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Stepped out for a bit of the old ultraviolence.
Full fat superbikes are fucking nuts. Especially after 800 miles on a 50 year old 250.

I fitted a set of old Trailwings to my XR a couple of years back and could barely unstick them on the road, even at big lean. The front was very impressive, good feel, considering. They were fine for some off road trails too, though were shit in sand and mud like any other 80/20 tire.

Doubt it will crack if it’s carbon fibre. That’s just ripples in the clear coat. You can sand it back and spray lacquer if you can be bothered. I did on the belt covers and cases on the Duc as they’d gone dull. Or return it but there’s a decent chance the next one will do the same.

I've only sat on one. Can't imagine what they were thinking really, it's like a block of flats. One of those in the 'glad it exists' camp...:)

Nice, that's some shiny metal. CBXs are huge! Never liked them much but they sound lovely.

Weird kink, but I love the smell of a machine shop.

@tom13 - yeah, I think I'll stick a Domino race one on there if I keep it. I used to do it with all my little bikes and am somewhat irked I forgot. Makes a huge difference.

Cheers fella. 850 miles of Northern Cal backroads in 3 days - little bike did well. Could do with a closer ratio box and a quarter turn throttle. Pulls clean from 6.5k but all the power is 7-9k. Absolutely wails when it’s on the pipe.

Couple of pics from the road…

Good spot - looks a lot of dough for a base spec 749. Cool bikes, but hold out for an S with the swedish gold and some farkles....

My race bike, headlight ‘conversion’ is 2 led strips and a stick on fake headlight. Not that I recommend it but keeps the bizzies away…;)

That's grand mate! Enjoy!

Looks like a lot of fun!

I finally got to test ride the RD yesterday. A few heat cycles, then a gentle 20mins or so, then a few harder goes in 2nd and 3rd to seat the rings. It was unbelievably lean on the 190 jets I guessed at, much better on 210s but still lean. Pretty amazing the difference porting and pipes makes as the stock size is 120! Got to head down to Compton today to get some bigger sizes, hopefully 220 will do….

The anxiety sucks. I've got similar around town and it's sucked a lot of the pleasure out of city riding. Hope you get everything sorted soon.

I’m slowly getting there on my RD250 project. So far:

Rebuilt engine, cylinders bored .5mm over.
Ported cylinders to 250LC + specs.
Recut heads, decked barrels and made copper head gaskets to set squish at .95mm.
Made expansion chambers
Rebuilt front forks with stiffer, straight weight springs and (knock off) gold valves.
Revised front brakes, new master cylinder (smaller bore) and braided hose.
Fitted electronic ignition (magneto style)
Rewired for DC charging.
Made a little tailpiece for rear light and license plate mount.
Loads of other little stuff I forget!

Hopefully just a bit more and I can get to testing. Needs a little run in and some jetting passes before next weekend….

Yeah it’s fine.

They run mousses on the Baja 1000 and do well over a ton on them. They do feel a bit odd.

Apparently monster gains in traction on tubliss in the technical stuff because you can run 5psi and not flat. I've never tried them

Yeah, it's frustrating to say the least.

For dirt bikes seems the gold standard is mousses, then tubeless, then ultra heavy tubes.

I wouldn't put a tube in a tyre that didn't need one. If you're really worried, throw a few ounces of slime in there, it works on anything other than big slashes.

Yeah, I’ve been doing my own since one tyre place took out my 90 buck Bridgestone Ultra Heavy duty tubes and replaced them with paper thin junk, without telling me. Pinched on trail second time out. You can’t win….

In other developments, I also noticed as part of my design / execution genius, you have to drop a pipe to take the rear wheel off the RD250. Groan.

I’ve been doing way too much spannering recently, thoroughly fed up with it.

The tyre fitting circle of hell…

Hate fitting tyres.
Too cheap to pay the local shop.
Don’t want to buy proper tools because you might start fitting more tyres (see 1.)
Wrestle around in the dirt for two hours and pinch the new rear.
Pay shop.
Hate fitting tyres.

The gooseneck was always the bit that shit me up at Cadwell. Oft were the times I ended up going down the hill on the grass. Happy days.

I used to love the Mountain. Hall bends after it is wicked too, you almost get whiplash with the change of directions before the hairpin.

@jambon - this is proper, high quality upgrading. Should be amazing.

No one light foots a rental. ;)

As a weird comparison. I had to drive my Chevy van the day after I got back. Even that, as an agricultural 90s holdover is quieter inside and has better steering feel.

Conventional car accoutrements, handling and a Tesla power train would be properly tempting for me.

I had a Tesla 3 as a rental for the weekend. Terrific power train but the rest of the car was awful. Twitchy, crashy suspension and so loud. The interface to do anything is borderline dangerous IMO. I got about 185 miles out of the advertised 250 and was impressed with the swiftness of the paid chargers.

Good job, glad you're OK.

Call a bike lawyer - get a decent payout!

I made a little mudguard / tail tidy thing for my RD as it didn't have one. Modelled on a folded up cereal box and bent / welded / filed and sanded out of some old aluminium sheet. Think it looks OK?