Ride Report from Reliability Run

[OhioTed]

Following is my account of this past weekend's Ohio Valley BSA Owners Group's Reliability Run.  Sorry, I can't say I was mounted on a Penton, but hope you enjoy the story anyway.


AUGUST, 2009 OHIO VALLEY BSA MEET RELIABILITY RUN


During the May event, my poor little, much-abused '77 Honda XL175 would not pull the mainjet, and yet despite half-throttle performance at best, still carried my overweight, worthless hide the whole way.

I attributed the affliction to bad gas, acquired at the half-way point of the Spring ride, as evidenced by the opaque liquid, which rose to the top of the XL's tank during fill-up at a backwoods gas stop.  I later drained the tank of the goop, and cleaned out the carb, but did not "flush" the tank.  Failure to do so would unfortunately come back to haunt me.

This Reliability Run (RR), of which I have become so enamored, truly is a wonderfully fun event.  And yet, it is also a "competition" affair, with a prescribed 24-mph speed average, and trophies awarded to those stalwart individuals who manage to file into the one and only checkpoint, at the finish of the ride, closest to the correct overall time corresponding to their earlier departure.

With several successful previous rides under my belt, during which time I rode completely and blissfully ignorant of time/distance/speed concerns, I decided that on this ride, for the first time, I was going for a trophy!  Supporting my ambitions were announcements that the event would award three trophies per class, as well as the RR's one-final-check-only scoring arrangement.  Such leeway would potentially permit me to make up considerable time from going slow, getting lost, and crashing, in the woods, by way of the plentiful road sections.  Additionally, classes were structured for the first time by way of separating the old bikes from the modern stuff.  Thus, I would be riding Small Displacement Vintage.  

To assure I was going into the event armed with the best possible enduro tools available in 1974, mounted up on the bars were a clock, route chart holder, pre-calculated 24-mph time/distance chart, and (functioning – after I swiped the speedo cable from my '72 XL250) speedo/odo.  I even made sure there was air in the XL's tires and changed the oil!  Man, was I ready!  In fact, I was already preparing my acceptance speech for winning Overall.  

A few test rides up and down the street on Friday night before the event showed the XL, with its totally worn-out top end, to be running "perfectly".  Satisfied, I pulled the bike back into the garage, stepped off of it, and looked down to see a puddle of gas beneath it and a trail of fuel following us in from outside.  The source was the carb's overflow tube.  Dang, the float seat must be stuck open again.  No problem.  A few taps with the handle end of a rubber mallet on the carb brought an end to the leakage.  One more quick ride to be sure.  "Reggie" (my name for the old Honda), burbled a little, but then cleaned out.  Hmmmmm.  Not too late to swap mounts.  My Can-Am 175 TNT was sitting right there, ready to go.  A mental coin toss landed Hondas-up, so the little XL got rolled onto the trailer.  Oh, fate.  You're a cruel mama.  

"Race" day started out perfectly.  Beautiful weather, nice turnout, excellent trail conditions.  I lined up for a mid-pack key time.  Lots of good friends and fellow riders fore and aft.  While waiting for my minute to come up I kept leaning over to eyeball the carb's overflow tube.  Not a drop.  The bike ran just fine in warm-up, too.  RR trophy, here we come.  

As we were waved off, the Honda and I accelerated smartly away from the starting podium.  Spectators watched enviously.  Surely this must have been how Jack Penton felt at the start of the 1973 ISDT, with that famous wheelie.  We rolled out of the clubgrounds, directly into the woods, and the XL instantly bogged out.  Yikes!  Too late to do anything other than gassit, though.  She still ran fine on the mainjet and besides, what would Jack do?  Why, go for it, of course!  How ironic I thought, as the little Honda and I careened through the first set of trails, that on the last ride we had power only in the lower revs, and now it was just the opposite.  

Regardless, we came out of the trees in one piece and hit the road looking to make up time.  Despite our frantic pace (by '77 Honda XL175 standards) through the woods, we were still about two minutes down.  The first few miles featured some really tricky, hilly gravel roads, so it took us a while, but soon the planets aligned, and we were riding on our minute.  Woohoo!  And, at about ten miles out the XL's carb cleared its throat and we once again had a full range of throttle application at our disposal.  Oh, yeah!  Does it get any better than this?  I started mentally rehearsing my victory speech:  "Yeaaaaaaah, despite a stuck throttle and no bottom end, we hung on aaaaaand still managed to pull out the win.", I would say, with as much nonchalance as I could managed.  

So, we bee-bopped along, watching for arrows and cranking the charts forward.   Man, 24 mph on the road sure is slow!  Later minutes came cruising by.  I moved over for them, and smiled and waved.  Haha.  So long, suckers!  I'll gladly eat your dust now, 'cause later I'll be looking down on you from the victory podium.  Heh heh heh.  

