Its vewwy vewwy qwiet here today.

Two more hours and I'm off to the island.

Moike

 

I'm thinking you've been beaten there....

Bry

 

Half your luck...swmbo has landed in horsepittal so might make it down
tomorrow sometime morning hopefully, if all goes well I will make it to the
house after the Cranbourne run.

Scum

 

We're probably going for a ride about then, give me a call or a text
when you have an eta.

Moike

0408325024

 

Everyone else has already left.

DaZZa

 

Thanks for staying for the performance.

Hope the bike gets better quick![1]

Cheers
Goaty
1. Did I mean to say that?

 

you jinxed the bike
He had to have it towed back to Melbourne and missed some of the races.
It blew a valve or something in the queue to get in after it overheated.

 

Nah, I already knew ... I rang him to get him to tell Clem that I could
see his shirt at the track on Google Earth, and got the whole (sad) story!

Cheers
Goaty

 

Wa! It can't have broken down, it's a BMW!

-----sharks (not those bloody valve seats again?)

 

Could be.

The bike overheated in the very slow queue to get into the bike parking
area. (on the plus side, it expired as I was about to hand over the
parking fee, and they never did collect it, since I left the bike just
outside the barriers.)

It definitely sounds valve related.

There was a very sudden rattling sound, not unlike a chain being dragged
through a hole, accompanied by a distinct "Chuff Chuff" sound from the
right cylinder. It only ran on for a couple of seconds before I shut it
down, but it seemed quite prepared to chuff on. I'm pretty sure one of
the valves in the right cylinder is no longer closing as it should,
probably the exhaust, since there didn't appear to be any blow-back
through the carby. My first thought is that the valve seat has come
adrift, and broken into two or more pieces, (the rattling noise) and
that the valve is therefore no longer sealing (the chuff-chuff noise).
It might also be a sudden failure of the valve-stem collet so that the
spring is no longer able to close the valve, or perhaps a broken valve.
None of the rattly noises sounded 'hard' or 'sharp' so I'm guessing
(read: hoping) there is no serious damage. I'll know when Chris/James
at BM Ringwood get a look at it.

RACV were excellent. They had a van on site just in case. When I got
to speak to the driver, he just drove down the gravel road beside the
bike park until I saw him and told him to stop. I had envisaged
piss-farting around for ages organising for the bike to be carted, but
the RACV bloke just had a good look at the bike, and discussed tie-down
points (I have a little too much experience there) while I unlocked the
panniers and snipped the hidden earth wire to the alarm. I went in and
watched the races while RACV took care of everything. They offered to
organise transport home, but Dave Milligan of Get-Routed
http://www.getrouted.com.au/ lives close to me and offered a seat in his
van. Thanks Dave. (Dave also supplied copious quantities of quite
drinkable beer for the BBQ at the house on Saturday night.)

I remain a bit pissed off at the organisers of the GP for the pretty
crappy management of the parking. The queue stretched right back almost
to the main gate, and moves at a snails pace. Queue management seemed to
consist of a rather excited man with a strong sub-continental accent
shouting unintelligble things into a loud hailer and holding up three
fingers. At the entry to the bike park, there wasn't any signage saying
what it cost, so every second bike pulled up and had to ask the price
before diving into their pockets for cash. As far as I could see mine
was the only bike that overheated in a disabling manner.

Thanks once again to Dave for getting me home, to Jodie for retrieving
my gear from the house, and to all the others who offered to help with
rides, cartage or sympathy.

Moike

 

Could be.

The bike overheated in the very slow queue to get into the bike parking
area. (on the plus side, it expired as I was about to hand over the
parking fee, and they never did collect it, since I left the bike just
outside the barriers.)

It definitely sounds valve related.

There was a very sudden rattling sound, not unlike a chain being
dragged through a hole, accompanied by a distinct "Chuff Chuff" sound
from the right cylinder. It only ran on for a couple of seconds before
I shut it down, but it seemed quite prepared to chuff on. I'm pretty
sure one of the valves in the right cylinder is no longer closing as it
should, probably the exhaust, since there didn't appear to be any
blow-back through the carby. My first thought is that the valve seat
has come adrift, and broken into two or more pieces, (the rattling
noise) and that the valve is therefore no longer sealing (the
chuff-chuff noise). It might also be a sudden failure of the
valve-stem collet so that the spring is no longer able to close the
valve, or perhaps a broken valve. None of the rattly noises sounded
'hard' or 'sharp' so I'm guessing (read: hoping) there is no serious
damage. I'll know when Chris/James at BM Ringwood get a look at it.

