading for the main group/leader. He was a more experienced rider but I had GPS and the route so I followed in case he couldn’t find his way. I knew there would be plenty of people including the rear guides at the scene.

By the time he reached them, the group was mostly down a steep tricky decent which people couldn’t get back up so I stayed at the top acting as a messenger between the crash site and the others. We were just before the refueling site so I was on reserve and low on fuel.

What follows is a long story and a long day for me. To try and briefly summarise, the riders were taken to hospital by air ambulance. The lack of fuel complicated things, as did the need for people to stay with the crashed bikes while recovery was arranged. There was a messenger’s bike out of fuel in the decent which needed to be recovered and I joined a small sweep through team who checked the route, picked it up and then got to the refuel point. It was then back to Hexham to become the bike recovery detail. The crash site was just short of the Scottish border in a very remote area with no good through roads from the English side meaning long round trips to get to the scene for support. There was also a lack of mobile phone signal for most of the forest and a lot of the surrounding area meaning communication was difficult and Chinese whispers were hard at work.

We did get back, refueled the remaining bikes, collected one of the crashed bikes, the other had already been collected and got everyone back to camp. It did take a while and I’m grateful to those people for their patience.

On a positive note, I’m told both injured people were discharged from hospital that evening. One had a broken thumb in end, the other knee injuries according to the last reports I heard which was much better than the picture painted at the scene.

Some further photos and another experiences of the weekend

I hope this unfortunate incident doesn’t adversely affect our chances of future use of the forest. Several of the riders went out of their way to help in various ways and thanks have to go to them. They’ve helped maintain my faith in human nature.

Finally, I have to say the emergency services did a fantastic job at the scene.

I’ve been having problems getting my MGB’s engine to run right. This was traced to an insanely high compression ratio which in turn was caused by fitting standard pistons in a North American export low compression engine.

I did try and mess with the carburation but couldn’t get it right. The three options left were therefore:

• Take the engine to bits and try and increase the head volume by gaskets or replacement pistons.
• Convert to some kind of fuel injection and electronic ignition in the hope the carburation could then be customised and fixed.
• Change the engine for a different one.

Circumstances mean I need a working car. The first option would mean a prolonged period of messing around with the car unusable and I don’t have time or space to do it or the second at the present time. I did however have a known to run space engine stored in the back of a garage so the third option it was.

So on Saturday I extracted said engine from behind mountains of stuff and then pulled the old engine+gearbox out of the car in record time. I switched the gearbox over and was preparing to insert the other engine when I discovered my spare was from a MGBGT which different engine mounting plates. This was recoverable but meant removing the crank pulley, timing cover, camshaft sprockets and chain from both engines and swapping parts which took a while, not least due to having to go and locate bigger sockets+tools to attack the large bolts.

Despite this, by midnight on Saturday the new engine was in with engine and gearbox mounts attached. This left various things to reconnect today (and change the GT waterpump and thermostat housings over too).

Mid afternoon Sunday I turned the key, it kicked over and after a few rotations, fired up . Apparently I looked rather surprised. It miss fired a little at high rpm due to the distributor being loose and advancing itself but that was easy to fix by actually setting the timing.

The trip back from my brothers workshop seemed to go ok although the speedo died half way. The engine doesn’t miss/back fire, die at 3,000rpm or misbehave like the other so initial signs are good. The speedo cable had snapped and has now been temporarily repaired.

Its MOT is due in a couple of weeks so lets hope that goes ok.

Some photos with the camera phone (sadly a bit fuzzy):

Where’s the engine gone?

The original engine and gearbox on the engine hoist

The new engine in the car but missing the radiator, carbs, plug leads and other parts and with the wrong thermostat housing

The replacement fully installed

Its taken me a while to post this but the 6th/7th August were my annual trip to Cadwell Park, a race circuit in Lincolnshire (some nice views from the air).

The Daytona coming into Coppice

Whilst I’m not sure I was going much quicker this year, I was a lot more comfortable to be doing what I was doing which was nice. Oddly I was also much more comfortable moving around the bike a bit this year, perhaps due to the offroad riding and being happier about the bike moving underneath me.

Piglets (the group I was in) did seem to have a few ‘interesting’ overtakes this year and the person who out braked themselves into Park and shot up my inside just as I was about to turn into the corner made life interesting. Thankfully they then went offline letting me turn into the corner and everyone survived. They also did find me and apologise which does make a difference.

