Thursday 17 September 2015

Beware Chipmunks

After last year's Rye House race, I foresaw that my CCM wasn't going to get much action for the coming year so I took the precaution of draining the fuel and disconnecting the battery. I've been told horror stories of sheds catching fire due to mysterious electrical fires so am not keen on leaving a trickle charger on unattended. if I'm going to do a session in my shed or garden, I just flick it on charge for the day to keep it healthy.
The Rotax 604 engine seems to sump a lot of its oil if not turned over regularly. Mine spat out about 500ml when I tried to fire it up after a year off the job last week. Age-wise it's probably due an oil change but it hasn't seen much action and it's not deathly black, so I just topped it up with fresh. It did some gastronomic gurgles, spluttered, farted then started, for the first few crank ups.
I'm now wise to the short shelf life of modern fuel, but I thought best to crack the carb open and check for gremlins before just filling the tank and returning to Hoddesdon.
The Dell’Orto float bowl was showing the usual signs of light oxidisation. But more alarming was the contents of the big nut on the bottom. It looked like a chipmunk had crumbled a digestive in there.
Odd for a drained system??? After poke about with one of these excellent multi-point picks and a liberal spray of carb cleaner it was good to party.
No speed enhancing miracles have been gifted to man or machine in the past year, but it was good to be back, and I had a lot of fun.
Thanks to Anthony and Anna - and the ever faithful volunteer marshals, for organising another smoooooth DTRA race day. BP

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