Farewell DT175MX

Now in the hands of Ivan, along with the gasket set I bought when I
thought I'd keep it.

Ho hum. I'll keep looking, but I'll never find another one like it.

Oh, and Ivan, bless him, arrived an hour and a half late, apologising
profusely because he'd lost my address and phone number and had managed
to find me using..... I dunno. Some widget.

And then he went out on the test ride, and 15 minutes later, thinking
he'd run out of petrol, I started scouring the streets on my Trophy.

"The roads round here are hardly orthogonal," quoth he on return. The
finest excuse for: "I got lost" that I've ever heard.

I suggested he needed a SKOGA number.

"I've already got one," he replied. Why am I not surprised? Bless.

 

Danke TOG. Just made it home, having filled up with £3.12 worth
of unleaded at your nearest BP. Strangely enough, the oil light came on
as I got to Stockley Park, but went off again when I stopped at home.

It was a bit of a woeful tale. There just happens to be an express
bus, the X26, from Heathrow to East Croydon, stopping at Sutton. It runs
roughly hourly, and the scheduled departures include 1545, 1645, and 1750.
Given the rush hour, I gave myself more than an hour to get to Heathrow;
we got there at 1740 and I walked over to Stop 20 -- just in time to see
the X26 pull out while I was still 25 yards away!

I waited until 1800 in case there really was going to be a 1750
bus, but no show. Took the Picc into Earl's Court and found the District
Line platform for Wimbledon. Train times were given as every 4-6 minutes.
Are they bollox! Finally one came along and we trundled off to Wimbledon.

There was a train to Sutton at 1919; I was unsure of whether my
Oyster was valid on the train so I doubled back to the Tube platform to
check a sign, but it was about Tramlink. Back to Platform 9 at exactly
1919 and no sign of the Sutton train, it had already left.

Checked out of the station looking for a phone box, reached into
my pocket for a printout of TOG's message with his phone number -- and it
had gone AWOL at some stage of pulling out my PDA, Oyster Card, etc, etc.
:-( Found out that I couldn't use my PrePay for the train, so bought a 90p
cheap-day single to Sutton and waited for the 1946. Then it started
bucketing down rain... I thought briefly of trying to find a WiFi hotspot
to log onto my Brunel account, but my PDA's wireless card was in my other
rucksack.

Finally got to Sutton and walked out of the station into light
drizzle. Now, I wasn't totally unprepared; although I hadn't stored TOG's
phone number, I *had* programmed his coordinates into my navigation
programme. So, with six or seven GPS satellites showing me the way, I
tottered the reasonably short distance to his door, although his house
number is well-enough hidden to make it a bit hard to verify the house.

Of course, I also got lost going "round the block" on the test-ride.
Difficult to judge where I was in the gathering gloom, so out with the GPS
again (with a momentary glitch that necessitated resetting the whole PDA)
and I guided myself back by stopping every couple of hundred yards to
check the instructions.

The trip home started out OK, following signs to Kingston as
a first bet. Then it said "For Kingston follow Epsom" so I did that
for a while, then a sign said "Kingston, Heathrow" and I soon found myself
on the A3. I realised that this probably wasn't the road I wanted when
the signs started saying "Guildford, Portsmouth", but it was the M25 soon
enough, so I followed that around to the Heathrow exit then jumped the A408
exit to Yiewsley and home.

SKOGA? I've already got one, for getting lost finding Aylesbury
for the start of a BOTAFOT run...

--
Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD, DT175MX. "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO# 003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

And he's trying to track down the Higgs boson ?

 

The oil light comes on in synch with the neutral light. Gawd knows why.

 

old way of checking the bulb still works

 

Yes, the principle is simple, sound, and often annoying!
But I can assure you I didn't ride from Stockley Park to Cowley Village
in neutral...

On that point, has anyone any specific recommendations for 2T oil
for the air-cooled beastie? Anything to seek out or, more usefully, to
avoid? We used to swear by Bel-Ray synthetic when I was racing, and I
believe Silkolene had a bad rep at one stage.

--
Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD, DT175MX "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO# 003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

In my experience, Yamaha 2-stroke oil warning lights always come on
nice and early, and you have to be a total numpty to run the things out
of lube. IIRC, my 350YPVS light came on when there was still over 150
miles' worth of oil in the tank.

Lozzo will be along shortly ;-)

Oil - and decent semi-synthetic or fully synth (if you're flush) will
do. I always use(d) Silkolene.

 

TOG@toil says...

Wot 'e said.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Lozzo

Are there any "do not mix!" cautions with 2-stroke oil types? Or can I
just bung any old stuff in with whatever Dodger's been using in the TS?

And does anyone know what tyre pressures seem likely?

Oh, and memo to self: Do not start the TS when the exhaust is pointing
at the Shagwah. Still, it needed cleaning anyway...

--
Wicked Uncle Nigel - Manufacturer of the "Champion-105" range of rearsets
and Ducati Race Engineer.

WS* GHPOTHUF#24 APOSTLE#14 DLC#1 COFF#20 BOTAFOT#150 HYPO#0(KoTL) IbW#41
Enfield 500 Curry House Racer "The Basmati Rice Burner",
Honda GL1000K2 (On its hols) Kawasaki ZN1300 Voyager "Oh, Oh, It's so big"
Suzuki TS250 "The Africa Single"

 

It had Castrol TT or 2T or whatever. I dunno what Jayne had been
putting in before me, but I think it was the same.

Mid twenties, from memory. Try one of the Haynes manuals.

hehehe - could be worse - you could have started the KH.

 

Salad Dodger says...

In that case I'd go for a semi-synth and be done with that. I ran my
strokers on a decent quality semi-synth 2-stroke oil and they only ever
blew up because I abused them beyond their design spec.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Salad Dodger

I am obliged.

Oddly, neither of them seems to have any mention of tyre pressures at
all.

--
Wicked Uncle Nigel - Manufacturer of the "Champion-105" range of rearsets
and Ducati Race Engineer.

WS* GHPOTHUF#24 APOSTLE#14 DLC#1 COFF#20 BOTAFOT#150 HYPO#0(KoTL) IbW#41
Enfield 500 Curry House Racer "The Basmati Rice Burner",
Honda GL1000K2 (On its hols) Kawasaki ZN1300 Voyager "Oh, Oh, It's so big"
Suzuki TS250 "The Africa Single"

 

Bridgestone quote 1.8 and 2.0 bar for the trail wing as fitted to a
TS250ER