Taddy Goes all the way
Previously in Taddy gets a PB….
Taddy gets dragged by an impatient road train damaging the top ring and everyone gets an oil bath…
After a mighty battle the little Tike concedes defeat at 1390km eclipsing her previous PB of 1020km.
Taddy’s spirits where down after yet another failure to complete the 1610km in 24hrs so I organized a ride home in a horse float to shield her from the prying lenses of the paparazzi…. Then it was guts out on the work bench.
I set about thinking how to get some pressure off the top ring… then it dawned on me, simple,
Get the highest compression Hight piston I could (plus 3mm),
Make a 2mm decompression plate for under the pot,
Get a ct110 cam chain, shorten it by 4 links,
Dial the cam in the original configuration, then slot the cam / camwheel holes,
Assemble the head/pot take measurements disassemble machine piston crown profile, reassemble with bearing blue and check piston/head clearance, need 40 thou…do it 6 more times.
Glue 80 thou ali disc to intake valve head, bearing blue, assemble, check valve piston clearance, disassemble machine piston valve pocket reassemble… do it again…
Glue 100 thou ali disc to to exhaust valve head… you get the idea.
Clearances all good, reassemble, dial cam to original spec, check cranking pressure, 180psi… job done.
All this work to move the top ring 1.1mm down the pot away from the big bang.
why didn’t I think of it before?
Now for a test. I planned a 80km round trip with head winds of about 15km/hr one way and some hills, didn’t have much say with the hills around here. The results were encouraging.
Now just had to wait for the good weather, during said wait several days looked good but then fizzled out not to mention major flooding that removed roads from the route pushing the ride day closer to the sub 10 deg C nights that would challenge my stamina.
Its always the down time, that gets me. So, to help I decided to strip taddies engine and check the valve seats, something I hadn’t done after try 5. the seats looked fine but I did find a little oil on the back of the exhaust valve, so nothing for it but lap the valves and fit new valve guide seals.
3 hours later all back together.
After watching for weeks, pulling things apart, putting them back together, A day finally popped up on the Met eye horizon. Tues 28th March. Temperatures were tolerable and most importantly the winds favourable.
As the day drew near the forecast changed a bit with the winds coming up to about 40% head and the rest tail or side. The strength was still less than 20km/hr at 10m. since 70% of the route was in open country with no heavy woody road sides to break the wind I was of two minds whether to go or not. After a few minutes of thought I decided to change the final drive ratio from 2.8:1 to 2.86:1. This would bring the top speed down about 2km/hr but would help Taddy hold in on the hills and head winds. I would have to closely monitor the road speed as an over rev on the big hills between Ravensthorpe and Esperance would be one of the easiest achievements of the whole ride.
20:00 hrs Monday night I did some departure time alterations in Base Camp to align the wind and route direction changes. No going back now… clean the visor charge the sena and phone, hit the sack.
Eyes open at 01:30hrs… took a few minutes to remember why I was up so early… that’s right Masochism.
Rider preparation:
Skins, LD comfort longs, heated longs, quilted liner and riding pants.
Long sleeve T shirt, long sleave polo, heated liner, quilted liner and riding jacket.
Summer gloves, new heat gloves and old heated gloves (new heated gloves not broken in yet).
Boots, 3lt camelbak.
Now breakfast… cup of milk and a black coffee. Only Drank half the coffee as I was starting to overheat with 5 layers on, had to get some air flow.
Strolled out to Taddy, kicked her in the guts and we were off. The 5km ride to the start weigh point bought the body temp back to a comfortable level. Amazing what an open jacket can do.
Getting a docket at the Bendigo bank I headed off, resetting all the gps logging fields as we went.
The first hundred kms are always a little tense as I listen for noises and feel for vibrations. I got through Northam and then that sudden shot of adrenalin… I hadn’t turn the spot tracker on… easy fixed. Now to settle in. as we headed south of Brookton things started cool to the point of uncontrollable leg shivers… Little taddy didn’t have the electrical output to run the heated gear, I had only put it on cause I remember when I was a little tacker my dear old mum used to say that it was the thought that counts. The auxiliary alternator was only to be used if the situation became a deal breaker.
The first fuel was at Cranbrook 382km, as usual the southerly heading had a head wind so we only managed a 75km/h OA and 24.km/lt.
Heading North again to Katanning we had the tail wind and as usual I got lost in Katanning, must remember to turn the zoom up on the gps in towns so I don’t ride past intersections.
Heading East with the wind coming round to WSW we were zooming on to Lake Grace, Lake King and Ravensthorpe.
Just west of Lake Grace we stopped to check oil and make an adjustment to the needle jet needle. Since I had changed the final drive ratio and had a tail wind Taddy was running in the high Eighties and around 14:1 A/F a scenario I didn’t think I would see. I scoffed a tin of tuna and we headed on. Moving the needle up one graduation brought the A/F down to around 13:1 and dropped the head temp 5-10 deg on the hills.