Lava run

I was invited by some guys to join a run that would eventually find it's way close to my home town, organised by the Wild Dog Creek SC from Melbourne and the geared and classic clubs were invited to attend, the final group ended up at 19 scooters and 20 people representing I think nine scooter clubs, I heard someone say anyway. The plan was to ride out from Melbourne and around the south west district of Victoria which , as it turns out, is the third largest Lava plain in the world, I know, exciting stuff.
I arranged to meet the group outside of a small farming town called Cressy, halfway between Colac and Ballarat, as is almost always the case the fuel stops and such took a little longer and I ended up riding half way to Shelford and caught them on the road. The first three pics show me loaded up ready to go, parked up halfway to Shelford near a classic example of a volcanic rock wall, the local farmers had to pick up all these rocks over many years to make the land usable, grazing mainly, some cropping too, so they decided to use them to keep the cows in, these fences/walls are scattered around the countryside in the district and will outlive anyone living here today. Third pic down is the group in the distance, I fell in just in front of the tail end charlie and the fresh country air I had to myself became a plume of 2T, lovely. The old DR177 held its own, I still couldn't quite keep up with the 200s though, but it didn't matter, the ride was superb anyway, rolling countryside, old farm houses and wineries, stone churches and cows, plenty of cows, this is dairy country BTW, the group was separated by one minor breakdown and me overshooting a corner and testing my off road skills, You can see my spare fuel tank on the centre floor mat in the first pics, well I had it occy strapped around both sides of the stand legs this meant that the stand hung down a bit, coming into this corner I could have slowed down a bit but didn't and as I leant into it, the stand scraped the ground. I knew then that 1- I was going too fast and 2- I was going to run out of road and would need to bail, mind you it was a one lane country road, gravel on both sides. First thing that went through my head was " fucks sake don't drop it....or hit that tree" I clutched in and put my feet down, straightened up, braked as best I could and aimed at where I wanted to go, twenty metres later after coming to a stop next to the tree and having endured shrubs, branches on the ground, eyeing off the barbed wire fence to my left, a fucking foot to my left, the two riders behind me stopped, "you OK?" yep I said laughing and feeling like an idiot " scoot OK?" apart from a branch stuck up in the front wheel guard "yeah I think so" "nice recovery" "thanks" and off we went......
 After a regroup at a small place called Lismore, pic 4, we headed off again to the highlight of the ride, Mt Elephant, seen in pic 5, a dormant volcano standing proud on the otherwise flat landscape, the community group had opened it up for us to see and ferried us up on the back of a ute, it was fascinating to hear about the history and the view was spectacular, pic 6 & 7 are at the base of the Mount, after this we stopped for a late lunch at Camperdown and on to our overnight venue, Gellibrand, we all stayed in the caravan park in cabins, two guys braved the frost and camped, dinner was at the local pub and was followed by tall stories, two stroke tuning talk, the differences in skinhead scenes around the globe, pool and what decent music anyone could find on the jukebox, oh and it goes without saying, beer flowed, wine was quaffed and laughter filled to small room.
In the morning we headed into Colac for Breakfast and after having the local paper come and take some photos and ask a few questions, the guys waved and bid farewell and continued on home to Melbourne, I went home, kissed the kids and the missus and went out to the shed to finish putting the 200 engine, last post, together. I have clocked over the 9000kms mark as wee in the last week, on the way to the Club brekkie in Geelong in fact, that's over 4500km on the DR. Bottom pic isin the morning getting ready to leave and of course my new front rack, a freeby, from one of the WDCSC guys, I put the word out and he had one he didn't want, score.

 

Here's the front of the local paper the following day, Chris from Melbourne on the left, Sharon from Hobart on the right and my front and centre, grossly mis-quoted as well, the drug bust had nothing to do with us, but was obviously more important than a bunch of classic scooters gracing the town and giving it some class, albeit for a short time.

Give me some revving love..

