Tag: Enduro

Crickets a chirping

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My apologies for lack of updates.  I’ll blame it on being out riding, but, unfortunately I don’t actually get to ride every single day.  Yadda yadda yadda.  I have been riding though, unfortunately no racing at this point.  I have been putting time in on the new ride:

I’m sure it’s a piss poor excuse, but it is what it is.  I’m bummed to a certain degree that I haven’t been at a race yet.  My entire goal this year was to win some sort of race series….and well, that’s going out the window quick.  I know I’ve been getting good “practice” in, but still just not the same.  Nonetheless, I’m excited about getting to a race here shortly.

I’ve lost my train of thought, so I’ll wrap things up.  This Saturday AM I plan on (assuming they’re open) riding at Rocky Glen again.  I want to do a couple solid 30+ minute sessions to help my body get in proper shape.  Stay tuned.

Andrew

PS I’m updating my gopro mounting.  Tired of crappy footage.  haha.

Background on bike….an ongoing saga.

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Got back into racing dirt last year after coming from Trials. Went from a 2001 KTM 300exc that was a great “open area” bike. Not so great for our tighter Harescrambles (my opinion). Swapped that for a 2004 YZ250F thinking the 4T power would be great for racing. Raced Indy Endurocross on that and then decided that I wanted to go back to 2T. I wanted something that felt like my trials bike. Something I didn’t think twice about what I was doing in the woods. 125 2T it was. Unfortunately I traded my bike for a POS 2004 YZ125. Would have been fine had the original owner(s) taken care of it, but alas…..they did not. I’ll post up here what I’ve done\will do to make it my competitive machine. I’ll be competing in D17 Harescramble Series B class.

Be forewarned that while I do occasionally take pictures of what I do on the bike….I don’t always, and when doing general maintenance\things like that….I generally don’t take pictures due to not wanting to get grease\crap on my camera. I also find that while out riding I do a horrible job of taking pictures. I now have my own GoPro, so there will be testing\tuning\practice video.

Enough chit-chat; onto things.

The bike I got rid of for the 125:

The 125 after a bit of elbow grease:

Everything seems fine, but right off the bat, I notice some issues.  For one, the forks aren’t in the greatest shape, the steering feels notchy, the tires are shot, and the frame is unusually rusty.  WTF have I gotten myself into?  And why the crap did I trade an essentially pristine YZ250F for this thing? (I’ll spare the 4T vs 2T battle for the track)

Day before my first time out on the bike, I decide to pull the triples and am greeted with the following:

Ok.  No biggy.  Needed to ride that weekend, so went to a local dealer and swapped them out.  Killed some hearing in my left ear while pounding the races out.  Wear hearing protection kids!

Finally got to do a real shakedown of the bike @ KI Tracks in Oregon, IL.  Oddly enough, I don’t have any pictures of me there.  I do have this brief video ( hopefully ya’ll can see the thing) from my buddies cam.  He’s on a KTM 250SX.  I show up around the 2:30 mark. VIDEO.

Things I learned from that ride:  1.Forks were toast.  2. Don’t ride in muddyish conditions with a half-assed rear fender…spend the 25$ on a new one!

Now I know that I’m a bit big for stock suspension @ 190 pounds without my gear, but I know the bike shouldn’t so easily bottom out purely under breaking.  The power of the bike felt quite nice, and the Shinko 520 tires hooked up very well in the tacky soil.  Unfortunately towards the end of the day, I heard what I presumed to be piston slap.  I shook it off as me “hearing things.

Enter suspension rebuild.  Pulled fork tubes and found the following:

Both fork tubes pitting nicely.  From what I gather, it’s rust from beneath the coating coming out, because it wasn’t localized to where rocks would hit the tubes.  I busted out some fine grit sand paper, smoothed them out, and got on with the project:

I got the bike all put back together, and it was time for a shakedown at some local trails.  Again, I don’t have pictures of this, but the bike felt incredibly planted while riding.  I was able to ride all out with complete ease, and was able to take greater hits on the front without bottoming out the fork.  The bike felt like a complete winner (in a good sense) after that shakedown.  Unfortunately, I was for sure hearing piston slap and decided to pull the top-end.

Big surprise, the cylinder was out of round.  More so at the bottom of the bore than the top.  I figured why risk things….Lets get a big bore!

