Posts Tagged ‘KTM’
Committed to Trail Maintenance
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Submited by Bill Dart
Tags: Colorado Trails, KTM, Slavens Racing, Trail maintenance
Posted in Photos | 1 Comment »
Winter on 5 Miles of Hell
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Submitted by Mike Stokes @ Apex Sports
Tags: 5 Miles of Hell, KTM, Moab Utah trails, Slavens Racing
Posted in Photos | 2 Comments »
Closure to a Rant
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
During my 36 years in the motorcycle industry I have come across many obvious design flaws and I’ve often wondered “what horse’s ass came up with this”? Now I finally have some closure as it appears that motorcycle designers come from the same gene pool as train track designers.
The history of railroad tracks
(Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding of it will depend on the earlier part of the content)
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that’s the way they built them in England , and English expatriates designed the US railroads. (more…)
Tags: KTM, motorcycle design, Slavens Racing
Posted in Rants | 5 Comments »
The Tough One
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
One of the toughest races on the planet!
Tags: KTM, Slavens Racing, Taddy Blazuziak, The Tough One
Posted in Videos | 2 Comments »
N. America Top Secret
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Tags: Adventure rider, Colorado Trails, Colorado Trails Preservation Alliance, Husaberg, KTM, Slavens Racing
Posted in Photos | 1 Comment »
KTM Eye
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Submitted by Chip at chipsimons.com
Tags: Adventure rider, Chip Simons, KTM, Slavens Racing
Posted in Photos | 1 Comment »
TUbliss Tire Core System
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
The revolutionary Nuetech Tubliss Tire Core System is in stock at Slavens Racing. $87.95
Tags: KTM, Nuetech Tubliss Tire Core, Slavens Racing
Posted in Videos | No Comments »
Tinkeritous and Tuning it Out of the Main Event!
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
I was born and raised in central Illinois just a few short miles away from the fastest mile oval track in the world, the legendary Springfield Mile. We lived one block away from the famous Route 66, which went to the track, and every year my dad would load us up and take us to the race. My brothers and I would hang on the chain link fence like a bunch of monkeys as Mert Lawwill, Dick “Bugsy” Mann, Gene “Burrito” Romero, Kenny Roberts and the mob thundered by and the ground would shake. Well maybe the ground didn’t shake but it seemed like it did when I was 6 years old.
If you’ve ever experienced a National Class C flat track race then you will know that the mechanics are constantly tuning and re-tuning every little detail on the bike looking for an edge over the competition. They have quick change hubs and a stack of sprockets that allows them to adjust the gearing to match the track conditions, tire choice, engine performance and many other factors. They constantly change and adjust jetting, cam timing, compression ratios, suspension set-up, wheelbase length, tire selection, tire grooving, octane levels and just about anything and everything else that you can imagine.
So, what the hell does this have to do with the average trail, desert, hare scrambles, or enduro rider? Well the flat track tuners have a saying, I tuned it right out of the main event. What does that mean? It’s when a tuner has a bike that won the heat race, won the semi, but then chronic tinkeritous kicked in. He just had to tinker with it before the main event and ended up making it slower or handle worse or maybe even caused it to DNF.
Today’s high tech dirt bikes offer an endless amount of adjustments and the aftermarket guys offer an endless amount of widgets, gigets, bling, and snake oil. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of great products on the market but there is also a lot of useless junk that adds weight to the bike, downgrades performance, or compromises reliability. It’s a state of euphoria for the chronic tinkerer that spends too much time on the misinformation highway and not enough time in the saddle. It almost ensures that they will tune it out of the main event or at least ruin a good trail ride.
Although I’m not a fan of stock bikes, most manufacturers offer some damn good bikes that are very capable in stock form. Yeah yeah I know, they might not have the best suspension or the best engine performance but they can get the job done.
Every year I ride a lot of owner prepped bikes (I used to test hundreds every year) and some of them are very well prepared. But with many of them the owner has spent a lot of time, energy, and hard earned cash turning a perfectly good bike into a steaming pile..a wiggly, wobbly, poorly tuned, bling infested, overweight pig with compromised ergonomics.
So, my first words of wisdom (and experience) in this Education Post would be to first carefully evaluate your new or new to you dirt bike before adding anything to it or making any changes. Ride it stock for a ride or two or three before touching a single bolt. I know that this may go against every cell in your body and that you may go in to an OCD tinkeritous meltdown, but it will give you valuable information and establish a baseline from which to improve the bike.
All great professional tuners, engine, suspension or chassis, establish solid baselines with the stock components before making any changes. This is similar to what doctors do before surgery to increase the odds of a good end result and not tuning you out of the main event.
Establish a solid baseline then carefully and methodically evaluate all products, services, website guru enlightenment’s, and home tuning ideas before implementing them.
Happy tuning,
Jeff Slavens
P.S. Please sign up for our free RSS Feed to automatically receive future post and please check out our educational videos on this blog and at SlavensRacing.com.
Upcoming post
- Spring rates
- Progressive shock springs vs straight rate
- Shock bladders vs floating pistons
- Ergonomics
Tags: dirt bikes, KTM, Springfield Mile, tuning
Posted in Education | No Comments »
Ohlins SD561 Steering Damper 2.0
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Product information
The new Ohlins damper utilizes a sub-mount (under the handlebars) mounting system that does not raise the handlebar position. The Scotts sub-mount and the GPR both raise the bars approximately 1″ above the original position which is a concern for riders under six feet tall or for riders that always use the seated riding position. Raising the bars one inch creates a poor rider position unless the seat is raised the same amount.
* Damping Level Adjuster (DL) – Controls the general setup including a high speed valve.
* Return To Center Adjuster (RTC) – Variable set-up of the damping force on the return.
* All aluminum casing.
* Mounting kit, instructions, and tuning manual are included.
* A new improved low-speed adjuster that secures the adjustment knob from coming off accidentally and gives a better click feeling when adjusting the low-speed damping.
* Damping force fading reduced significantly. Internal friction and wear minimized giving improved service life.
* Flat bottom for easier mounting on bike in either direction.
Note: Because of the current weather conditions in Colorado the Ohlins Steering Damper test will be a two part review. The first part being about general product information, installation and fitment and the second part will cover the field test.
Installation
I’ve installed at least 100 Scotts Dampers so I consider this a good foundation from which to start this installation. After reading the multipage installation instructions several times (because the installation is much different from other dampers) I proceeded to remove the forks and triple clamps. The next step is to remove the top steering head bearing race. This can be done with a hammer and long punch but my tool of choice was a race removal tool by Park Tools which made this step easy.
After the race was removed and the frame cleaned it was time to install the new race that has a post attached that connects the damper to the frame. It’s a little tricky because the post must be properly aligned with the center of the race and the frame backbone. Be sure that your eyes are correctly calibrated before attempting this step and the next.
A clear template is provided to make three punch marks on the triple clamp, two near the steering stem and another near the handlebar lower clamp. The ones near the stem are for the indexing pins located on the bottom of the damper and the third is where a hole must be drilled in to the top triple clamp for a sleeved bolt that locates the damper in the correct position. This is where I ran into a snag. The location of the sleeved bolt was too close to the left side lower handlebar clamp and it would require grinding the clamp to resolve it.
I re-evaluated all of the punch mark locations, tried twisting the damper to resolve the issue but the original location was correct. Any rotation of the device created an alignment issue. There must be a straight line down the center of the frame backbone that proceeds through the two damper control knobs and the center of the steering stem.
Grinding the clamp was not mentioned in the installation instructions so a call was made to Ohlins USA and I was connected to the installation guys who had not heard of this issue. I emailed several pictures to him and exchanged a few more emails and phone calls but 5 days later nothing was resolved.
Five days seemed like long enough so I once again reviewed the instructions, punch mark locations and alignment. I then drilled the 6.5 mm hole in the top clamp, installed the locating bolt and sleeve, used my porting tool to grind the clamp and finished the installation.
Although I don’t like the grinding part, once installed it looks good and operates freely and correctly. Plan on 1 1/2 to 2 hours for installation.
Pros: Sub-mount location
Cons: Price, complicated installation
Tags: Husaberg Ohlins Steering Damper, KTM
Posted in Test Lab | No Comments »
Profile
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Racing in central Illinois - Circa 1973
Jeff Slavens is a 36 year veteran of the motorcycle industry, having worked as a line mechanic, factory mechanic, dealership owner/operator and current owner of Slavens Racing.
In the 70s he and his two brothers raced Maicos. It was kind of a Team Maico Slavens but as Randy Hawkins once stated, too many stallions in the same barn is not always a good thing. Every race day their mother was worried sick because when the gate dropped (back then it was actually a rubber band) the brotherly love was gone and the race was ON and they thought nothing of taking out the other in the pursuit of the win.
Those early Maico days are where Jeffs engine and suspension skills began to develop. Maico Brake-O was not allowed if you wanted to beat your brother so there were endless hours devoted to repairs, rebuilds, tuning, and suspension mods. He and his brothers studied magazine pictures of the factory Maico team bikes and cut, bent, and welded their frames to accommodate a lay-down shock position and increase wheel travel. From there shock and fork mods were developed by Team Slavens because there were no off the shelf items available.
His first affiliation with factory race teams was in the 80s with the then dominate Team Husqvarna. Later in the 80s and 90s it was with Team KTM and Team Suzuki and from then until now with Randy Hawkins Team Am Pro Yamaha.
When he worked for the Husky team he ported cylinders and did head mods for the entire team (enduro, HS, desert, mx). Boxes with dozens of cylinders (for the many National Champions and up and comers like Randy Hawkins) would arrive several times per year and of course they always needed them yesterday.
Also during the 80s he started a long working relationship with then new comer Rodney Smith, who rode MX for Team Yamaha at the time. They first met just a few minutes before the first moto of a Washougal, Washington National MX. Jeff was there tuning for a top ten Yamaha support rider when Rodney rode up and asked for help. His YZ125 was a dog so Jeff took it for a little test spin in the jetting area. He returned and told Rodney to run up to the start line and pick a starting position while he rode the bike over to Rodneys pit and started barking out orders to Rodneys dad whom he had never met. They tore the carb apart in record time, changed some brass and Jeff blasted up to the starting line where engines were running. Rodney hopped on the bike, pulled the holeshot, and they’ve been friends every since. Rodney went on to win 5 Brazilian national Championships, placed 3rd in the World 250 MXGP, 3 National HS Championships, 5 National Reliability Championships, 6 ISDE Gold Medals (top American twice), and 5 GNCC Championships.
Cagiva bought Husqvarna in the late 80s and ran it in the ground so the team riders were all looking for work . Many of them switched to Suzuki so then Jeff became the engine guy for that team. At approximately the same time Team KTM asked for some help and Jeff built the 290cc engine that Kevin Hines used to win the National Enduro Championship.
And then came the Javelin, Randy Hawkins. Jeff had built engines for the new young punk from South Carolina while he was with Team Husqvarna but the funny talking kid came on strong when he got comfortable on his Slavens ported, Dale Stegal tuned RMX and later on YZs. Randy went on to win 73 Nationals, 7 National Enduro Championships, and 12 ISDE Gold Medals with Slavens Mule Motors. He was recently inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.
Now at age 56 Jeff enjoys traveling the world with his wife Sue to see the sites, architecture, learn about different cultures and find new friends and great places to eat. During the summer and fall you’ll find him riding the Gnar on some of Colorados gnarliest trails.
Tags: GNCC, Jeff Slavens Racing, KTM, Profile, Randy hawkins, Rodney Smith
Posted in Profile | No Comments »