revtothelimit - motorbike forum

Well, the old girl is now sporting new fork seals, dust seals, and 10w oil- I did procrastinate a bit as to what weight oil to use, both as this is the only possible mod you are permitted to make to the damping capabilities of the standard forks on these, and one Banditeer I spoke to ( who TBH seemed to be a bit full of himself ) said use 20w, but that sounded relly thick to me so I opted for 10w- I don’t have a clue what was in there before, so we will see- if they are too bouncy, it won't take to long to pull them out, turn them upside down and refill them with something thicker.
All went OK and reasonably hassle-free, although it was very obvious that it’s had its fair share of fork seal changes over the years!

And now that I’ve got my two “new” front wheels before I got into replacing bearings and changing over tyres and discs etc, I thought that I’d just double-check that the MK2 wheel is, as people have told me, actually a direct replacement for the MK1, and I’m pleased to report that indeed it is- slots in with the same spindle and spacers with no mods required, so we're good to go




The difference between a 3.0” and 3.5” front wheel really is quite significant in terms of how a 120 tyre sits on it, this pic very well illustrates that -



Both tyres in the pic are identical ( 120/70 Sportsmart TT)- the one on the left is on my (3.0") MK1 bandit wheel, and the RH is my ZX6, which has a 3.5 rim- quite a difference in profile eh!

So I set about getting the rotten old tyres off the newly purchased MK2 wheels




And the discs off my current wheels, and as is often the case with old stuff, it’s not always completely straightforward…

On my old wet wheel, the discs and bolts are OE Suzuki and it was obvious from both the state of a few of bolt heads, how ridiculously over-tightened they were and the huge amount of Loctite, that they’d been in and out before- I managed to get all but two out, unfortunately these two however have been previously mullered (there’s even a bit of a slot been cut in one ) and a 6mm Allen key just turns, so I’m going to have to get creative with those and drill them out I think…




My current “dry” wheel had after-market wavy discs and non-OE stainless bolts, and the heads looked decent in these, Oh good I thought and set about removing these discs- whoever had put them in hadn’t gone quite so mad on the tightening or amount of Loctite so the bolts all came loose nice and easily- one far too easily, and the head just dropped on the floor.

On closer inspection I could see that there is the remains of a bolt in that threaded hole that someone had had a very poor and failed attempt at removing- the hole that they’ve drilled is way off-centre, so it looks like they’ve thought “ fuck it”, sawed the head off one of the new bolts and stuck it on with black silicon to ensure it passes scrutineering- I kid you not- the offending hole is the one at the bottom of this pic, and next to it is the upturned fallen bolt head showing the remains of the silicon



But this doesn’t really matter to me as I won’t be using that wheel again, and it has a very small SH value, so I’ll likely just take it down the tip with those manky old tyres that I took off the “new” wheels.

Anyway, that’s where we are at the moment, I’ve just typed this while I’m having my lunch, and that's now done so I am back off out to the garage now to drill those old bolts out and order some new ones- the jobs on old multi-owner shitters never end eh!

Errr is that a crack in the fork leg to the right of that bolt head?

Good stuff!

Ditchfinder wrote: Tue Apr 02, 2024 2:02 pm

Errr is that a crack in the fork leg to the right of that bolt head?

¬Beat me to it.

The rhs leg also looks to have a bad scratch on it?

RE the fork lower "cracks"- fear not eagle-eyed ones! - It's just cracking in the grey metallic coloured coating only- not sure whether it's a powder coat, ceracote or whatever , but it has numerous crack in the coating- the fork lowers are an aspect of the bike that I haven't bothered stripping or re-finishing yet, plan is to strip them and some point and spray them a nice sort of OE silver.

And in other news, I've taken on-board @Nobby 's advice and re-mounted the transponder bracket a lot closer to the front of the bike- it's not at the absolute front but is just about as close as I can get without putting it on a fork lower, which is simply not happening for me, (well, maybe I might reconsider if I end up losing a race by 0.00001sec but doubt that's gonna happen )- -am still surprised that a scrutineer recommended I put it down there

You can use an appropriately sized torx bit, an impact driver and a hammer to get fecked Allen disc bolts out.

errrrrm ??? @Tricky

weeksy wrote: Tue Apr 16, 2024 7:45 am errrrrm ??? @Tricky

Well, he finished all the races as i just had a look at the results

I was gonna ping him a WhatsApp but forgot

He's probably buggered off for some sun.

Damn selfish if you ask me.