Enter Eric Gorr.  Eric is about an hour and a half North of me, so I pulled the engine and loaded up that and the wife and headed north!

Dropped off the motor and went to do some mall browsing with my Wife and kill some time before picking up the fresh engine from Eric.  I headed back to pick up the engine, to be informed of the bad news.  Mr. Crank was Mr. Toasted!  haha.  Well I wanted to ride in 2 days, so it was time for some over-nighting of parts (from Japan?) and some quick handy rebuild work. (Sorry, not a single pic of the rebuild.  I guess I was focused. haha)  At this point, I also tossed on a 14T front sprocket as suggested on Thumpertalk.  Apparently the 144 has the extra giddyup to take care of the taller sprocket, so I did it to it.

Things were looking great.  Bike got back together in very little time.  Engine rebuild was super smooth.  I felt confident that the bike would kick right over….sure enough it did.  All the better, I was ready to ride for that Saturday.  Originally had planned to go back to KI Tracks when my neighbor walked over while I was loading up the bikes.  Would I like to ride at their track 5 minutes from my house…..Why yes I would!  Off to the track!

The bike needed proper breaking in.  So MotoMan Break-in it was.  If you think he’s wrong…I don’t care.  He know’s what’s up, and that lil 144 had some scoot.  Unfortunately I decided to man-up and hit one of the doubles on the track.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I’ve jumped plenty of jumps that were longer in distance than this one, but the track was more SX style with steeper\taller face that was a bit intimidating.  I decided to not wait for my friend to get on his bike to “pull me” through the jump and instead pegged the bike in 2nd.  Sigh.  I didn’t slip the clutch enough coming out of the turn and part way in the air knew that I was doomed.

Obviously I came up a bit short on the jump.  I didn’t have 100% commitment and just didn’t do things right.  Thankfully I didn’t get hurt from this.  I didn’t fall.  Just came up short, cased, and exploded my rear shock & linkage into quite a few pieces:

Earlier that day, I managed to tweak my knee.  I had messed it up practicing on the YZ250F earlier in the year, but apparently this day just aggravated things and I ended up not being able to walk by the end of the night.  I’ll spare you the racy photos of my bare legs and just share the link to the following MRI\x-Rays of my knee.  Doctor drained plenty of blood & gave me a piece of crap “knee brace”.  Thank goodness for having Insurance!

Fubard Knee

I managed to score a replacement shock\linkage off eBay for a handsomely 40$.  Not a bad gig.  Unfortunately, I was still on the edge of “being able to ride”.  Winter decided to set in, and I figured that to help protect myself even more, I would pull my bike apart, sand blast the frame, powder coat it white, and toss the darn thing back together.  I did this for a couple reasons.  My frame was rusty.  I have a large enough sand blaster to blast my frame.  And I have a friend who can Powder Coat stuff the size of a car who happens to be storing a bike in my garage…..So it cost all of Free99 + my time.

So my frame went from looking like this rust bucket:

To looking like this work de art (disregard the pile of CR below the frame):

And as such the bike went back together ever so nicely:


I will continue on this later, but figured I would give a precursor.  I’ll list out the things I have done, things I’m doing, and attempt to put whatever full specs I can up about my rig.  In the meantime, feel free to check my site for other info: www.AndrewGore.net

Andrew

tbc

Woods – HareScramble Machine

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No, not me. I’m talking about the bike.  Quicky details:
2004 Yamaha YZ125.

Eric Gorr Big Bore 144.

Shinko 520 Soft\Intermediate Tires (possible swap for Michelin S12XC)

Moose Hand-Guards

Moose Skid Plate

Soon to be add-ons:

OverSized fuel Tank

Revloc Dyna Ring

This will be THE woods weapon for the 2011 Season!

Andrew

This Addiction, no going clean.

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An unconventional addiction to them crazy 2 wheeled things called Motorcycles. Right now the flavor has seemed to be motorcycles in the Dirt variety. I’ve come to the realization that with Kim’s current work\school schedule, any sort of short motorcycle road trips are basically out of the question. This is not then end of the world, as noted before, my passion of competition has been reignited.

In the past year I have bought, traded, sold, and fanagled a handful of various motorcycles and dirtbikes. I can’t quite pin point what my deal is. Previously I’ve maintained a solid reputation for having zero emotion when it comes to mechanical machines. I fear this had in the past caused me to be distant in my mechanical\physical relationship between me and my machines, but it appears that the past three bikes I’ve gone through have torn down my mechanical walls.

