Tag: GasGas

Upcoming race prep!

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Things are looking up! It’s March. My GasGas is up, running and feels like a great machine. My YZ now has a WR transmission, 290 Big Bore, and may or may not have a Rekluse Z-Start Pro going into it. I hadn’t really planned on that, but I found an almost new one for the price of an EXP unit, and the DynaRing unit I have will NOT grab with the added power of the 290 kit. Kinda wild that a couple HP difference, and it just slips. Go figure.

On top of that, I’ve added a “toy” to my working out.

I love feeling really worked after a good row on this thing. It’s like doing pushups, crunches, and leg presses all in one. Come race time there’s a good chance I’ll be down around 170#. Not bad considering last year I was closer to 185-190. I feel good knowing that its the “excess” I’ve been whittling down. Rebuilding muscle at the same time is just a plus.

Only downside so far as of late, is that I have not gone to the indoor MX track as much as I had planned. Heck, I haven’t made it there since I last went. Basically life got in the way, and then I got antsy, and tossed the WR gears & big bore on the YZ, which took much longer than planned as I busted the cases while doing the swap.

Hopefully get there one more time this month. Supposed to go to a race middle\end of March, but based on how the weather has been, I forsee a total slop fest. Not exactly in the mood for that. Then it’s down to Trials Training Center first weekend of April with the GasGas to do some skills improvement work. Then end of April is a trip to the UP for some trail riding with friends.

The season hasn’t begun…..but already has. 

Time to go row & get some dinner with my wife.

Andrew

Past mistakes, future fortunes.

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As stated before, I’ve made some bad choices in the past.  The thing that’s really killed my racing as of late has been my only constant being change.  I’ve tended to keep a bike for a few short months, complain about something on it, and want to change to something “better”.  While it was true that each bike presented itself with it’s own unique issues, I didn’t stick to my “just run it” attitude I had in the past.  I assume this is partially because now I could actually get the bikes I want & choose.  But aside from causing me to lose money, I lost valuable time in learning my machines.

So it all started back with a 2001 KTM 300exc.  I picked this up from another ADVRider member in February of 2010.  Prior to this, I had a BMW G650XCountry that I realized would not be a good race bike.  The KTM had power, suspension, and at the time, I felt it wast the lightest bike on the planet.  I raced 3 races on the bike, and by the 3rd I was thinking it’d help if I had something lighter.  I test rode a Honda CRF250R and felt this was the key for Harescrambles.  I unloaded the 300exc & picked up a 2004 Yamaha YZ250F.  The bike was setup for an A MX rider, far from ideal for the Harescrambles (and the Indy Endurocross I raced it in).  The YZ250F was feeling good, until I rode a 125 2-stroke.

This is about where I really shot myself in the foot.  I ended up trading a perfectly good YZ250F for a YZ125, thinking that it was going to be all that and a bag of chips.  I lost BIG on that deal.  I was jaded by lack of lighting, a crew of hillbillys surrounding me, and the sweet scent of pre-mix.  I got the YZ125 home and began finding all it’s problems.  Steering stem bearings were the least of my worries, and after my first real ride on the bike, found that aside from the top end being worn, the bottom end was as Eric Gorr put it “One of the worst we’ve seen”.  This was the end of October/ beginning of November of 2010, and of course, I needed to rush to get the thing sorted.  1 Eric Gorr 144 big bore & a fresh bottom end rebuild, and I was ready to rock and roll.  Go figure that the day I go to test out the bike, I case a small double at a buddies track, exploding the rear shock, linkage, and along the way, my right knee.  Thankfully it was getting towards winter, so I had time to get things sorted.

I rebuilt the YZ144 over the winter, fresh everything.  I added a Revloc auto clutch & was ready to get down to business racing it.  First race out was awesome.  It was up at Aztalan MX in Wisconsin.  I took 2nd off the start and was positioned well to be competitive throughout the race.  Go figure though that about 30 minutes into the 120 minute race, I flatted my rear tire.  I said screw it & continued on.  On the jumps, I took it easy to not throttle too hard in the air.  By the 90 minute mark, my body was feeling it & I was slowing quickly.  I ended up in 4th or so in the race, which sucked, cause the 3rd place rider was right in front of me, I just had no idea on timing\scoring…..Racing and learning.

I continued to race the YZ144 at a couple more local Harescrambles.  Somewhere along the way in early 2010, I convinced myself to pickup a BMW G450X.  Dealer had a stupid low price & I convinced myself I “needed” one for riding trips in the UP (Michigan).  Plated, dirtbike, yup how can you go wrong?  Unfortunately I was alternating between racing the 450 & the 144 and just wasn’t doing good at all.  I was never confident in the races, and just fudging up where I shouldn’t have been.

At this point, I was really getting down on my abilities in racing.  I knew I could ride faster than my friends when we’d race around.  I knew I could keep up with A riders at times, but it was like I had A skills, with the fitness of a C rider, and the mental lapses of an 80 year old.  Flashes of brilliance while racing, peppered however, with more poor riding.  This is just chalked up to not having raced a whole bunch.  Nerves and the like.  (Un)Fortunately at this point I had a buddy of mine ask me if I wanted to give Supermoto a try.  I was a bit worn out on the off-road riding\racing & more or less just needed a break.  I had a good first weekend in that, really enjoyed having proper brake markers & keypoints on a constant track, but just didn’t “feel” it for the road type racing again.  This brief foray back onto the road racing cost me some valuable off-road race weekends, but I needed to do it to know for sure.

At this point, I was beginning to feel that I should be sticking with the 450 for racing, but was still switching back and forth between it and the 144.  I went down to race a GP on the 144 and was just downright pissed about my performance.  I’ve only myself to blame, as my tires were destroyed and half way into the first race, I lost all rear brake.  I thought I had it fixed for the 2nd moto, but it was all but gone, not my way to ride, but not much I could do.  I was getting to be quite sick of that YZ144, and just fed up with how things were going for me.

It was at this point that I finally decided to finally give an Enduro a go.  I figured there were no other Harescrambles going on at the time and it’d let me see if maybe I’d like the format of these types of races over whatever else.  I loaded up the 450, signed up for Open B class & just figured I’d go and have fun with it.  And fun was had!  These enduro’s actually started on time (pet peeve of mine from Harescrambles), I got to race for all day long, and best of all, I got a great finish in my class.  I had some issues, but I loved how my bike felt, I felt positive with how I rode, and basically went home feeling happy.  At this point, I was dead set on racing the 450 the following season, in the Enduro’s.

This past winter was spent prepping the 450X for a committed D17 Open B Enduro season.  I had scored a great bigger tank for the bike, I revalved the suspension just to my liking, and had it completely fresh for the season.  I got one early ride on the bike and just felt great on it.  Again, my brain began to wander.  Deep down I knew that for 2013, I’d want to be back on a 2-stroke.  One thing led to another, and here I am now on a Husqvarna WR250 2-stroke.  It was a relatively easy decision for me to make.  I had no real complaints with the 450X, but things fell into place, so I rolled with it and am now on a bike that just feels wonderful.

I’ve learned some really key things this past year, and despite how much I had wavered throughout the year, it’s really helped me focus in.  In 2011, I had no set goal.  I had no set plan.  Yes, I wanted to race Harescrambles, but I wasn’t yet at a point to really push to be competitive.  I was jumping around from bike to bike, discipline to discipline  This year I feel renewed and confident.  I’ve got the clear goal to compete in the D17 Open B Enduro class and I feel I’m on the best bike for the job.

This season, I’m going in with confidence! – More to follow!

-Andrew

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