This topic contains 27 replies, has 0 voices, and was last updated by 
-
it was a good ride hay murph
i make a good road block on hills how many times did i get in the way :ohmy: sorry. how was sundays ride.looking back i should have caught you front wheel and stoped it from going over.that 500 you ride looks like a lot of fun and sounds great i miss that power.ps am riding with bob :woohoo: not doing yellow mouatainThree days untill I leave and the bike looks like this. Better pull my finger out after work!
Things to do.
Topend rebuild.
Richer jetting.
Rebuild Forks.
Change gearing.
Test gearing.
160,000km service on Hilux.
Pack everything.
:laugh:
You have some work to do there Stevo :whistle:Get crackin` mate,,,
And best of Luck at the Mountain (Yellow one that is)
Hmmmm, where do I start? I’ll go back to the week before the race.
Two days before I had to leave for the race, my bike still looked like this.
I had done the North Star trail ride the week before and I didn’t want to give the engine a freshen up until after that. My forks also started to leak at North Star. I decided that I didn’t want to run the risk of them leaking during the race. So for the week before the race was spent in the shed after work, rebuilding the forks, doing a top-end rebuild, changing the gearing and fitting new tyres. Whilst still keeping on the good side of the missus with helping clean the house and getting the kids to bed each night.
Friday morning came around really quick and I packed my sh!t to hit the road. That’s when things started to go downhill. I hit a wallaby in the first 100km which half tore the bumper of the front of the hilux. Thirty minutes later, a few zippy ties and I was on my way again.
I was still running the standard jetting and wanted to go up a few sizes in the main to help with the long straights. The plan was to pick one up from a bike shop in Moree on the way. They had none so decided to risk it.
I arrived at Condo by mid afternoon and met up with the old man. We got the bike scruiteneered, I signed in and we went for a walk around the prolouge track.The track was about 3km long and started right at the MX track. It wound around through the MX track and then darted off through the scrub on to some single track, over a fence jump and eventually ended up finishing on the speedway track. We then settled in for the night.
This was the start of the fuel dump for both fuel stops. By morning there would have been in excess of 400 fuel cans here.
Saturday morning was an early start with the riders briefing at 6:30am and prologue starting at 7am.
I had a pretty good run and got 72nd out of 220 riders, which I was happy with as I was only aiming for a finish in the top 50% of riders for the weekend. Nugget was waaay waay back in 178th after prologue but I’ll get to him later!After Prologue finished, we had a long wait before we could start as there was some sort of stuff-up with the transponders and the timing system. During this time, the old man happened to notice that I had oil all over the bottom of my shock. Yellow Mountain just became a whole lot more interesting! I think it was about 11am before we got underway.
I had a good run to Tottenham (apart from riding a pogo stick with wheels! Thank God for Steering Dampers.) The track consisted of plenty of fast stuff along fencelines and the edges of wheat and canola crops. There was also some nice loamy singletrack to blast through and a couple of rocky sections as well. The bike was pinging fairly well, from running too lean, so I took it a bit easier than I would have liked but was still having a ball.
That night I lifted the needle one clip, to help with the pinging, and changed the air filter, which was pretty putrid.
The race back to Condo was a better day, with less pinging from the engine. That?s until I got to the first fuel stop and saw oil leaking from under the steering damper. Yellow Mountain just became even more interesting!
I backed it off a bit then and was feeling a little low. Pinging engine, no rear shock and no steering damper. I was almost in cruise mode after that thinking, ?what more can go wrong?. As people would catch me, I would move to the side and let them past.With about 60km to go I heard another bike come up behind me and I moved to the side and this smart arse on a stinking KTM came past waving at me and doing fist pumps! It was Nugget (a mate)! That was the last straw! I thought he was way ahead but he had got lost earlier and so I had actually been leading him back on day 2.
The Race had just begun! Now Yellow Mountain became a really bloody interesting! For the last 60 odd kays we fought for the lead through sandy loamy pine country, flatout down fence lines, over rocks, smashing through scrub and over logs. It was bloody awsome fun. I think the lead changed about three times before Nugget finally came over the finish line about 30 seconds in front of me. I did the leg on day two in 3:00:41 and Nugget got a Sub-Three time of 2:59:41. Our overall times for the weekend were Nugget 62nd with a time of 06:07:21 and I was 65th with a time of 06:09:26. Mine would have been a lot slower than that if Nugget hadn?t come a long and sparked me up a bit.
Dad headed off pretty soon after the race and I waited around for jerry cans to come back in from the fuel stops. By the time they came back in I?d had too many beers, so decided to stay anoher night and have a few more beers with the boys before heading back to Gundy in the morning.
I had a great time for my first Yellow Mountain, even with the problems I had. I was a well organised event and I will be back for sure.
Please post any pics you may have from this year as I don?t have many. And add any thing else to make a good story. I might try to get some helmet cam footage up later. I wish the battery wasn’t flat during the battle with Nugget as there would have been some great footage there.
Great report mate, thanks for sharing it. I miss doing Yellow Mountain. Haven’t done it for a few years, qualified 16th in 2005 I think it was at the Condo prologue track that had two fence jumps, never seen them before aren’t they wild :woohoo: The next time I rode it was 2008 I think and we did Tottenham Condo Tottenham and I qualified in the 80’s from memory cause mate in front went to slow and got hung up on a fence jump :laugh:
It’s a great event a must do I reckon, the run along the fence lines can be scary eh :ohmy: The sand with the rocks mixed in, the cattle tracks through the scrub wicked, hunting down that bike in front and trying to beat only one person (your mate whoever he is
)
:woohoo: :woohoo:TB
This was 20 minutes later. Fixing flat tyre. Oh well.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.