Everything was working according to plan.  The miles clicked by, and I hit every turn accurately, adjusting my odometer on the fly so that everything lined up.  Then at 33 miles out, we turned onto a nice trail section and the Honda just died.  Having put so many miles on this bike I knew in an instant why, too.  It was out of gas.  A quick peek into the tank confirmed my fears.  Nothing left but Reserve.  A tankful of fuel gone after just 33 miles on a Honda XL175?  Impossible on a bike which consistently delivers mpg figures near triple digits, right?  Well, not if the float seat is stuck open.  And, that's exactly what happened too, as a twist of the petcock lever to Reserve resulted in a steady stream of precious gasoline exiting the overflow tube.  Dang it!  My promising day, ruined!  I sat there, dejected, for a few minutes.  A couple of guys on modern bikes came by and offered to help.  No, thanks. I just waved 'em on.  Joe Norton came by on his raucous, '71 Yamaha DT175, and offered to help.  No, thanks anyway.  I'm done.  Just tell Clark Francy where I'm at, and have him pick me up in the sweep truck.  

With nothing else to do, I dropped the float bowl.  Yuck!  The gasoline within looked like muddy water.  How could this have happened after I had drained the tank?  I fiddled with the floats a little bit and the drooling ceased.  Then a thought occurred to me – why not go for it?  If nothing else, I could at least try to make it to the gas truck.  What have I got to lose?  Better than sitting here, with my thumb up my butt.  

So I gassed it.  Man, did I gas it.  The poor, little Honda was really humming.  As soon as I got moving, I checked my time and found I was about 15 minutes down.  We went and went and went.  And, I gained time back.  Ah, but it was a double-edged sword.  The further we went, the closed we got to our minute, but where was that gas truck?  Finally, the inevitable.  At a gravel road intersection, the XL died so suddenly, I knew immediately – that was the end of the fuel.  Rats!  And I after I had gotten back to within two minutes of my time.  My hope at this point was to bum gas from another rider.  I scrounged around the Honda and determined that the document pouch would serve as an acceptable vessel for fuel transfer.  And, minutes later a buddy of mine on a Honda SL125 came by and graciously offered to help.  Waiting for gas to slowly pour from his petcock was aggravatingly slow, but the pouch was liquid-tight and the process was working.  Just then Joe Norton came by on that DT175.  How did he get behind me?  Joe looked right at us, then went straight on down the road – the wrong direction!  Ok, so that's how he got behind me.  

With a couple of pouches worth of gasoline in Reggie's tank, he fired right up and we took off once more.  As before, with nothing to lose I went as fast as I could.  We were back to about ten minutes down after this last stop.  Tick-tock went the merciless clock.  I was gaining time back, but slowly.  At eight minutes down, I spotted the fuel truck.  Alright!  Well, at least I won't be stuck out here.  

Clark had told us in the rider's meeting that there would be two checkpoints – one at the gas stop and one at the finish.  As I approached the truck I did some quick mental calculations:  Eight minutes down at one check – but if I could zero the finish, I might have a chance.  Sliding to a stop, I grabbed for (Paul Busick's) gas can.  It was marked "hi-test, 2-stroke", but Paul was long gone and he would have no reason to suspect me as the culprit.  Besides, Reggie's worn-out top end was used to burning oil.  But then, just as I was filling up with the illicit gasoline, Clark announced that this was to be the "final check".  Rats again!  That was that.  

For pride's sake, I gassed it again, hoping to reel in my lost time before the finish.  And, I got to within about six minutes at the end.  Reggie had come through once again, but I had let myself down in my ambition to score a prestigious and elusive Reliability Run Trophy.

Post-race inspection showed a ton o' rust in the bottom of Reggie's tank.  Oh, so that's where all the crap was coming from!  A thorough rinsing brought out a lot of rust flakes.  That's a start, but I'm going to have to seal that tank.  Plus, can you believe I was NOT running a fuel filter?  Yeah, yeah.  I know.  But, lesson learned, and watch out next year!  Besides, I've got a perfectly-running '74 Yamaha DT360A just sitting there.  All I've got to do is mount up some fresh knobbies and hang my enduro instrumentation on it.  Hey, maybe I'll even run the stock, Thermo-Flow shocks on it!  Spring, 2010 Reliability Run, here I come!

                     Ted

                REGGIE                                    

[dennis brown]

the bsa reliability was a fun event ,had good turn out. there were bultacos, 2 huskys 1 rokon tri. bsa.hondas zundapp many newer bikes. and no pentons ths surprised me, you missed a good day

dennis l.brown