On Friday we packed up and left quickly as I was booked into a TRF camping weekend in Yorkshire. This meant driving home, unloading the bikes, unpacking the van, loading the CRM and offroad stuff and catching a few hours sleep and then getting to North Yorkshire for 8am on Saturday.

I was pleased to actually manage that (who needs sleep!) and then spent a pleasant weekend riding around the North York moors I was out with a number of friends from Northumbria TRF being led by the event Yorkshire event organiser.

The TRF runs were not without incident. 2 miles out on Saturday we had a puncture. The CRM was then miss firing like crazy so I tried changing the plug with no change. After going slowly up a steep hill on full throttle with no power I investigated further finding some rather soggy ECU connections, removed the water and rewrapped it in plastic. The bike started, sounded good and then died, not wanting to restart. We quickly discovered the plastic on the ECU was now sucked over the airbox inlet. Oops . After application of tape, it ran fine.

Some lanes followed, then a relaxed pub lunch where it was noted my number plate and bracket were snapped off and missing. Hmm. We then headed back to the camp site with some concerns over the amount of fuel we had due to no fuel stop.

We went down an interesting very steep rocky descent which was heavily water eroded with large boulder obstacles. I’ve never been over anything quite like it before and was very pleased we were going downhill!

After some trips across some moorland it was then lots of downhill roads into the camp field. This was fortunate as the bike chose this moment to run out of fuel. I coasted down the hill and pushed it the remaining distance to the van. Beautiful timing

Whilst the day had been red hot, we spent the evening huddled around a fire watching video about the Ertsberg rally projected onto the side of a barn. There was also a steam train + dining car came by and a lovely stone bridge to watch it from.

The next day with the bike being refueled we headed out for a short run towards the coast. I managed to stall it in the ford next to the field which was a good start but kept my footing, restarted and got out. There was a steep muddy climb with some troublesome tree roots half way up which did cause me problems as I’d stopped at the bottom to close a gate. With a little assistance I did make it up eventually though .

Things got better from there with other people falling off instead of me. I had to pull another CRM off the top of someone after he overtook me trying to show off .

We stopped near Whitby for breakfast/lunch/icecream and then took to some lanes near Robin Hood bay. I took some photos here with the camera phone:

On the way out of there someone suffered a rear puncture meaning a tyre changing stop. A police car drove past, turned around, came back and stopped with the officers than questioning us on where we’d been. We eventually convinced them we’d been doing legal things and they were leaving when they spotted a bike missing its number plate (not mine). Thankfully they left with just a warning about getting it sorted and that there were traffic cops around on the nearby trunk road who would pull us for it.

This left a dilemma as there was a number in the group without plates but we decided to chance the main road and there was no traffic cops thankfully.

The rest of the trip back to the field went fine, we came up to another group and it was interesting to see some riders who were slower than me for a change! I was out with some rather good riders and the slowest there, as usual with my Northumbria TRF friends :/.

In the ford next to the field, the other CRM owner decided to drown his bike but at least we could tow him back onto the site to fix it. Several people seemed to have problems going through there this time and the water was significantly higher than that morning. I rode through without incident which was nice .

This just left packing up and driving home which I eventually summoned the energy to do. I’ve been having problems with my energy levels recently, not helped by the flu thing I had and whilst I’m totally shattered, I did manage everything and came back home in one piece with working bikes! I only fell off twice on Saturday both just silly bike sideways, lie down under it things and didn’t come off on Sunday.

So an action packed four days, tiring but enjoyable and good fun!

Next up is the Northumbria TRF run into Kielder forest on the 22nd August.

When checking the bike over I discovered the chain and sprockets are unlikely to last another trip out and one of the rear wheel bearings has play in it. I took some photos of the suffering of the bike:

A little bit of erosion

and plenty of scratches to the handguards.

A sick looking front sprocket

and a not much better looking rear

The front panel has finally been ripped from its mount on the radiator. This has been likely to happen for a while as it was already badly cracked. I haven’t decided how to fix this yet.

A standard bike footpeg

The footpeg I mostly rebuilt from bits of steel bar

The bike, showing signs of wear but not holding up badly considering.