I threatened to do it, and I did it! I raced Old Rusty in the Stump Jumper hare scramble in Manahawkin, NJ yesterday. What a hoot!
Now don't get mad, but I didn't take a single picture. However, I know for a fact that folks will be posting some pics from the HS soon, and I will link them as soon as they're up.
First, you need to know it was an utter mud fest. Sooo muddy. Heavy rain Saturday afternoon and night and Sunday morning made the course a sodden mess. The poor club was working all day to reroute us around the worst sections, and as the course deteriorated, they had to continually reroute. But it was fun!
I had been meaning the whole week prior to take the bike and my box of keihin jets out for a shakedown run, but it never happened. The bike always seemed to run okay putt-putting around my house, so I hoped for the best. Well, hoping wasn't exactly good enough! Once the bike got up to temperature, which happened about 75 yards into the mud bog/starting straight, the idle started to hang pretty high. And any use of the mid to top power for more than a second or two resulted in some nasty lean knock sounds. So I just putted around on the pilot jet for half a lap before I stopped to turn in the air screw. Much better, but still lean on the needle. Unfortunately, the engine bay was just too muddy to consider opening up the carb and raising the needle, so we soldiered on.
And let me say, this thing is a tractor. Mega flywheel effect let me just chug through anything that appeared in front of the bike. Foot-deep peanut butter mud mire? Child's play. Two-foot deep ruts? Brrrrraap! The super soft suspension was the hot setup for the day, as it kept the front planted even when everything was slick as grease. The front didn't deflect once. And I'm in love with the seat. So wide! So soft! I wonder how my Husky WR 125 would look with that seat. I'm confident that with some jetting I'll be in love with this bike.
The brakes, however, need some work. Mainly the fronts. They just don't do much of anything! There was one steep downhill, maybe 25 feet of vertical at a 40 degree slope that made me pucker pretty hard. Not so much on the second lap, when the roll out at the bottom was clear, but on the first lap the guy in front of me fell at the bottom just as I rolled off the top. I managed to slow enough to get the bike turned in time, but I'm not sure how.
So I was on track to complete three laps. At the end of the second lap, I was in first place! (in the vintage class. Out of two entrants. The other was my buddy on my 1987 KDX 200 with a bald tire. Some might say I stacked the deck in my favor, and they would be right!) About midway through the third lap, I powered through some standing water and the motor just died. Not a coughing, sputtering, protracted death, just like I'd hit the kill switch. A few dozen kicks were fruitless, and after being roosted by several bikes, I moved off to the side to diagnose the problem. Plenty of gas? Check. Drain the float bowl in case I sucked some water in there? Check. No dice. Fouled plug? Not likely, but I checked anyway. Nice dark electrode, dry as a bone. It was at this point the course worker offered me a tow back to the pits, and I took him up on it. AFter all, I was also going to run the afternoon main event which was only an hour from then. So back to the pits to get ready for the next race. I think something electrical got wet in the water crossing, because up to that point, the bike was running very consistently. I'll report back on my findings when I can.
Besides the power outage, the other victims were my side panels, which both cracked. I'm glad I didn't spend a bunch of time trying to get them pretty!
And I love this. I call it, "The Course Cutter's Curse."
All in all, it was a blast, and I'll probably run the vintage class again some time.