Columnist: Jane Daniels - dog days and brake caliper woes
By Team TMX on 29th Aug 19
Things have slowed down a little for a few weeks so to help ensure that I have no spare time, I decided that it would be best to foster two golden retriever boys that are in need of a loving home from Cyprus!
Theyre certainly keeping me busy but they are an absolute pleasure to have around and just love being in your company.
They arent much help in the garage though, they come in and steel the rags when you turn your back so you will go and play with them, you wouldnt think theyre eight this month!
If anyone would like to adopt two golden retrievers and offer them a loving home, give me a shout!
The Hafren BEC was a good weekend, the weather and both tests were mega and also the trail in between!
We had two longs days on the bikes of 7.5 hours, I was consistent in my test times and only crashed in one test. I finished fifth and sixth each day in Expert E1/4 and Im happy with that. the Expert class is stacked this year!
Farleigh Castle was the next round of the Acerbis Mx Championship, I had never been down there before and I really wish I had, the track is ace, all natural and got quite rough in places.
In practise I had to run the bike in as I had a top end rebuild done, but managed to push for a lap to get a better feel for the track.
In the first race I got the holeshot and was leading but on lap three I started to hear some banging, I thought I hadnt ran my bike in enough and it was dying but then I looked down and saw that my front brake caliper had fell off and was swinging around in my front wheel, which wasnt ideal!
I stopped at the side of the track where my friends were and they helped with a 10mm and some cable ties to just get the caliper up and out of the way and I carried on to finish the race in eighth .
I was really annoyed with myself as it was all my fault, I hadnt tightened the bolts after having different fork springs fitted. I ruined the disk, caliper carrier and the pads, and I thought also my weekend!
People came over to ask what I had done, and all I could say was, what I hadnt done tightened the bolts! I was on catch up from my eighth and managed another four holeshots and four race wins throughout the weekend!
I was really pleased with my results and also getting some decent starts for once! I hadnt had much hope of winning the overall after my eighth but did all I could in the remaining races and somehow managed to scrape the weekend overall by just two points!
The next round is my next race and thats at Culham in a couple of weeks. Ill be sure to double and triple check the caliper bolts before every race and hopefully gain the championship overall as I go into the last round with a 36 point lead.
I have a couple of weeks of practise coming up and then from Culham I have the WESS at Hawkstone, World Enduro Championship in France, BEC Natterjack and then a training weekend. Its all one weekend after the other so the manic continues... wouldnt have it any other way!
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