Chris's Bike Blog » TTR250

Another “incident”

chris — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:02:14 +0000

Out with the TRF again and the TTR was performing brilliantly – so well in fact that my riding was definitely entering the exuberant category. Unfortunately, I chose the moment to be particularly exuberant as I skidded round a bend on a forest track only to encounter (would you believe it?) – a tree! Classic object fixation followed and I hit it. Bike not hurt, tree only lost a bit of bark, I damaged my right wrist in a manner as yet unknown. I did carry on riding for a bit but I am not sure this was sensible (two weeks from now and I am still hurting!). Still the riding was fun and the TR guys are good value so no real complaints. This accident has caused me to add “Injury” to my list of categories for Blog Posts!

Ride with Kent TRF

chris — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:25:34 +0000

I went out for my first ride with the Kent TRF guys today. I took the TTR250 and had a great ride that covered 140 miles. The work that Perry Leask did on the bike proved its worth. The front end handled very well and the bike felt much more controllable.

Suspension work

chris — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:40:07 +0000

The TTR has been with Perry Leask at HM Racing for the last couple of days. Earlier rides had shown the front end to be a nightmare – bouncing all over the place so much so that I wondered if the forks were completely buggered. Well, Perry sorted it out perfectly. The work involved new seals, oil and adujsutments plus a lot of measurements but no great drama with new parts etc. Perry’s workshop reminds me of the suspension shop at Lotus – it has the necessary pressure vessel for nitrogen charging etc. and is very clean. I have aprintout of the various settings before and after and to my untutored eye, it doesn’t say a great deal apart from the fact that I could have messed around my self or ever without getting it right.

The service wasn’t especially cheap but it has turned the bike into a usable machine which it wasn’t really before and in my view it wasn’t just money well spent, it was vital.

New tyres

chris — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:43:45 +0000

The healing process has progressed far enough to allow me to do a bit of light physical work – just as well ‘cos I am getting fat – and so today I used my new bike lift to remove the wheels from the TTR which I then took to Watling Tyres at Swanley where I had the TKC80s replaced by Michelin AC10s. The price was pretty good and fitting is free so I was a happy bunny. Alan Clark who runs the Swanley depot is a long time motocrosser and enduro racer himself so he knows what’s important to a biker.

The lift makes a potential awkward job very easy and the TTR is well designed to facilitate a simple job like removing/replacing the wheels.

The new tyres look businesslike!