Hugo’s 1981 Morini Camel makes an ideal mount for spectating at the Manx Grand Prix, once the race paddock has provided essential supplies
OUR CLASSICS
The bikes ridden and fettled by the Classic Bike team
PRE-MANX GP prep for my Moto Morini Camel consisted of wiping the oil off the nearside fork slider and adjusting the chain. It was running beautifully when last ridden five weeks ago, so why mess with it? Unloaded onto Douglas seafront the bike started easily, but it wouldn’t tick over. Maybe it should have been serviced it after all.
With only 45 minutes until the end of evening practice, the immediate priority was to get to the pub at Creg-ny-Baa to watch the last racers complete their session, so the problem was temporarily solved by keeping the revs up. Next day, after restarting the bike four times between the seafront and the paddock, each involving a dismount to swing on the left-side kickstarter (I can’t start it with my left leg), it was time to address the problem. My C-grade diagnostic abilities suggested two obvious possibilities: best case was a blocked pilot jet, while worst case was an ignition coil breakdown leading to insufficient sparks at low rpm.
On the access road beside the race paddock, with the reassuring proximity of proper mechanics and their tools, the carburettor float bowls were removed in the hunt for muck and to check the pilot jets were clear. They were – but an obvious alternative cause was also revealed. There was clearly a massive air leak, caused by a split in the balance pipe that links both carbs (see right).
The balance pipe is only exposed to petrol vapour, but that had been enough to rot it in just a few months. The actual fuel pipes are at least a couple of years old, but show no signs of deterioration, suggesting that the balance pipe was incorrectly specified – they need to be made from nitrile rubber to stand a chance against the toxic horrors of super unleaded. (It’s the same with disposable gloves – you want nitrile rubber gloves rather than latex or vinyl for working on bikes.)
We were in a good place to find a replacement for the leaky tube. Ernie Coates Race Support provides the paddock’s Dunlop tyre service and other essentials with gruff Ulster efficiency; £1.50-worth of tube was cut from a roll and when the carbs were reconnected the Camel’s steady tickover and snappy throttle response was restored. Time to hit the trails.
For Saturday’s races, with John Westlake on his Husqvarna and our friend Ian Martin on a 640 KTM, we went to the inside of the course, allowing us to ricochet between viewing locations for the races
