Thats gotta hurt!

Practice makes perfect so up to the quarry on Saturday to get used to the bike over the bigger rocks, I also took the chance to fine tune the carb. The Villiers set up I have is just about spot on but a little movement on the airscrew coupled with the lower gearing had the bike moving very slowly, smoothly and consistently on tickover especially on descents the trip to the quarry also gave me chance to ride with the new tank for the first time, I wanted to make sure that it was clean inside so i ran THREE fuel filters! and it gave me the opportunity to find out how much fuel the tank held, as it turns out a little under 3 litres of which about a half litre is reserve, more than enough for a single venue trial.

Full of optimism that even a rain fall of Biblical proportions could not dent  I set off at Addingham Moorside for Yorkshire classics second Championship round.
The venue is notoriously rocky and peaty so I set off early to get the best of the sections blazing a trail yet avoiding the gooey mess that some sections would inevitably become.
The first was a simple affair in and out and over some benign rockey and although the second was a staple of the venue I fell foul of it and dropped into the stream and stopped dead... ouch. A precautionary dab on the third then a run of cleans until i three'd my way out of Mick Driifield's steep rock gully and that was it for that lap.  I cleaned the tricky 7th and found a cracking route in 8 up and over a massive boulder that others rode around section 8 I chose the hard route as the clubmans route had some tight turns to avoid the loose rocks that I personally felt comfortable riding over, lap 2 was even better I only dropped the one until section 8 when disaster struck,  the clutch seemed to drag then the rear brake locked on , going up hill,, and ouch the chain wrapped itself around the gearbox sprocket and lifted the chain case up destroying the lugs on the gearbox..

I had the bike to bits in a jiffy but could nt find anything obviously amiss until I put it together again and noticed that the rear wheel had about 20mm of sideways and vertical movement even when bolted up tight.. I assumed the Sherco alloy spindle had cried enough

Back home  I had the thing in bits and I had to apologise to the spindle, it had borne its weight and more in the breakdown, the culprit was the nearside rear wheel bearing which had had a catastrophic failure. The inner race had totally separated from the bearings and outer cage causing the rear wheel to move which lead to the chain jumping which preceded the destroyed gearbox mountings.

A couple of phone calls firstly to Simon Bateman Namtab who promised all the clutch bits and bobs would be in the post later that day and to the benevolent Ady Brayshaw who agreed to sort some alloy welding of the gearbox lugs with the box in situ.. that though will have to wait till next week as this week other projects dominate! in the meantime the pics show clearly the damage to the gearbox lugs and the clutch been stripped down ready for Simon's delivery!

As for the trial another great trial from Yorkshire classic and befitting of the best pre 65 trials club in the country, a decent entry in horrble weather at a venue renowned for rocks all the sections were rideable yet challenging and all cleanable with care and skill and a half decent bike!