What did you do to your Gas Gas today?

[Jim Cook]

Originally Posted by Fred1956

Started it & rode it for the first time since the start of the rebuild in June, stripped to the bare frame and back together again.....started 2nd kick..

That's great to hear, Fred. It looks real good, too.

[bkwdc]

Nice job Fred. Enjoy.

[Fred1956]

Originally Posted by bkwdc

Nice job Fred. Enjoy.

Will do Thanks again for the rescue!

[Jim Cook]

Today, at 7 am, I met with my riding buddy Mike Evans at my mom's 40 acres, to do some more finishing touches to the tight single track trail that we've been working on.

This 40 acres already has a "training wheels capable" 1/2 mile twisty woods trail that weaves through the woods surrounding the pond.
This summer, my project has been to pack in as much singletrack as I could get on the rest of the 40 acres.

The terrain is typical flatland creek bottoms; heavily wooded, and much of it is covered with either vine or saw briar thickets under thick tree cover. (There are stumps, but no rocks.)
It's been rough cutting, but I did my best to only cut the limbs off trees and remove small sweet gum tree saplings to make the trail. I routed around the thickest of the vines and briar thickets, and used them to separate the sections.

We finished flagging the loop last week, and got it "rough cut" enough on Saturday to be able to work a bike through to the end. (Notice that I did not say "ride" a bike through to the end. This ride involved a lot of paddling of the feet and stopping to wiggle the bars to get them past choke point trees.)
We now have a full 3.5 miles of super tight singletrack, all in the shade.

Tuesday morning and this morning consisted of riding/maneuvering the bikes through the trail and widening some of the tighter spots.

That brings me up to "What did you do to your bike today".
Although I brought my 2011 EC250 with me, I had brought another bike that Mike wanted to check out. It is Uwe Hale's former bike, which I bought about a month ago. The bike is a cherry condition 1999 EC200, with a Recluse Z-Start auto clutch and left hand rear brake.
Leaving my 250 on the trailer, I unloaded the 200 and took off on the first part of the loop.
The bike started first kick every time, in gear or not; and idled pretty well as I stopped to tie up ribbons, despite the heat. It was smooth and easy in first and second gear, and hopped all the logs crossings with no fuss.
I found the 200 easier to wiggle between the trees than Deb's TTR125Le.

The one thing I found awkward was also the neatest thing on the bike.
The clutch lever stopped the rear wheel, quickly ; and I kept forgetting that there was no rear brake pedal.
I normally use mostly the front brake in the woods, loading the front wheel to make it bite the ground better, and slowing down.
I would be reminded of "no brake pedal" several times during the session, when I would go for the rear pedal to slide the back end a bit for a better angle at a gap.
When this happened, I generally ran off into the trees.

The bike was lovely. Mike agreed, after I finally let him ride the bike.

Good Riding to All Ya'll!
Jim


.

[desertgasser300]

Originally Posted by Fred1956

Started it & rode it for the first time since the start of the rebuild in June, stripped to the bare frame and back together again.....started 2nd kick..

Don't you love it when it all comes together and it fires right up? Get some graphics on that bad boy, if anything it helps protecting the plastics(for awhile anyways) and graphics always make it look like you know what your doing.

[shang]

I picked up some flexx bars off a friend with the Cycra guards.



I didn't really like how low the guards go and think the mounts up front look kinda bulky. I missed my Enduro Engineering guards, so I made some adapters and mounted them back up.

[firffighter]

Awesome report Jim!

That's so cool to have your own singletrack to mess around with.

You'll have to get in a nice long woods ride on the '99 and give a good ride report. I'd love to find out what your thoughts are on the 200, the Rekluse and the LHRB after some good rides.

My previous 2 seasons were on a KTM200 with the Z start Pro and LHRB. It was awesome. I would eventually like to set up my '03 Ec200 the same way.

[pscook]

Went for a little ride. Got some hardware. 500 Minute (8 hours and 20 minute) Team Race. We had three guys on our team, myself on the 3hun, and the others on KTM 200's. Fourth out of eight teams in Open B. 13 total laps.

8.3 mile loop, do as many laps as you can manage. We swapped out after every lap, so I had 80 minutes between sessions I got to do 5 laps, the others got 4 laps each (timing).

[john r b]

Great looking bike Phil, and great finish. Wait a min. I didn't know that beer made it passed the mississippi river. lol

[pscook]

Originally Posted by john r b

Great looking bike Phil, and great finish. Wait a min. I didn't know that beer made it passed the mississippi river. lol

Thanks, I think the 2011 is a good looking bike, and it definitely looks better dirty. The race result was completely unexpected, I'm scribbling together a race report now.

Re: PBR - It's the best value out there. Tastes better than any Budweiser offering, and it's pretty much the cheapest stuff out there, which makes it easy to buy in bulk and hand around the campfire. Plus I get major street (trail?) cred from the crust old timers out here.