Anything to do with Trini the Triumph TT450
Now that I've finally taken the exhaust and radiator off it's very obvious that the huge gash in the front of the block wasn't the cam chain, it was a conrod. Should've known but the noise I heard after the bang tinkle tinkle tinkle sounded distinctly like a chain being dragged across something. Here's what I extracted from the inside of the engine Have a guess what this is .... (click on images to view larger ones) ...
I finally stopped sulking about it all (cheered by news that I have a replacement in the pipeline) and went and had a look at my Triumph to see what happened on the main straight of Paeroa. The first thing to do was take the fairings off so I could get to everything and locate where the problem was. Even before I'd taken a bolt out of the fairings I could see the belly pan was full of sludge (oil and coolant mixed together). This didn't surprise me because even though it didn't ...
Yeah nah. Short story; something in the engine broke on the main straight and it made awful tinkling noises. It's not fixable and I'm not replacing the engine. So the worlds only TT450 triple race bike is no longer.
Now that was a good weekend cos I learnt a hell of a lot. Saturday my wife and I rolled out of bed a bit later than we should've, buggered around for longer than we should've and generally dragged our arses. Neither of us wanted to get out of bed at such a ridiculous time, her because she doesn't ride bikes (working on correcting that particular failing but a fix is gonna take a while) and me because it'd been a long week. After I'd made us both a decent cup of coffee ...
Talk about wet!! The ducks have more brains than motorcycle racers cos the stayed home. 5:30am is a ridiculous time of the night (even though there's light it's ridiculous to call it morning) to do anything, but that's the time I set my alarm for. A short while later I was out of bed and making a coffee for the road. Throw the rest of my gear into the car and I'm off to McDonalds for the traditional grease-fest that gets me through a race day. Pulling ...
AMCC Round 1 at Hampton Downs signalled the start of Summer racing and the first race for me since Paeroa in February, 8 months ago. This time I planned to get an unusually early start so that we're not rushed even if something doesn't quite go as it should so I'd set my alarm for 5:30am. That's an insane time to be awake. On the average work day my body might be walking around but my brain isn't awake until about 10:00am. Even then that's only after some breakfast ...
I finally got around to putting my bike on the dyno and did we get a surprise!! Sunday I hooked up the trailer, loaded the bike up and got things ready to go visit Gary Pendleton. I swiped the mother inlaws Garmin because I wasn't exactly sure I'd find Gary's place without a little help and then watched some rugby. Next morning I was up far too early for a Monday (I don't work Mondays, they're evil), into the car and off to McDonalds. Can't go anywhere without ...
Paeroa was one of the reasons that I started racing. I told my wife that I wanted to do Paeroa (and maybe Wanganui) and that was the justification for doing other race meetings (rules say you have to do at least 3 track events to be eligable for the Streets). Because of the tight time constraints with a Street Race, sign-in and scrutineering for Paeroa are on the Saturday so that Sunday morning it's straight into the riding as early as possible. I ...