Sunshine at Hoar Park
Brendan Walsh has sent us this quick report:
For my first outing on a bike to Hoar Park this year I decided to give the two oil in frame 250’s a run. Obviously I couldn’t ride them both so John Earp volunteered to assist and was assigned the BSA version, the B25T Victor Trail, myself on the Triumph T25T Trail Blazer. You may remember the latter from a previous piece on the section website when the latter was collected from Totnes.
The BSA was purchased from Ashbourne in 2011, both ex US imports. The BSA was in very poor condition having stood outside for thirty years minus a spark plug! It was what I wanted at the time and being just up the road was handy. It was restored in record, for me, time over the following six months. It was started up, ridden round the garden, put back in the garage and forgotten about. It needed MoT test and registering and it was to be another five years before I got round to that.
The T25T was a bit more straightforward being a more or less complete very low mileage example. It had been the victim of some poor maintenance, for whatever reason the top end of the engine had been stripped and poorly assembled resulting in oil and head gasket leaks, plus a few stripped threads. The usual, again for me, fitting of electronic ignition, new carb and battery. There were a few other bits and pieces purchased from eBay and it was time for an MoT and registration. No problems with the latter but by now it was winter so bike riding took a back seat, especially with the amount of salt that was deposited on the roads last back end and this year.
So how did we get on today? When we landed at Hoar Park John complained that the BSA would only do 45mph, attempting to exceed that resulted in misfiring. He also said dropping down into third cleared it, strange. Mick Waterfield, on his newly rebored Honda 750 and Steve Hollis on his 1100 Honda were also along and the consensus was that it was a fuel problem.
For the trip home we swapped putting John on the Triumph, which he preferred with the exception of the brakes!
Couldn’t argue with John, it would only go over 45 downhill.
On arriving home removal of the main jet revealed all, blocked solid! So a lesson learnt, again.
So a good day out in the sunshine, but all that tea and buns, you’d think we were cyclists. Brendan.
BSA B25T Victor Trail in the foreground, Triumph T25T Trail Blazer obscured behind the BSA