RACV were excellent. They had a van on site just in case. When I got
to speak to the driver, he just drove down the gravel road beside the
bike park until I saw him and told him to stop. I had envisaged
piss-farting around for ages organising for the bike to be carted, but
the RACV bloke just had a good look at the bike, and discussed tie-down
points (I have a little too much experience there) while I unlocked the
panniers and snipped the hidden earth wire to the alarm. I went in and
watched the races while RACV took care of everything. They offered to
organise transport home, but Dave Milligan of Get-Routed
http://www.getrouted.com.au/ lives close to me and offered a seat in
his van. Thanks Dave. (Dave also supplied copious quantities of quite
drinkable beer for the BBQ at the house on Saturday night.)

I remain a bit pissed off at the organisers of the GP for the pretty
crappy management of the parking. The queue stretched right back
almost to the main gate, and moves at a snails pace. Queue management
seemed to consist of a rather excited man with a strong sub-continental
accent shouting unintelligble things into a loud hailer and holding up
three fingers. At the entry to the bike park, there wasn't any signage
saying what it cost, so every second bike pulled up and had to ask the
price before diving into their pockets for cash. As far as I could see
mine was the only bike that overheated in a disabling manner.

Thanks once again to Dave for getting me home, to Jodie for retrieving
my gear from the house, and to all the others who offered to help with
rides, cartage or sympathy.

Moike

 

Yeah it was pretty poor. I arrived behind a group of cars, which slowed
and became a queue to the car park. I stopped behind the cars and right
at that point, a hundred metres or so from the car park gate was a cop
standing on the side of the road showing great disinterest. Then a few
bikes started to ride up the left shoulder of the road, so I followed
them, only to get to the front of the queue and find a cop directing all
the bikes up to the bike entrance which was a bit further up the road...
so why the cop at the back of the queue was just letting bikes queue
with the cars and not directing them to the front of the queue intrigued
me.

The entrance to the bike parking was a shambles.. there was a sign
halfway down the gravel road showing 4 distinct arrows for different
parking... secure, general & 3 day pass.. but when the bikes were
directed into the parking queues, there were only 3 gates.. so noone
knew which entrance to take, and that excited sub continental bloke
shouting instructions was no help either. At least with a pillion on
the back I didn't have to stuff around paying for parking.. I just gave
her all my coins before we arrived. Fortunately we arrived there early
enough that only a couple of minutes were spent in the queue.

Nev..
'03 ZX12R

 

What, not while spinning its rear wheel in Talbotville mud?
You obviously weren't trying hard enough!

-----sharks

 

Small mercy.

You better have a good stern word with them. Warranty job?

But not the only one to get a get worried. My R1100RT was starting to
sound quite rattly (far more than it should, more like an old R100RS
(oops)) with the temperature gauge getting up towards the red zone
(remember no "water" cooling on these boxer engines). I had to turn it
off at the top of that little rise and paddle it down the hill, but
started it when I got to the excited little sub-continental gentleman.

Good to hear you got home OK.

SteveB
BMW R1100RT

PS Hi to GS and the others I met at the ticket gate.

 

I do hope that this info is being passed onto the organisers... they
need to do something

Johno

 

The work was done just on three years ago, I don't expect the warranty
to last that long, and I was probably operating it outside the design
envelope.

I'm happy to take it back to them.

Moike

 

Leo's VTR got a bit hot when he was stuck for an hour waiting to exit after
the race. The fan cut in for the first time that he's ever heard it and
made a graunching noise as it rubbed on the radiator! It's probably been
wrong since he crashed it 6 or 7 years ago but it's never been hot before!

Yes I agree that having all-asian carpark/security staff didn't really help
the flow of traffic no matter how loud the megaphone was!