Rowrah - October 1999

Saturday 16th October 1999
The weather was amazing for mid October, we'd spent weeks talking about how cold and wet it was going to be, so sunshine and clear sky's were a real lift.
Initially the bike wasn't running properly, if the throttle was opened fully the engine bogged down. Looking at the plug helped, we were running far too rich! Down jetting sorted the problem although we had to progressively use smaller jets. Lea was 'going for it' straight away and fell off the bike 4 (yes four) times in the morning. This was like the old days where we first started racing but we've been doing this for 6 years. The bike was standing up to the abuse pretty well only peripheral parts were getting damaged. I don't know weather our tyres are getting knacked or maybe the cold track temperature was causing the accidents, but unless you got the tyres warmed up properly there was no warning before the tyres let go! All in all we were happy with the setup of the bike and didn't change the bike.


Sunday 17th October 1999
The bike ran faultless all day, we were the weak link. We all fell off once, luckily each time the bike wasn't damaged! Here's a picture of me on the deck! Rowrah suits our bike and we all thoroughly enjoyed the race. We did 261 laps and usually we were doing 1m 7s or 1m 8s this was better and more consistent than the May meeting. We finished 7th in class 1 which is our best result to date.
It was nice to see so many of the 'Fast' RS framed bikes having mechanical problems. Long live the 'Moped' aspect of Mayhem, some teams look to be taking it far too seriously. Keep it cheap and cheerful, if people want to throw £1000's at it let them, but make sure that these teams don't take over with rule changes etc. There's nothing better than a dodgy class 3 step through winning and getting their name on the trophy. The name of the game is (and should always be) 'Moped Mayhem' I think it's a mistake to start calling it '50cc Endurance Racing' If people are that serious about their racing get and ACU license and race RS125's (they've probably already got a frame!).


I took some photos here are a few of them :-

So at the end of 1999 we finished 16th in class 1, altogether we did 842 laps! The only disappointment was the first race at Rowrah in May when the bike wasn't running correctly, otherwise the bike has ran reliably and is getting faster.

In 1998 we finished 10th in class 1, the bike was slower back then but didn't break down. So all in all we're happy with 1999 and looking forward to 2000