Never done keeping your followers waiting.

weeksy wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2024 6:00 pm I was gonna ping him a WhatsApp but forgot

You are as bad as each other

[/quote]

Well, he finished all the races as i just had a look at the results
[/quote]

Yep, he did

Kev

Buckaroo wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2024 6:52 pm Damn selfish if you ask me.

Never done keeping your followers waiting.

It's the same old story. Once the wins and the ensuing fan adulation arrives,they forget their old pals.

Dodgy69 wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2024 6:06 pm He's probably buggered off for some sun.

Nah, he's doing that tomorrow

Budapest iirc

Kev

Skub wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2024 7:53 pm

Buckaroo wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2024 6:52 pm Damn selfish if you ask me.

Never done keeping your followers waiting.

It's the same old story. Once the wins and the ensuing fan adulation arrives,they forget their old pals.

As we all know, @Tricky is not one to skimp on the accounts and pictures of his various two-wheeled exploits so I believe a little patience is in order. Rome was not built in a day.

I know his memory is not what it was but he'll get there....

I am sure he will be along to regale you with tales of Cadwell in due course. Just make sure to grab a cuppa first as it's likely to be a long one

Kev

Yeah sorry bout that boys and girls, has been a fairly hestic last week or so for me, but I'm here now

Just to re-cap, last weekend was the second round of the series at Cadwell, and a normal, proper two-dayer -well, three days for me and 99% of the competitors if you count the optional Friday test/practice day.
As I’ve previously mentioned, Cadwell is a circuit that I’ve a fair amount of experience of, and one that I love- the weather was also looking remarkably good so that coupled with me having my (new to me) Mk2 3.5” front rims on, I was really looking forward to this one.

And it’s fair to say, the weekend it didn’t disappoint- in fact, overall, it exceeded my wildest dreams, if I’m honest!

The week-end started well on Thursday afternoon when we arrived at the circuit with us managing to bag a really decent spot in the paddock directly above the scrutineering shed and just along from Alan the tyre man- really were fortunate there as despite it only being just gone 6pm just about everywhere with hard-standing was taken.



Got the gazebo up and the bike etc unloaded into it and buggered off into Louth to Mrs Miggins B&B (well, it was actually called the Beaumont Hotel but like a lot of places in Lincolnshire that I’ve experienced, it , and specifically the owner was, umm quite special...... )

Anyway, it was a big room with a comfy bed and decent bathroom so just the job all considered. I even sent my old mum a video of it on Saturday, as she likes that sort of thing, and golden-bollocks Mart (my younger brother and helper for this week-end) had sent her a vid of his place, not that it's a competition between us of who is the best son of course (but it is )

I struggled to turn my brain off and so hadn’t had that much sleep, but didn’t matter, friday was perfect weather so I got to the circuit nice and early and left Isabella fast asleep at the hotel- one massive advantage I had at this round over Oulton was that my brother Mart was coming up to help and staying Friday and Saturday night and as well as helping with tyre warmer / wheel change etc duties, was happy to be a taxi driver, which meant I didn’t have to try and get a (non-morning person) OH out of bed / hang around unnecessarily etc, really made life so much simpler and more relaxing for me.

Practice went well, with me taking it fairly steady and building up gradually in terms of speed, and learning lots from some of the properly fast boys, particularly in terms of where the edges of certain bits of the track are, and you do need to know and use that if you want to go fast there.

I was still running on the Sportsmart TTs that were on the bike when I bought it, so in the afternoon I treated it to a new set (as they are the compulsory control tyre, they’re Dunlop subsidized and only £220/pair fitted at the circuit, which is a proper bargain IMO), and a new set of SBS Carbon front pads in readiness for Saturday morning qualifying- the tyres seem to last for ever, relatively speaking, but can’t say the same for the pads. They are however by far the best in terms of stopping power (and the worst until you get heat in them so I would never use them on a road bike) you can set for these shitty old sliding calipers though.



Saturday morning came and I got a nice surprise and two trophies before I’d even got on track!
Apparently at Oulton, although I thought that I’d had a pretty rubbish couple of races, although I’d finished 11th on the road in the second race, I was 3rd Senior (50 YO+) home, and they award pots for top 3 Seniors too, which I hadn’t realised- Yay! On top of that, I also got a nice big tall one for top newcomer of the meeting- I have to say, I felt a bit of a fraud as I thought my performances were mediocre at best, but, well, I didn’t argue and accepted it with grace

After that excitement, I went out for warm-up and all was well, then came qualifying- I got my head down and although I never had what I considered to be the best lap I could do in the allotted 12min session, I qualified back on the sixth row, a good 6 secs and way off the top 2 or 3, but well, none of those boys are mugs and there were still a lot behind me so I was reasonably happy with that.

