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Dear Keith, Thank god I have found a scrambling advice page, you see I am going to race this season and I have purchased my bike and found a lovely female mechanic. I know the bike will need modifying to get it race ready and I am pretty sure that with a decent suspension set up and the removal of the lights and maybe some of them knobbly tyres it will be a winner. Should I go for Ohlins or Fox shocks ???? and should I leave the standard front forks alone?? The power output although not tremdous will, I am sure be enough in the capable hands of a good rider like me to take me to the holeshot each race, should I cut the silencer off to get that authentic racer sound ??? as long as this does not give it too greater rise in BHP. As you can see my mechanic is dressed in our Y2K+1 team clothing, could you market this line on your site for the fans we are sure to attract during this coming season as I am sure we will have a bigger following than Jeremy Mcgrath Thank you in anticipation of your help. Scrambler Man

Dear scrambler man I hope you are as fit as your new team mechanic looks, now to the points raised, Fox shocks or Ohlins tough choice if you intend to beach race then Fox would be okay their bushy tails will clear the sand from delicate parts, for hard pack then I would go for Ohlins but watch out in thunderstorms as Thor might seek vengeance. Definitely leave the forks as standard as with your undoubted skill any fork travel over the 2" (50mm) standard fork travel would be totally wasted. To improve your chances of getting the holeshot I would suggest that you remove the front brake, this will remove the temptation of trying to slow down for the first corner there by giving you an edge over your competitors! You can cut down your silencer for that added racer sound with out fear of increasing the BHP as you would need to re-jet the carb to gain much advantage from the reduced back pressure. I am convinced that with your lady mechanic dressed in her Y2K+1 team kit you will have a very large following. Best of luck with your racing team for this season and I look forward to meeting you at the races. Keith mxgb

Suspension Headaches

We first met Chris Taylor at the 1999 YMSA SuperNational at Wild Tracks Chippenham, Chris had his mobile workshop there and was knee deep in front forks and rear shocks. We were experiencing some mega bad handling on Bryn's 1998 Honda CR125, this was very disappointing as we had just spent out on some front and rear suspension tuning. It appeared that the bad handling may have been due to some poor tuning of the rear shock. On a more positive note, however, Chris thought that the tuning that had been done to the front forks was "very good". With this in mind we took a lenient view on the work that had been done and assumed that the poor handling of the rear shock could have been due to an error in the reassembly of the shim pack. I must stress that this work had not been done by CTR.

Anyway Chris agreed to take a look at the offending shock, but warned us that we would have to wait until he had finished all the other work first. Forewarned we removed the shock and left it with Chris to work his magic. We returned to the CTR mobile workshop around 9:30 pm and Chris was still finishing the other work, so by around 10:00 pm Chris started on our shock, it is amazing how many shims make up the damping system of a modern MX shock. Chris duly cleaned, measured, rearranged, and changed the shims until he was happy with the set up, rebuilt the shock, refilled with fresh damping fluid and recharged the gas chamber. We then exchanged a crisp new £50 note (actually it was a well worn collection of £5 & £10 notes) for the reworked shock.

This left us with the straight forward task of refitting the shock and rebuilding the bike ready for the mornings scrutineering, This was not as easy as you might imagine as it was very dark where we had set up camp, we use a van and caravan for racing HQ, no generators to power mega kilo watt search lights that some teams employ. No our solution was far more down to earth; we used a small torch and the headlamp on our small Suzuki street magic pit bike. Anyway up the CR was rebuilt, passed scrutineering and was ready to race, the handling was now superb and Bryn rode with a new found confidence, we did not win that day or finish in the top ten, but Bryn rode well and enjoyed the racing which is all that you can ask for really. The YMSA SuperNational is a big meeting with full line-ups in all classes, very well organized and a joy to participate in. No we do not compete very often in YMSA meetings but try to attend the SuperNational if we can, although we cannot compete in 2001 as we have sold the CR125, and now compete on a Yamaha YZF 426, but we can recommend that if you get the chance to ride at the SuperNational then take it.

Keith & the MXGB crew.