DOROTHY ... Come out the PLAYEEYEE!! (Warriors)
3-27-17 I picked up a Heald VT-7 with a vague idea about what I wanted ... I am still a far cry from where ever that is!
Sunday 8-6-19 was the day she was ready to hit the streets and trails!!
The Hour/RMP meter says Dorothy was run for over 2-1/2 hours Sunday.
A few days before the carb was cleaned, replaced the pilot jet (17.5) with the one that came in it (15.). Blew air through it.
I remounted the motor mounted gas tank and made sure there was a filter inline.
My brother was over and was buzzing up and down my street, got it to about 5000 and I could hear that "marbles in a can" sound ... I assume its the valve tapping the head ... we wont be running high RPM for this outing, its mostly a shake down to see what I've got.
89 octane was drained and 93 was put in the tank. fresh oil was added to the crank.
We buckled her down to the mini bike trailer and were off!
We met up with some friends at a school, drove around a bit on the surface streets and alleys ...
Then rode back to our cars for a second ...
As expected the gearing isn't even close to what I want, it performs much like a VT-10 ... I won't harp on gearing or getting the motor into the 7000 RPM range .... today is just to shake her down ...
She started easily and ran what I would call flawless.
The Mikuni is very nice, smooth idle, responsive, better than a stock carb to be sure!
Nothing went wrong and in the last hour I was beating the shit out of her!
Others in the group tried her and proclaimed her a beast ...
My wife rode her and found she was well behaved!
I was wondering if I would like the handlebar position ... no worries, I liked the bars being slightly bent back.
We are fortunate enough to have a couple places we can ride that are heavily wooded in the city ...
One of our favorite places is the now defunct Grand Rapids BMX Track.
Its a place where BMX bicycle racers used to come and compete.
Hell of a fun place to ride/beat on/test out a mini ... and so I did ...
One section is about 1/8 mile of Whoops ... small hills evenly spaced in a row ... 2 friends were ahead of me, I wound her up and let her rip ... I flew past them jumping from hill to hill ... I weigh damn near 300lbs, the bike must be 80 to 100lbs ... that's at least 350lbs jumping, landing over and over ... for the 1st time ever I lost my phone out of my pocket .. (found it) ..
We found some mud ....
I chose not to put the fenders on ... that's was not a good idea!
After 2-1/2 hrs the spark plug looked like this ..
She got up to 4200 RPM but was mostly maxed out at 3800 RPM.
The belt felt like it was slipping a bit at the end .. could be heat or it could be a bit wet?
Drilling the Driven pucks made next to no difference. Engagement was about 1900/2000 RPM.
Out of the hole I was about the same as other minis in our group with the exception of the Baja with a warmed over 212 Predator ... he was faster out of the hole and had better acceleration ... but while the Baja topped out Dorothy kept pulling like a freight train ... still seems like RMP and MPH are about the same ... (4000 RPM = 40 MPH)
The front tire still feels a bit heavy even in the trails ...
As she is now she is a well behaved and excellent running bike.
Next up on the list will be gearing and getting the stainless steel valves in the motor.