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AnonymousFor someone so active and keen on this forum, I would have thought that Moto would have already read the thread in bike preparation about tightening up all his nuts. He sure seems to have a lot of bits fall off his bike. Maybe he likes that quote from the movie, Days of Thunder, that “loose is fast”
regards,
Slug
wr450fs wrote:
Quote:For someone so active and keen on this forum, I would have thought that Moto would have already read the thread in bike preparation about tightening up all his nuts. He sure seems to have a lot of bits fall off his bike. Maybe he likes that quote from the movie, Days of Thunder, that “loose is fast”
regards,
Slug
Wait till you go for a ride with Tripper!! Have you ever seen a front brake caliper fall off?? Probably a good thing it did in hindsight, other wise he wouldn’t have noticed his seat wasn’t even bolted on!!:blink: Or that his barkbuster was about to fall off.
AnonymousI’ll do a proper write up later, I’m leaving work in a couple hours and unfotunately have got some stuff to do.
In total my exhaust fell off, my kickstarter was loose and chain guard was flapping around. In fairness though, the kickstarter bolt always comes loose and really needs some loctite on there, the chainguard bolt I had ordered along with the special retaining nut to hold it in place but it didn’t turn up in time (4 days!!) so I rode with zip ties holding it in place. Oh, and who ever checks there exhaust bolts???
Was a good day though and nice to ride somewhere new. My (clutch) finger has ballooned to twice the size of normal now and I can’t bend it anymore due to fluid build up
Anonymous
AnonymousYeah, well I’ll have to do that from now on. I can’t be arsed to write it again now. I’ll have to do it later
Mother of a crack whore, I even proof readed before hitting the button
Anonymous(This might be a long one, even for the second time around!)
I had an early start getting up at 5:30am, though I was pleased to see the makings of nice day. I hadn’t ridden in a couple of weeks and was looking forward to riding some new tracks, meeting the infamous TB and just getting on the bike really.
I went down to my underground parking and unshackled the beast, doing my usual quick inspection as I went. No problems there, so I got tooled up and cruised the bike up to the Wyong exit of the freeway. I was early and was pleased to see that TB was already there too.
I pulled across the road and had a quick intro with TB and we loaded my bike onto the trailer. We had a short stint in the car to the twin Caltex servo’s just North of Wyong where we were meeting Phil. Once he turned up we didn’t hang around and both shot off to the meeting point on Prickly Ridge Road. As we drove in we saw Champo with his TM 300 2 dinger sat in the back of his ute. Me and TB both noticing the fact that he had a race bike, with race numbers and his name written on it. We had both looked at each and said ‘fuck he looks alright!’.
Shortly after Mick, who we later learned is 58 years old, rocked up with a trick looking KTM 525. After some quick intro’s everyone starts to unload bikes and get geared up. Since the thought of watching TB get undressed wasn’t very appealing, and I was already geared up, I decided to have a wonder and a looky, looky at the bikes.
I strolled over to look at Phil’s DRZ when I couldn’t help but notice his mangled handlebars. It looked like he had been at them with a set of pipe benders! They looked liked bulls horns pointing towards the sky. Looking at bit bemused at how they got like that and thinking it might be home time for Phil, he obviously notices the look on my face and says ‘yeah they’re a bit weird hey, I’m kinda used to them now though’ . WTF!!
A short time later everyone was ready, we fired the bikes up and TB led the way down the firetrail missing the first narly hill out as it was only the start of the ride. I tried to keep up with TB but couldn’t, the dust cloud was so bad I couldn’t see my arse from elbow. I ended up sitting about 100m behind TB so I could actually see what we were riding over, it’s discerning riding at 80 clicks off road when you can’t see the ground!
On the first turn off from the fire trail Phil had wedged himself and the banana on a tree across rut, and needed a little assistance to get himself going again. Shortly after we shot off again I’m back chasing TB. I actually didn’t know where the hell I was going and couldn’t see TB at all at times but it was easy enough to follow the dust cloud
I pull up just behind TB at the bottom of this little hill with a sweeping left to right hander. As Mick and Champo arrive TB fires up the CRF and neatly torques his way to the top. Champo goes next and I follow behind. Too close behind. I can’t see a thing from the dust, end up completely off line, slow right down, lose my balance and cant touch the ground on the low side….track inspection No.1
I pick the bike up start it up and after some faffing about ride the last 5 metres to the top.As I get composed at the top and look back I see Phil wheeling the banana up the hill. It looked very trick until he fell off the back and had a track inspection of his own :p After a lot of laughing and jeering, he made his way back down the hill and got up second go without any issues. Mick was last up and cruised up the hill like he didn’t know what all the fuss was about.
We headed off down some more twin trail type stuff before coming across a rocky/rutted little downhill. TB in the lead veers to the left and takes the flowing line down with Phil right behind him. I decided I wanted to go the harder way down and jump in front of Phil. After doing the hard bit and realising I had successfully passed Phil I made a small off camber rut look very hard and decided it would be a good time for tack inspection No.2. I literally did jump in front of Phil, he almost ran over me. My bad!
A few hundred metres down the road we all pull up to find TB with front wheel of the CRF stuck in a muddy bog hole that was hiding just over a hump in the track. How he managed to stop where he did had me a little bemused, anyway, with a bit of a pull from me and Phil the CRF was free and on we went.
By now we had come across the single track which was very flowy and great fun to ride. TB held a good pace through the single trail and I was having to put some effort in to keep up. At some point here, Phil had had a bit of downtime and doofed his clutch lever.
We pressed on making our way towards the pines camping area still on the sweet single track. We came across and sandy section with heaps of whoops which I haven’t ridden on before. I was trying to get some flow and rhythm on them and was quite impressed with myself keeping with TB through the whoops. My ego was quickly bruised when Chamo rode past me on the whoops, gliding over the top of them like I was standing still. Bastard!