I swore after I rode a CRF250R that the 4-stroke bikes were the answer. The way the power was always there; the way I didn’t have to try to get it to do what I want. The reality of it was that I was angry and upset with the KTM 300. On my last race with it, I got the crap beaten outa me. Now this wasn’t all the bikes fault (smashing your foot into a tree 10 minutes into a 2 hour race is bad idea k?) but it sure made me feel better to put the blame on it. I faulted the WP Suspension, I faulted the “over-powered” feeling, I faulted everything about that damn bike. I however did not fault the fool sitting on the machine.

Enter 2004 Yamaha YZ250F Stage Right. I will now admit the obvious: This was an impulse move on my behalf. I was sure though that it would solve all my riding issues. And to a certain degree, the bike did. I gained some important experience on the machine and learned a few more things in regards to my riding. The 250F helped me see another aspect of what I do and what I don’t like in a bike. Little nuances, the small things I would otherwise overlook when going for a bike. I am now seeing to be quite significant factors in what I like or dislike in a bike. Unfortunately the thing I realized I wanted most in a bike, was lost by the KTM 300 Storming out Stage Left.

Pingers, Ring Ting Tingers. I was warned. I was told I would be back. I retorted that I had seen the light. The writing was on the wall, however. I will say it, and I don’t care what anyone says. 4-Stroke dirtbikes HAVE NO SOUL! You can put it however you want, but the 4-Stroke bikes are just lacking in the excitement part. I’m sure I wasn’t riding fast enough, or pushing hard enough to feel things in the same excitement level on the 4-Stroke, but that is the issue. The way the power is delivered, it just doesn’t add up to be an exciting ride. I felt a need to be back on a 2-Stroke, someway. Somehow. Now I must admit that there are a couple contributing factors to my passion for 2-Strokes. It could be the wicked power that the KTM 300 has, or I admit (fear?) that it may be rooted deeper.

When I originally began racing dirtbikes, I had the misfortune of picking up probably one of the worst dirtbikes known to man. A 1986 Yamaha YZ125. A basket case to say the least. From the poor power, to weak suspension, to me not knowing what the crap I was doing with maintenance. Everything added up on that thing to equaling disaster. Yet for some reason I had a desire to race it, and race it I did. Unfortunately for me, it put me on a vintage bike against kids on new 125 machines. It was 1999 (or 2000?) and even a bike 10 years newer than mine, was light years ahead of what I had. So why the heck would I want to go to a 2-Stroke, 125cc, Yamaha? The very same bike that I loathed all those years ago? Soul.

The 250F made me realize that the 4-Stroke bikes had no soul. No emotion, nothing, nada. So now I am wondering all what I have here. I am at the end of the racing season. I have a 2004 Yamaha YZ125 in the garage that needs some TLC, and in my eyes, I pissed away a perfectly good racing season. That being said, I am much further in my riding abilities now, than I was at the beginning of the season, and as such, I look ahead. I am looking ahead towards the winter here for cross training, for planning my attack on a race series for next season. To compete and be able to compete at the top of my game. To be pushed beyond what I thought I could do.

So this addiction, I won’t be coming clean. I aim to immerse myself even further in next seasons racing. There is plenty of fun to be had in just riding around, but the taste of victory; I crave NEED more.

Happy Roosting,
Andrew

From one 2 stroke to the next

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If you haven’t really talked to me in the past couple days, you probably won’t know that I’ve turned a new page in my competitive whatever you wanna call it.  I’ve decided that it’s time to get my head into racing mr. KTM 300.  The little GasGas has gone to help fund a few goodies for the KTM, and will help offset some of the traveling costs, fresh tires, and things of that nature.  But anywho, I am feeling it is time that I check out these Enduro type races.  I know that there has been everyone and their brother who has probably raced one, but, well I haven’t.  HA.  I figure the KTM is a perfect lil scoot for the job.

Right now I’m a little unsure of where else to go with my thoughts on this one, but what yah gonna do?  I’ll also be competing in some Harescrambles along the way with good ol Jam0.  Looking forward to just being out at events again this year!

Andrew

ps…not sure why I chose this picture, cause I’m on Jamo’s 540 and not my 300.  I knew something looked weird.  haha