Saturday May 31st 2025

Mash 400 Dirtstar.

Further efforts were made to get the bike to start. With a fully charged battery the engine still on spun over slowly but despite having fuel and a strong spark there was no sign of the engine firing. To make sure the slow starter speed wasn’t down to a fault in the starter motor, the starter motor was removed and taken apart but it was clean inside and free from obvious faults. There was plenty of life left in the brushes and the brushes moved freely. The valve clearances were then checked and set to the standard value of 0.07 to 0.10 mm for inlet valves and 0.10mm to 0.12mm for the exhaust valve gaps. There was a bit of a ‘ermm’ moment before the valve clearances could be checked, when a partially removed generator cover led to a large portion of its engine oil being deposited onto the floor rather unexpectedly. A hurried retightening of the generator cover screws and a lot of mopping up saw things back on track. Rory spent time tutoring Levi in the ancient art of wheel building as they set out to begin replacing spokes in both wheels, largely because the spokes were heavily corroded. Wheel building may be an old fashioned skill, but there are still plenty of spoked wheels out there and very few people with the skills needed to do it.

Suzuki GSF1200 Bandit -

No progress made at this meeting but having established that the engine doesn’t need an urgent strip down, work could begin on replacing the bike’s tatty and corroded front forks with the brand new pair that came with the bike.

Jialing 125 (That has become the Jialonda).

We took this bike out for a spin on 24/05 at the Non Stop Trials centre near Ammanford. Although it was never going to do the job as well as a pucker trials bike, it did a very creditable impression of one. All those that were able to ride did so, however towards the end of the session it had become difficult start and keep running. During the week between the trails park and this session the club Mechanic stripped out the nice new fuel tap fitted to the bike to find it full of debris from the inside the fuel tank as was the inline fuel filter. Bearing in mind that corroded metal at the rear of the tank had needed to temporary repair to stop it leaking, the best option now seemed to be using a tank liner sloshed around the inside of the tank to seal it and also trap the debris. Another item that needed replacement was the inlet rubber between the cylinder head and the carburetor which had perished quite badly in places and wouldn’t be helping the way the bike ran.

Helping a club member out...

Allan (I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this) had dropped his bike at low speed when coming the previous meeting, It had broken his Suzuki Bandit’s clutch lever. We had tried to help him out with a loan of the clutch lever from our bike, but being much older it didn’t fit. Alan Came to this session armed with a nice shiny new clutch lever but when the time came to fit it, the part that the clutch lever pushes into the piston of the clutch master cylinder was missing and no-where to be found. Allan found a likely looking bolt and Graham set about cutting it up to make something to replace the missing part. After a couple of attempts he was able to make something that got the clutch working again.

Demonstration...

Phil demonstrated the dark art of disc brake overhaul and bleeding to a crowd of intrigued onlookers, using Phil M’s Honda VC750 as his demonstration tool.

Other news from the workshop...

Steve worked with Andy J to overcome the problem that had caused the top of the inner workshop door to become detached (When we were returning the Jialonda to the workshop after the trials taster. They soon noticed that a large screw in the top hinge was actually a cam that could be turned to raise/lower the hinge pin that fitted into the top of the door. This mean that the pin projected further into the door than it did and there would be no recurrence of the pin coming out of the door.