Once again the Quarry Run was an absolutely fantastic ride. Being trail boss for our clubs h/s, back in May, kind of burned me out. Haven't spent a lot of time riding or wrenching on my bike since. The wrenching part bit me hard.
The only s/a silencer I had was from my old '98 EC250 and since I swapped the (broken) aluminum subframe, on my '03 EC300, for a steel subframe from a '97 EC, the silencer fit. Unfortunately the core broke while going down the first road section Saturday morning. I couldn't get the bike to rev out and lift the front wheel over simple trail junk. Some hills were tackled in 1st gear at half-throttle. Because it was running so crappy I went on reserve around mile 35 and still had another 8 miles until the gas stop. Luckily one guy in our group, Mike from North Jersey (maybe Glenn knows him) took a digger and we stopped in front of a farm house to perform some surgery on his KTM200. The farmer brought us some crowbars to bend Mike's pipe back into some form of what it once was and also some tools and water to fix a leaking radiator hose on the KTM. I also gave him $5 for a gallon of gas, which got me back to Fireman's Field.
Back at camp I took the silencer apart, fixed the broken core and repacked it. Glad I brought along all my spares. Mike fixed his twisted handguard and another rider, Darryl, who bailed earlier when his clutch cable snapped, rejoined our group. The Suzuki support truck gave Darryl a new clutch cable.
The second half of day-one was absolutely fantastic. My bike was running like it should and I was making up for going slow in the morning. A few times I spooked myself pretty good and backed off to let someone else take the lead. Rescued one rider who was pinned underneath his Yamaha with gas pouring out the carb all over his legs. Finished Saturdays ride, which probably doubled the total amount of miles I've ridden this year, and couldn't wait for Sunday.
Woke up Sunday stiff as a board, but still determined to ride. Left Fireman's Field just after 9:00 and headed to the first trail section where a log-jam of riders had developed. It was here I noticed the s/a on my silencer was loose. I didn't have any loctite when I put it together Saturday and five of the eight screws holding it together were gone. Tightened the three remaining screws and then Mike and I took an alternate line passing the dozen or so riders waiting at the bottom of the hill. When we got to the top another two-dozen were taking a break after struggling to get up the hill.
Sunday consisted of riding hard, even through the 30-minute rain shower, and hitting all the hero sections, then stop to tighten the remaining screws holding on the s/a. Eventually I lost another screw, so it was down to two. When those fell out, on a road section, the entire guts of the silencer were chucked out. I found all the pieces, but only had the almighty zip-tie to put it back together. Five more miles down the road the zip-tie melted, chucking the guts of the silencer, once again. Spent a half-hour looking for everything, but only found the core. Gave up and called it a day with ~30 miles left to go. Rode 11 miles back to Fireman's Field, packed up, ate some chicken then headed home just as the rain and hail started.
Also found out my bike will go 46.5 miles on a full (stock) tank. Had to push it the last half-mile to the gas stop on Sunday.
Despite the issues, which I have nobody to blame but myself, I had a great time. The Quarry Run restored my mojo to ride, but I've got a lot of wrenching to do on the bike before my next ride. Probably going to hang my competition side in the closet for a while. Just too much going on to concentrate on chasing series points. Probably going to stick with the "fun rides" for a while and concentrate on teching my son to ride next year.
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