RD250

 I posted the image above in closing weeks of 2017 on twitter to thank some sponsors and more importantly; to introduce my next stage of this project... ...Enter the Yamaha TZ chassis. Mounting the engine I have already spoken in depth about the engine in another blog entry so I wont dwell on the hows and whys here. I didn't have a TZ engine for my TZ chassis so the RD lump, in whatever guise it found itself, was going in this chassis. To make this work, some fabricating and welding of brackets would be required and seeing as Andy Green  had the exact same plan with one of his TZ chassis, we decided to do the job together at his garage. The RD***LC engine cases we were using would fit the front engine mounts with simple spacers, the back is the area we are interested in. The TZ rear mount is far too small and in the wrong place so we lopped them off (we are working two cassis remember) and cleaned the area up for welding. Some wide box section was then cut to a ...

 Post Mallory park, I had a problem: The bike hadn't broken and I didn't know what to do with myself... ...Time to sort out some of those little niggles.  One of those little niggles was the rear fairing stays. Apart from being a ticking time bomb of fragility, they also get right in the way of my knees. As a result the fairing was starting to suffer and I was constantly conscious that I might knock one off, ending my racing weekend. I decided to copy a bracket idea I had seen on another bike using some 12mm steel bar and 20mm box section. Ideally I have used tube but nobody local to me stock any and I wasn't going to wait for a delivery. The bar was cut to length, drilled on either end and tapped for an M6 bolt. I made sure to drill as deep as the bit would allow in order to reduce weight as best I could. This bracket was going to be a lot heavier than what I was replacing. The bar was test fitted and markings were taken for where the box section arms ...

As things continuously vibrate themselves off my bike it was clearly time for my exhaust to drop off.  Which it did.  The plan During my one and only full trip round Pembry race circuit in Wales my left exhaust bracket cracked through as you can see on the right. Thankfully my fairing caught the exhaust resulting in little damage and a functional machine so no major problems there. Now back home and post some discussion with Andy Green; I had decided to make new mounts that should survive a little better than what I had. The straps on the pipes were something the previous owner had used and I had cobbled some sheet and rubber spacers together to marry them up to my frame. The solution proposed to me was to use tubular engine mount bushings in some steel tube that would be welded to my frame. The exhaust would then marry up to these bushes via some split box section . The box section would be welded to the pipe via a stress spreading sheet that would be we...

Being a working machine was one thing but there was no arguing that she was the ugly duckling on the Snetterton 16 paddock. It was time for some new clothes. Tank I decided to treat myself to a TZ style race tank from  scooternbikedeals  who was selling at a good price and had 2050 feedback. Unfortunately he was having difficulty with his supplier right up to the point that the 90 days of eBay support ran out and he suddenly forgot how to reply to emails. eBay did its usual shrug and walk away thing and I lost a load of money.  Fuck you  scooternbikedeals . Fairings From Shop to Paint Shop On a brighter note; I had got my mits on some fairings. We had some faf trying various places to see who would do us a deal on a large order of fairings. This turned into finding someone who hadn't sold their entire stock at the Newark bike show! I very nearly bought a Maxton fairing from Bardney racing but the shop owner had wondered off leaving his locked out ...