Limping Dog 1000

[Bubbagums 42]

Actual name is the Norra Mexican 1000 but I have never seen so many 3 legged and limping dogs in Mexico on one trip. We raced a 1985 XR350r the length of Baja and it was brutal. Not the racing but what we overcame to win our class and finish 6th bike overall.

A partial list of troubles

Day minus one: We had quite a bit of electronics and personal items stolen from a "secure" lot next to the San Nicholas Hotel in Ensenada while the owner was feet away working on the bike.

Fixed axle nut which was finger tight. Fixed brake lever. Adjusted and fixed rally computer (still never worked right until day 4)

Day one: Pilot jet fell out. Bike barely made it back to Highway one where we diagnosed and tightened it after many many kicks. Main jet was finger tight and next to go. Next rider lost gear bag and spot tracker (one item we can't blame on the guy that did the bike prep). Then clutch cable broke. Sourced replacement cable from xr500 in El Rosario (yes different routing and adjusters). The cable was a non issue the rest of the race. Late night. No dinner and only a couple of beers.

Day two: aluminum rear sprocket sharpened to needle point. Who puts an aluminum sprocket on a bike headed to Mexico?

Day three: found several possible replacement sprockets after lots and lots of inquires and searching. Dropped the oil in Loreto after great day of racing. Brass in the drain pan discovered at about 1:00 pm. What was supposed to be a party by the pool turned into an all nighter. Out comes the old motor and in goes the "new" motor. Almost buttoned up by dark. Woot. No fire. Replace stator with stator from old motor. Spark! yea. Popping but no go. Hours later we check the valves (we were told twice by prep guy they were spot on). Nope. Valve adjustment was off by hundredths. Huge difference. Button up. Still no go. Honda spark plug wrench was on gear bag we lost on day one. We lucked out and remembered we were carrying tools from other xr350r rider (Work2Surf). Pulled plug. ZERO gap. Finally fire and bike was running. Maybe an hour off from stage start at 6 am. Oops....glowing headers. Adjusted fuel screw. Went through carb. No luck. While putting carb back on we see the manifold boot was torn. Off from the old an on to the new. We had a running bike...after about 18 hours straight work. A few other item we fixed were replacing the rear sprocket with steel (drilled to fit by Robby Gordons team). Replaced rear tire and chain. Chain was precut and a link short...duh...2 master links and link in between fixed that. Sprocket was same number of teeth for those of you guessing that was the problem...nope.

Day four: Oil level up and down and spewing. Overfill. Fixed. changed oil. Got some sleep!

Day five: We finish with a very noisy valve train....but we finished.

Lots of other problems, too many to list. One remaining problem is the chase driver (sourced by van owner) took off with the van in Cabo and has not been seen since. Owner and chase driver old "friends" had a spat. Both in 70's. The 4 of us that raced got along very well.

Would I do it again? The racing was fun. We dropped the bike once. With proper bike prep almost all of our problems would not have occured. The xr350 is a very capable bike for being 30 years old. Like Bond "never say never"

[Dan Diego 40]

Sweet write-up. Any more photos?

[Bp619 104]

That sounds like a blast but horrible at same time

[danrider 5]

That is called sticking it out!!…. I like it… finish no matter what happens and work through it. That is a great adventure….you will never forget this ride.

[Baja2015 0]

That's sum hart and sol. We'll done. You almost rebuilt the bike. I love hearing about fixing things the baja way!

[tvscum 43]

Nice adventure Bob! We'll see you at 9am Saturday at Pio Pico?

http://dualsport-sd.com/forums/index.php?/topic/19999-dualsport-ride-sat-5-2-interest/

[PastaPilot 17]

way to push through. After all that still pulled a respctable finish. Congratulations!

[tntmo 887]

Awesome, competing and completing on a 30 year old bike.

[Goofy Footer 539]

Saw this race report on ADV from one of Bubbagums' team members Airborne Andy. Props guys!

http://advrider.com/index.php?threads/2015-norra-mexican-1000-cortez-challenge.1021996/page-33#post-26800841