It was about now where me and TB swapped bikes and I had a go on the CRF. Ther was no messing around I fired up the Honda and we made our way through more single trail eventually popping out right in front of the pines camping ground and decided to pull up for a quick break. TB used the time to survey the area for the forthcoming Christmas party and I think was happy with the location.
Whilst on our little break 2 park ranger type guys drove past and asked us not to ride over the other side of the trail as they are doing back burning. The ranger described the area he wanted us to stay out of and we said we knew it well, we had just ridden through it
At this point Phil had understandably had enough of the broken clutch on the banana and we gave him directions to head home. TB shot off on my bike and I decided to give chase on the Honda leaving Mick and Champo a little behind us as they weren’t fully ready when we left. We stopped on the side of the road ready o hit the single trail up on the way back and waited (cornerman style) for Mick and Champo. Waited, waited some more….oh dear! Realising there was problem we back tracked to the pines looking for them to no avail. Bugger, we had lost them
We thought they might have jumped in the single trail near the pines (where we told not to ride) so we ducked in there and rode through at double pace to try and catch up.A few K’s later we come back out on the firetrail and still no sign of them. I left TB on the side of the raod and ripped back down the firetrail on my bike to see if we could find them. I saw them a few K’s down the road, they had taken a right turn at an intersection on the firetrail as they saw dust, they back tracked a few K’s down the road when they caught the car that had left the dust trail.
We didn’t waste any more time and got straight on with some more single track which eventuated in a rocky downhill section. After getting to the bottom with TB we noticed that Mick and Champo hadn’t come down. TB seemed to think they had bypassed this section purposely and raced off into distance to catch up with them. I followed suit, gassing the Kato widen open in 3rd until I heard the ridiculously loud noise of a single cylinder 450 without an exhaust. I jump off the bike and turn around to see the muffler has disconnected from the header pipe and tip of the exhaust was pointing to the sky. That’s different!!
Inevitably the Camelback comes off and the tools come out, it was simple fix, but trying to put and exhaust back together is much easier when it’s not 300 degrees C. Anyway, I get it sorted and get back on the bike, heading in the direction I lost TB. When I meet TB, who had back tracked to find me, he had that look of ‘what’s wrong with you?’. He looked a little bemused when I said my muffler had fallen off!
After regrouping we headed off again a hit up some more trails, I had no idea where the hell we were but it was good riding. We pulled up for another rest break and TB noticed that my chain guide was loose, the trusty zipties holding it in place had broken. I got on the ground to do some more bush mechanics and put the new zip ties (thanks Mick) when one of the big red/black ants bit me on the hand. I waved my hand around and the little bastard wouldn’t let go. I actually had to pull it off with my other hand. They’ve got quite a good sting considering they are so small. Needless to say that this little episode was highly amusing for the other guys.
Rest over and we are back at it again. I think TB was now ad-libbing with the route as there were a few u-turns and riding in circles but it was all good fun none-the-less. After taking some directional advise from Mick, and realising that Champo had just hit reserve we started to make our way towards the cars.
We come up round this dam and I can see that TB is on the other side of this unpassable gully. I followed Mick round the side of the dam noticing what looked like a small ditch. As we got closer Mick got on the brakes and pulled up, with me stopping behind him. He stopped because there was another gully that fed water into the dam. It was about 3m+ deep and easily 2m+ to the other side. As we were about to turn around we hear the zing of the smoke see Champo come flying past us and jump the gulley landing neatly on the trail in between the dam and rock strewn trees on the other side. Crazy caaaarnt!! Me and Mick looked at each other laughing in amazement and said ‘fuck that’ and rode the dam the easy way :p
We were in the last 10K’s or so now and we were back in formation with me just behind TB. As we come across another rocky/rutty hill TB goes off to the right hand side and makes his way down the flowing line. I decide that I want to go the hard way again. Things are going well and I approach a double rock step about 5 feet high, gaining on it a little quicker than intended I decide the best way is to just pop a mono off the top to maintain momentum, it probably looked pretty scmick until I noticed that there was a small tree laid across the track at angle right where I was going to land.
Needless to say I found myself, not for the first time, flying though the air without my bike. I landed just short of broken tree stump that would have really ruined my day, although I did land a little awkward and bent my (clutch) finger back. Mangled finger No.1, superman No.2 and track inspection No.3! Got the bike up and rode the last 10 minutes or so back to the cars.
We had a little chat at the back of Mick’s car as we was shouting cold Pepsi’s, packed up the bike about 15 minutes later and TB dropped me back at the Wyong exit we it had all started. We unloaded my bike said cheeryo and and I rode home, still without hitting reserve.
Impressions:
TB – Good rider, you can tell he has been riding for a while and obviously knows his stuff. I only saw him veer off track a few times, never any big issues. He does scream like a girl at the sight of 2 black snakes. I regret not being close enough to hear it though. Cheers for the lift dude
Mick – A real nice guy, goes very well for older bloke and always looks very composed and in control. He swept for the entire day so thanks very much for that.
Phil – Impressive rider with handlebars like that, I doub’t if I could ride it in a straight line! He seemed to pedal the DRZ well and was a shame he had to bail early due to a mechanical issue not even related to his bars
Champo – His motorcross experience makes him a very neat rider. He playing around and whipping the rear of TM around just having a play. I think he could be very quick rider when he wants to really get on the gas. He must be the coolest TAFE teacher ever!
Overall I had a great day, it was nice to see the some different trails and scope out new rides for the future. The guiys were truly nice blokes which made the ride even better. I’m definitely there for the next one!
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