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

2012 Round Five: Lydden Hill Saturday

Due to the preparation for Lydden Hill taking much longer than expected, when we traveled down on the Friday, which was the night of the Olympic opening ceremony for London 2012, we met a fair few queues over the route. For the first time all season, we had arrived in the dark so there was no chance of getting the newly acquired gazebo up. However, we managed to unload and went for a few drinks in the "clubhouse".

In the morning we still had a few things to sort out including swapping over rear hubs in addition to the usual scruiteneering and signing on. Despite having the week before to sort out everything, I somehow managed to leave our signing on cards at home. Luckily I remembered our ACU Licences and identity chains. After causing a more frantic morning than expected, the practice came around very quickly.

The first thing I noticed with the bike was what seemed like a lack of power and under heavy braking into the only left corner, the front end was really shaking. The lack of power was really noticable up the hill and as such I didn't really have a "fast lap" or a "good lap" in all honesty. I pulled in a lap or two early and in all honesty, I was disappointed. A lot of hours had been put in along the way and it all felt wasted.

A pep talk from my Dad (43), Chalkie, Steve (99) and Roy saw my suspension have a change in setting but to be honest I think all of us thought that the issues were down to me but one good race could change all of that - which everyone knew. Unfortunately, Saturday turned out to not be that day.

In our first race, I was dropped very quickly and was lapping slowly by comparison to everyone else. And to top it all off, the race was restarted halfway through to a race incident only to be cancelled due to another race incident. The race was to be re-run at the end of the program, given time.

On the restart, Dads bike (43) had a cush drive failure. It turned out that the front sprocket castle washer had broken causing the spring to be held simply with the engine casing. A donation kit from Gary Biddle (58) saw Dad fixed for the second race.

Race two came along but again I had issues, very early on in the race the bike just stopped. Watching the rest of the race from the hairpin was inspiring seeing John Uffindell (41) get knees and floorboards down every single time. After the race I rolled my bike back to inspect the issue - which was quickly and easily identified as the brand new ignition I had fitted. It had shaken loose and it turned out that both rotor and stator were ruined.

It was a fairly catastrophic failure and caused me to sit out the race rerun that was at the end of the day. I watched the race from the standing area and took a few pictures which was a small consolation to missing the race. This was the first race I had missed to to complete engine failure and I really wanted to be out there.

In the evening, I managed to fit a spare ignition but ran out of light and time to test it. This was a great shame as on the Sunday morning, no engines would be allowed to start due to a local church service. Needless to say, we made the best of the evening and had a pleasant time hanging out with the JB crew and even had a few short games of cricket too. I really hoped that the Sunday would change my race attitude and bring me some luck. I wasn't going to have the best chance starting from the back of the grid though.

Photos: Lee Hollick Photography 

Race Scooter: All events occurred 28th July 2012