  

 

OK after some stabilising of my dodgy engine stand, shown proudly below, the additions allowed the engine to sit, be stable and most importantly be free standing, I went through a few things before I kicked it over again. Just on the stand, my Mum always said never to judge a book by its cover, the stand was thrown together and held together is such a fashion that Homer Simpson would be proud to call it his own, once done I'm sure there is an art gallery somewhere that would love to add this contemporary piece to their collection, or i could go into reproduction mode if anyone would like a replica :)

I pulled the float and needle from the carb and saw that the needle tip had the tiniest piece of rubber hanging off around the base of the rubber tip this must have been getting caught and stopping the needle from seating, therefore explaining why the fuel was dripping from the little tube in the venturi with the engine stopped. I dropped the main jet size to 118, what it was before I upped it for the Sito, I double checked the air fuel screw to 2.5 turns, changed to a new B6HS, just for kicking over purposes, premixed some new fuel 2.5%. Even though it has marks on the electronic ignition stator, I checked the timing manually, TDC check, 23 degrees BTDC as per Haynes manual check, some adjusting once I got the timing light on it and it was good to go, It has no problem starting and even idling, but there is no response from the throttle, it's almost like it is 4 stroking and it is definitely not revving, I'm going to put this to smarter people than I to see if there is something I'm either doing wrong or just plain don't know about. Apologies for the bad video, it gets the point across.

It's alive, not without problems.

Got a chance to have a go at starting the 200, after stand stability problems were sorted, gear oil and fuel supply, a cut off wire to stop it. I also hooked up a choke and throttle wire then I did a compression test and it came through with a 135psi after 4 kicks. Nervously I began kicking it, it took me a second to realise I wasn't in neutral, my advanced fuel supply unit, a coke bottle upside down with the fuel hose taped to a hole in the lid, failed pretty much straight away so I caught what I could as it ran down the hose leaving the hose full, that'll be enough for now I thought, next the super duper choke wire handle fell off, so I made a more robust one, OK good to go. I tried a few times and it was hard to kick, four or five times and finally a burst of life and the next kick she was off, it idled for about 10 seconds and died, I was trying to get the throttle cable but missed to opportunity. I was happy with the start anyway. I tried to give it another go, got nothing no pressure from engaging the gears on the kick start, engine not turning over, yet turning the flywheel by hand it did. my heart sank, I just packed everything up and left it at that.
Good old Modern Vespa comes through with the goods, confirmed by someone smarter than me, signs point to clutch problem, not splitting the cases as I first thought, sure enough the retaining ring on the clutch basket had popped out, just glad I wasn't doing 100 kph at the time. I rebuilt the clutch and put it back in, I will have some time tomorrow to have another go. I'd put it in the sprint but I am going to a club brekkie on Sunday and want to break the engine in a bit before I take it that far from home.

Blue wire on the right will act as a temporary kill when grounded to the case.

not pretty, but this puppy ain't going anywhere.

                                          Choke lever and the throttle cable (wound up)

This is what popped out at me when I took off the clutch cover, all sorted and back together now ready to go.

oh so tight.

OK three boring pictures of an engine on a dodgy stand, it's all stitched up and tonight I'll start the electrics, if you are wondering why I have connected the fuel hose, it's because I hope to set it up to kick it over on the stand or a modified version of it, and talk about tight, by hand I find it quite hard to turn it by pushing the kicker with the plug in, it's easier with the plug out and it's tight, can't wait to get a compression reading on it.
I'll be making a start on the smallie soon as well, now that I have all the parts. that's going to be a challenge since it was months since I pulled it apart and my method of putting all the nuts and bolts in the one container.......well it will be interesting at least.

On track again

The last of my parts arrived this week and I spent a bit of time making sure I didn't stuff something up again, the status is cases together and torqued to spec, clutch is in and also torqued, clutch cover on. selector box on, airbox and carb on, I will sort out the top end tonight, exhaust stub and exhaust after that and then the electrics, I hope to modify the engine stand and hook up some fuel and some sort of throttle set up so I can try and kick it over some time next week.
The good news is the crank spins freely now, fingers crossed.