Beware Chipmunks

After last year's Rye House race, I foresaw that my CCM wasn't going to get much action for the coming year so I took the precaution of draining the fuel and disconnecting the battery. I've been told horror stories of sheds catching fire due to mysterious electrical fires so am not keen on leaving a trickle charger on unattended. if I'm going to do a session in my shed or garden, I just flick it on charge for the day to keep it healthy.
The Rotax 604 engine seems to sump a lot of its oil if not turned over regularly. Mine spat out about 500ml when I tried to fire it up after a year off the job last week. Age-wise it's probably due an oil change but it hasn't seen much action and it's not deathly black, so I just topped it up with fresh. It did some gastronomic gurgles, spluttered, farted then started, for the first few crank ups.
I'm now wise to the short shelf life of modern fuel, but I thought best to crack the carb open and check for gremlins before just filling the tank and returning to Hoddesdon.

The Dell’Orto float bowl was showing the usual signs of light oxidisation. But more alarming was the contents of the big nut on the bottom. It looked like a chipmunk had crumbled a digestive in there.

Odd for a drained system??? After poke about with one of these excellent multi-point picks and a liberal spray of carb cleaner it was good to party.

No speed enhancing miracles have been gifted to man or machine in the past year, but it was good to be back, and I had a lot of fun.

Thanks to Anthony and Anna - and the ever faithful volunteer marshals, for organising another smoooooth DTRA race day. BP

Dell'Ortos Suck

(in a good way). After a complete carb strip, petrol tank tap off for a de-gunk, and fresh fuel, my CCM now starts as it should, just on the choke. Once warmed up, choke off, the engine runs smoothly through the rev range without coughing. Sweet music.

Stripping the PHM is straightforward, mine is a 40 'ZS1' with no pumper (Dell'Ortos mechanical injector, that my Guzzi, and most older Ducati's, do have - normally sits where the primitive riveted banking plate is).

On the top, there is a mystery tab with the number R-4938 stamped on it. Corsa Italiana raced the bike in its former life as a Supermotard in the '00s, before switching to the much faster Vertemati. Maybe it relates to re-jetting?

Hefty arthritis inducing spring.

Needle is clipped on its lowest of four notches (so sits higher in the bore and gives more fuel). 55 choke jet (45 as standard) cleaned with a fine sewing needle - now with added dayglo cocktail flag so I can add it to my surgical tool kit.

32 idle jet (standard 45 - not sure why one would down-size on that). A very fine hole that only a single strand of copper-core electrical wire was small enough to poke clear. 198 main jet (195 standard).

Also new to my arsenal, kinky Vynatrile gloves. Don't suffer all those nasty chemicals and cruddy nails anymore.
Later today, I'll take the bike to my Mum's farm for a proper shake-down blasting up the rough driveway. BP

Creature From The Black Lagoon

Propping up my shed under a sheet of corrugated plastic with a flower pot capping the end of the silencer was just a quick storage solution for my CCM after last years Dirt Quake. I had hosed off most of the quagmire mud, but I certainly didn't plan to abandon it it for over a year, otherwise I would have at least taken the battery off and drained the fuel - and cocooned it a little better.
Over the weekend I dragged it out of its dank nest in preparation for riding in the last DTRA race of the season, at Rye House this Sunday. It was a sorry cobwebby state. I put the battery on charge but wasn't it expecting it to start. It didn't. It pissed out rain water from the headers. Never a good sign. Taking the plug out and kicking it over produced a proper spurt of water. An even worse sign.

With some transparent rubber hose gaffer tapped to the household Henry hoover, I sucked out a cup-full of water. At least it wasn't rusty water and the engine didn't have any problem turning over with the kicker. But then I heard the echo of waves. Never a good sign. There was even more water in the exhaust. Murky. It's not true that stainless steel doesn't rust.

I'm using a car-type BOSCH starter solenoid instead of the original Denso one, and with a brand new battery the starter was spinning up fine and the engine would fire-up for a second on full choke, no throttle, but then die, as if the main jet was blocked - but normally it runs happily from cold just on the choke, so that doesn't tally. So I cheated and bought some highly flammable Easy Start from Millards the local automotive shop. Sprayed liberally onto the air filter, it did get the engine running on the throttle, but doesn't really solve the problem....

I had already cleaned the float bowl of green gunk, carb filter mesh of pigeon's bogies, and washed the foam air filter of brown toffee,

- oh and there was a Kinder Egg Fantasy ghost (missing his badminton racquet and small section of beach shown here) hiding in the airbox. I suspected problems further afield so sought higher intelligence...

Spent an hour on the phone with Capt Simon. Who updated me on the evils of modern fuel, whose shortcomings include very short shelf life of 6 weeks (i.e. not a year and a half); very aggressively corrosive chemicals; separation of constituent ingredients creating varnish like gummy residues; water absorption - to the point it's no longer combustible. So tomorrow I will chuck the remaining fuel in the tank and properly strip the Dell'Orto. BP

Dell'Ortos Suck

Not just the standard carb on chunky Italian roadbikes, but once popular on American and Japanese flat trackers too. I'm guessing this is a 38mm pumper on Jeff Haney's Honda. Read all about the development of the CX500 powered NS750 into it's successor, the RS750 in Sideburn #7. BP