I’d posted the question earlier about places to ride around Pt Plomer and a few of you said “head to Wauchope” another mentioned Kram was on Plomer Rd.
This ride gathering would be my first ride since my ACL reconstruction in February, and as usual had left the long awaiting rebuild of my XR400 until the almost last minute. I had 5 months to do it, and this gathering had only been spoken about for the 6 weeks, So I pulled all stops, sold a bit of stuff on FleaBay to fund the build, stripped the bike and went to town.
Nick at Teknik sorted the forks and shock. He found some gold blingy bits in each end, made one good shock out of two, whacked some stickers on them after working his magic, and I fitted them up before the engine in the car had cooled down.
The engine machining was a slightly more eventful series of moves. Nick took the barrel and head to machine, but his normal engine machinist which had my parts, was out due to medical reasons, so I got on the blower to find alternates on the coast, and with a gentle persuasion (including Beer, and Bourbon) was able to get my parts done in time. Dinner and a movie with the other half was a better offer on the Friday night……, so the engine build was for Saturday. So I didn’t have problems down the track, and being a ham fisted fitter, I waited till the kids and wife were in bed, garage to myself, JJJ on, and went through the clinical process of engine building.
As the clock ticked over 2am, I was making a few tired mistakes, and had to pop the valve cover to check timing gear position. I had it all buttoned up at 3am, but resisted giving it a kick in the guts, as suburbia kinda frowns on single cylinder staintune pipes.
Sunday morning at 8 was a different story. Choke on, kill switch off, 3 kicks. kill switch on, 2nd kick, crack, burble, crack, burble burble burble, braaaap. and it idled like a victor lawn mower! Sweet, finished all of the other bits and bobs to run it through a blue slip. Monday, passed the bluey! CTP done, and rego sorted.
Messaged Kram and Micknmeld to see if either would come back. Mick was keen to ride, hey this is coming together.
Loaded the ute. into the dual cab went, XR400, DRZ400, fridge, esky, 10′ mal, 6’6″ fish and a mates short board, 2 bags riding gear, 2 bags clothes and wetsuits, 2 roomy tents, tarps, 2 x 10 l jerry cans, plus a whole heap of other crap we probably didn’t need but made the 5 days easier. It was a loaded rig.
We set up camp at around midnight, and cracked the bikes up at 8am as the surf was shite. what a better place to run in the engine than a few heat cycles on the hard pack sand. first oil change, and I notice a crack behind right side foot peg. WTF :ohmy: :ohmy: look a bit harder and there’s rust there. :sick: :sick: So I say to my mate lewts get to Port and find a shop to weld this up. off we go, and at first roundabout get pulled by Mr Plod, thought I had no mirror. then he was talking number plate position, and no chain guard. I pulled thew sob story of just in town to find engineering shop to fix frame. and I don’t know what it was but he let me go! albeit on a wild goose chase to seek an engineering shop that shut down 12 months ago. Buckley & Buckley? their old neighbour is a mower shop, and he had a welder. Alas, he wasn’t willing to fix it, but I wanted to get on this damn ride.
“can I have a go? all I want is an old mower handle a grinder and a welder?”
“Sure, knock yourself out”
So the bike gets stripped in amongst all the mowers on his shop front, bashplate off,
“ooooh that’s a bit of rust. lets get in inside and flip it on it’s head, have a good look.”
I fashioned a piece of water pipe around footpeg lugs, frame curve and started to tack in place. gasless migs are pretty handy things, but this one was farked. tried his stick and kept blowing his power board, those things are not meant for welding current and I ended up cooking it. so old mate starts up his camping generator, the ones with eco mode that throttles up and down with load. You can only imagine how that was with the start current. I held my cool the whole time his mate turns up offering all sorts of advice, like “you should use 5mm plate and hammer it in place as you weld it”
The stick finally worked really well when it was hooked to the 15amp socket of his junction box at the incoming supply to the factory bay. hey i can weld with clean power!
bike all buttoned back together, again. off to the bottle shop to get the Carlton MID for payment of mower man.
back up Plomer rd, to test my welds, 15k’s of sand, woops, sandy woops, rocks would test it. If there was any cracking in any places, I’d pull out of the ride. back at camp and gone over the frame, and all good.
Then the surf turns on. wake up ride day to see Plomer point working perfectly. Damn I could just paddle out and not go on this ride, but too much had gone into it to pull out now, and we can always surf the arvo. originally there would be 4 riders, but the surf claimed 2 and that left my mate on a KTM450 who spends most of the ride sideways or on the back wheel, or sideways on the back wheel, and me, the gumboot racer on the potato farmers chook chaser.
We met Mick at the designated meet point, changed into riding gear, where he said he was used to seeing guys here in their undies…..whatever that means. My wife was a little unsure why we were meeting a guy from the internet in the bush. and off we went. good pace for me, not breakneck speed, and not snail-pace. I was in the zone for a change, flowing, sliding, loving the crack of the staintune pipe resonating the bang from the high comp piston flopping around under the Teknik supplied HRC profile cam. We’d ridden for about an hour or more, fire road, single, over hill, down dale, backtrack for fallen trees, fires still smouldering, Couple of easy-ish hill climbs (Grade3) and I low speed flop the bike down from target fixation on one of the climbs, pick it up, get it started from being upside down and come over the hill to find my mate and Mick stopped and Mick hobbling around he’d just stubbed his little toe on the kitchen table.
A rollie will fix it. after 15mins, Mick gets back on and 100m down the road, the ride is canned. can’t feel the rear brake, leg off peg on bumpy bits. That must hurt, he’s a tough bugger that Mick, or there was something in those rollies?? we fire road it back to meeting point, and Mick heads off to spend time in front of the box with a beer.
My mate was keen to get back to camp and have a surf, sorry for not sharing a beer or two Mick. I’ll let you share the finer details of injury. heal soon.
Pics to follow.
usi wrote:Dunno who this bloke is but if there aren’t pictures it didn’t happen :woohoo: :woohoo:
