King of the IT crowd

Put two off-roaders together and the first question from either is generally “What’ve you got on the go at the moment?” This is often followed by “You’re doing a WHAT!?” Occasionally it is “Oh, one of those…” but more often it’s “You must be mad”. You choose which of these statements is applicable to us as we head into Act Seven of the ‘King of the IT crowd’.

To be honest I thought I’d be riding this IT465 by now but hey ho, that’s the way things go sometimes and unlike our last few project bikes where spares have been plentiful, the IT range has gaps in it. Okay, people are working to fill these gaps but it can still be a long process to source bits but there were enough bits to make a rolling chassis for the International Dirt Bike Show stand.

The IT promoted quite a bit of interest on our stand and a few people did say they’d got bits and pieces left over from their own rebuilds, including a lad who reckoned to have a replacement lower front curve for the exhaust pipe. If you’re reading this… still interested in the pipe…

One of the bits taking forever to source was the small bearing on the end of the selector drum. In the bearing world that one doesn’t have a particularly hard life, unlike a wheel bearing, which spins whenever the wheel moves, this selector bearing has to move when the gear pedal is pressed and, as such, is not noted for wearing out. But our engine has suffered a bit through lack of maintenance and the… well I was going to call it oil but that would be stretching it a bit… sludge in the gearbox casing had done its worst and even when still on the shaft, the poor bearing felt rough. Once off the shaft and rinsed through in the parts washer to get all the crud out it didn’t feel any better, even soaking it in oil didn’t mask the roughness and I stopped kidding myself that it could be reused. I had to convince Nick Scott at Motoduro that this bearing was worn out… he thought I was joking “…but it never wears out?” Ours has…

Read more in the Spring 42 issue of CDB – out now!