2012 Round Five: Lydden Hill Sunday

On the Sunday morning, I was itching to try the ignition out as I needed to know if I had set it correctly, however, those of you familiar with the Lydden Hill weekend will know that no engines are allowed to start before the local church service finishes. The charity cycle race was also on this weekend so the morning went quite quickly after spectating this event. Annoyingly, there was no practice for scooters on the Sunday which meant there was no track testing of the ignition set-up either - just the paddock to sensibly ride around.

Rather amusingly during the weekend, Gary Biddle (58) had advertised for a passenger on his "tandan" which looked like it offered good fun. That was until a tyre was blown up to 120psi. Needless to say one loud explosion later the machine became less of a good offer. In the Thurland camp, luckily the ignition did work but similarly to Saturday, it felt lower on power. The clutch had a problem beyond simple adjustment and second gear jumps became quite frequent.

Onto race 3 and after making a poor start with the issues, I noticed very quickly that my dad (43) had broken down up the hill on the first lap. In the rest of the race, my front end felt terrible again into the the left-hander and people were just easily pulling away from me. My laps got a little better again but one point that I can look back on in hindsight was the fact that even keeping the engine on the boil, I still had to change down on the first corner and up the hill I barely snatched at 3rd gear.

At the end of the race, inspecting dads issue identified a fairly serious piston failure - it snapped at the pin luckily though, there didn't seem to be as much damage as debris so there were a few positives. All there was left was the 4th race. I replaced my shock with 43's unused BGM and gave a check all over as usual.

In the fourth race I posted my fastest time but yet again, didn't complete a race. On the last lap, one of my gear cable trunions came off meaning I couldn't change down. I pulled over and was duly collected after the race.

Overall, I actually like the circuit but came away quite disheartened. Starting issues, riding issues and bike issues all had to be considered bad preparation and I was adamant I would not compete at Darley Moor due to my poor performance and opt for a track day instead - to allow myself to improve. I had completed only one race and dad had only managed two. If there wasn't such a good crowd of people there it would have been even worse for us both. In this light, for the whole weekend, I'd like to extend my personal thanks to everyone from the BSSO.

Photos: Lee Hollick Photography 

Race Scooter: All events occurred 29th July 2012