My first race came and went in a blur- I got away cleanly and was fast up through Coppice but got absolutely mullered by many in Charlies 1&2 after which I managed to get my head down, got by a good few and had a fabulous battle with one of the (well established) other seniors for the last 3 or 4 laps, just missing out to him after he got me back on the last lap, but finished 10th on the road, and 3rd senior, so another trophy, and my best lap was 3 secs faster than my qualifying time- Yay!

I had also entered the Newcomers race, which was the last race of the day, and TBH was slightly nervous about this one as I was the only Bandit in it, amongst S1000RRs, R1s, and current model R6, ZX6 etc, but having said that there were also some Minitwins and PI 600s, but it was all very much an unknown quantity to me.
Not sure how they’d decided on grid positions for this one, it looked like it had been random rather than laptimes, but the good news was I was up on 3rd-row f, not that it helps too much against 200 geegees (© Yozza ) 1000s on that run up to Coppice, but at least meant I should have a decent chance against the Minitwins etc in front of me, and the nice thing about this race is that it was effectively two classes (and hence two awards of 1st-3rd trophies) out at once- “middleweights (basically MinitwinsSS400s and pre-injection 600s/636s , which the Bandit, of course, qualifies as ), and then anything you like up to 1300cc.


And then just as I was putting my lid on and about to go to the holding area, an announcement came over the PA that I and four other Bandit racers had to go to the scrutineering bay immediately for technical inspections- arse!
I ran down to race control, where the head of the Bandit series was waiting and explained that I was just about to line up for the newcomer's race, and he said fine, but as soon as the race finishes ride straight up to scrutineering rather than back to your van

So down I went to the grid and the race was absolutely brilliant- I really felt like I got into my groove for this one, and bit by bit was reeling in the leading middleweight, a guy on a Minitwin.
If the race was one lap longer I am certain I’d have had him - he started in front of me on the grid, my fastest lap in this race was a second faster than his, and pleasingly for me, I was also 1.5 secs faster than my fastest lap in my previous race.
I just ran out of laps though and went over the line and half a second after him, but still a decent result of 9th on the road and 2nd in the middleweight class so another trophy!

I got in from my race and rode straight to the scrutineering bay, and then it was seat and tank off to check airbox and carbs, and a few other things, all of course were all in full compliance, and although it was a bit of a faff and meant we didn’t get away from the circuit until well gone 7 pm, I was really pleased to have been checked, particularly as I was starting to get some results.

Quick shower and the three of us then had a very mediocre curry in Louth (The Raj Mohal if you’re interested- it’s really shit so don’t bother going there unless you want bland greasy food and the most indifferent customer service ever ), a few drinks and bed, and then it was Sunday.

As for Sunday’s racing, long story short (ish), despite some unforecast rain showers and plenty of offs in mainly other people’s races meaning some delays, I had another brilliant day, scoring another pot for 2nd Senior in my first Sunday race despite chronic right arm pump for the last few laps that had my forearm blow up like a balloon, it reduced my braking ability and was really weak and painful for over an hour after the race.
Thankfully it did recover in time for me to polish the day off with a my first win in my last race, which was an absolute cracker- (heart rate averaged 138 with a 181 peak in that one, for anyone interested )




Overall with the weather gods being kind to us too, it was just the most fabulous way to spend a weekend, and I have to say, I am really starting to love my shitty old Bandit- the wider front rim has made a big difference to stability and front-end feel, and 10w fork oil and the amount of preload spacer I have got in there seems fine.
I actually reduced the amount of preload on the rear shock a bit after Friday and wound some more rebound damping on , and although I’m always open to further tips and suggestions from people who have more experience with these than I do, I reckon it is probably about as good as it can be for a MK1 within the rules now



The old girl didn’t miss a beat, has brakes good enough to lift the back wheel, handles well enough for me to know the limiting factor in how fast we go is me and is just tip-top fun to ride all considered – roll on Pembrey in May, another track I know fairly well and like!

Most excellent write up @Tricky ...... start of the season and already amongst the pots and mixing in the points for all of the field.

Onto Pembrey which couldnt be more opposite to Cadders if it tried

Magic stuff. The Bum-Bandit actually looks very tidy in the pic too.

Awesome mate and well done can’t wait till I’m old enough for the senior class

Superb sir!