The Yamaha framed Rotax 640 as I got herAfter selling my Tigcraft Yamaha SRX 640 Supermono my intentions were to hang up my leathers and enjoy the 2009 Supermono racing season from the other side of the fence! Although I did toy with the idea of letting someone ride my bike if it never sold, this appealed to me as it would allow me to still be involved with the racing side but not have the risk of injury. As the Tigcraft did sell I was going to offer my services to the Supermono Association at each meeting, probably as a race liaison running around telling riders where to be and what time, that sort of thing. All these ideas were put on the back burner when Simon Bird offered me his Yamaha Rotax 640, which had blown its engine at the penultimate meeting at Oulton Park. Simon was in his first year racing and I think he was a bit disappointed in the Mono’s as they are not the sort of bike you wheel out of your garage, race it then put it back in the garage till the next meeting. Mono riders are always tinkering, curing small oil leaks, cable tying bodywork, replacing engines, etc. Simon was helped by John Good who was a sort of veteran in the Supermono’s, and had raced Mono’s for several years, between them they carried out their own mechanics on the engine, but to be fair these types of Single Cylinder motors need a lot of TLC and knowledge to keep them going and still be competitive. When Simon offered me the bike he told me what had happened at Oulton Park, he told me he was a bit eager to get out and arrived at the collecting area way too early and the engine started to smoke. When he was eventually let onto the circuit he rode down the pit road to the end where he was about to go onto the track, there was a crack and the engine died, he looked down to see the timing belt had come off, he never tried to start it again. I spoke to several people who knew Rotax engines and they all said it did not sound that bad but bad enough, possible top end seizure, bent valves, holed piston those sort of things. I decide to buy the bike from Simon with the intention of doing it up, maybe do a couple of track days then selling it!
I picked the bike up from John’s house in Derby and also a large box of spares. The bike looked ok but well dated with an old TZ fairing and the big TZR seat unit but I could see potential to make this bike look as good, if not better, than my old Tigcraft!
I decided that I was going to keep the same colour scheme as my old bike, everyone said that it was the dogs swingers!!!, so that meant the frame, swing arm, fork legs and fork yokes would be black and the tank, seat, hugger and fairing would be yellow. I contacted my 3 sponsors from 2008 to find out what they could offer me if anything at all? I am pleased to say that Richard, (TFL), Nick, (BPS) and Dave, (Cabtec) have all agreed to help me out for 2009, probably not as much as they did last year but anything will be a help. I looked on Ebay and was fortunate enough to get a new set of black Vortex Clip Ons, a Yamaha R1 Brembo front master cylinder, Brembo rear master cylinder, some R6 front calipers, fairing brackets , throttle assembly and paddock stands. I had also seen a Yamaha TZ250D fairing and Droopy seat on there and found that it was almost an identical fit to the ones on the bike already, so I was well on the way to updating the Yamatax!!
I had purchased my previous bike, the Tigcraft Yamaha SRX, from Dave Habel, a very good Mono racer of about 6 years ago, and I can recall him telling me he had shed loads of Rotax spares that he no longer needed, I called to arrange a visit to see what he had and what price he was looking at. When I arrived I was amazed to see that about 2/3 of his garage floor was covered with boxes marked Rotax. He had 3 small boxes packed with inlet and exhaust valves, there were ignition covers, ignition coils, cdi’s, clutch assembly, covers, bolts etc. In another box he showed me a Mikuni Flat Slide carb which he said I could have, also he had a George Mansfield tuned head and a 600 Nikasil barrel neither of which had ever been on a bike, I was taken aback with all the spares and equipment he was selling me and I was more than happy with the deal we struck too.
