Nik Hill

It’s a kind of Magic - Update 6

Capital to Coast Scooter Safari - Update 6

“Race Day”, I mean the “Scooter Charity Ride”. 

The event began with early morning sun and the promise of a fine day. The hooter went to signal the start and bikes started moving off. Mat and I were in no hurry having only arrived minutes beforehand. We were also supremely confident that our Street Magics were fast enough to blow anything else into the weeds on the motorway. We were just about to take off when one of the other riders came running up to us and asked if we could help them because they couldn’t start their scooter. We spent about five minutes offering futile advice on how to start the bike he’d flooded due to the auto-choke kicking back on after sitting in the car park. He largely ignored this advice and kept hitting the start button while twisting the throttle open, flooding it even more. After recommending he just let it sit for five minutes or remove the spark plug and turn it over using the kick start with the motor off, we rode away on our bikes that are fitted with manual chokes and start everytime with either the electric or kick start depending on what mood you’re in. Hadn’t even left the car park and had already overtaken three other people with broken scooters. Winning!  

The initial route took us from Kilbirnie around Oriental Parade, this was pretty uneventful apart from us seeing a ridiculous amount of runners out practicing for the marathon the next day. The rest of the trip through town was pretty uneventful until we got to the lights at Ngauranga that led back onto the motorway. There was one scooter that must have been running crazy amounts of 2T oil because he was doing an amazing impression of an insect fogger blasting clouds of choking smoke back over the guy behind him. That thing must have been responsible for a good portion of NZ’s carbon emissions for the year. To the afflicted rider’s credit he just sat there and took it like a champ, basking in the acrid synthetic 2T fumes. The guy’s eyes must have been streaming with tears by the time the light finally went green. 

Anyway the light changed and we zoomed off up the motorway. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Mat’s bike to start showing signs of overheating. Our comms started playing up a bit and we pulled into the BP on the left side of SH2 before we hit Petone. A decision was made to ride Red Magic back to my place and fit a larger jet to see if we could improve the cooling (n.b. 80% of the cooling on an air cooled 2T is from the fuel mixture). We continued up the motorway with Mat carefully managing his engine temps still making better time than most at about 70km/h. The first official stop was at Whakatiki Park in Upper Hutt, so the plan was to detour slightly and do a jet swap at my place. Then head to Whakatiki Park to rendezvous with everyone else. On arriving at my place we found out the bike already had the biggest jet we had in it, which was already a few sizes bigger than it should have needed. Knowing the likelihood of seizing Red Magic if we continued for another 170kms, especially while going up the Remutaka Incline, we made the hard decision to retire Red Magic. This represents a marked increase in maturity for both of us because previously we’d have chanced it and blown the bike up. So Mat was now designated support vehicle driver. In hindsight we had two other motorbikes in the garage that Mat could have jumped on and continued to complete the event on two wheels. Like I said though, due to lack of sleep cognitive function was heavily compromised and neither of us had consumed any coffee for at least three hours, so this option was overlooked.  

Did I mention it had been pouring down since we stopped at the BP station to discuss Red Magic’s fate and all hope of a sunny day had vanished? Yeah… so that happened. Mat had called the event organisers and informed them that #59 (Red Magic) was down, but #60 (Blue Magic would continue. Their response was and I quote “Ok, hopefully you catch up and we’ll see you at Waiorongomai Station for lunch.” Waiorongomai Station is about 20km south of Featherston on the west side of Lake Waiarapa. I assumed from this that they had already left first stop at Whakatiki Park and were heading for the Remutaka Summit. I thought “Hell yeah! The chase is on, Blue Magic was born for this!” Jumping back on SH2 at the Whakatiki St on ramp, “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors came on the playlist, which was apt because it started bucketing down even harder. It’s worth pointing out at this stage that I’d forgot to put my contacts in that morning. I normally ride with these because they don’t fog up like glasses do inside the helmet. However, knowing this I’d also forgotten to grab my glasses twice. First time in the rush to get away in the morning and second time when when we stopped back in at the house. You know so everything is kinda fuzzy at distance. Anyway I’m screaming along past Whakatiki Park and see some of the vehicles with flashing lights from the event through my rain splattered visor, but no scooters. Assuming they were the tail end recovery vehicles because the organisers had said see you at Waioronomai Station, I thought I couldn’t be too far behind the back markers, so I fed Blue Magic all the onions, adopted the racing crouch position and sped on. 

By the time I hit Kaitoke I thought maybe I should have started to see some of the back markers, but just put not doing so down to them just having more of a head start than I thought. Half way up the Remutaka Incline I still hadn’t seen anyone and thought they couldn’t have gone that fast, surely. I was overtaking cars and the back tyre was regularly sliding when going round corners in the hammering rain. No way was anyone pushing as hard as I was, were they? So with me decisively engaged in my own OODA loop I pressed on to the top expecting to see a big group of scooters at the summit. Nope, nada, nothing. Knowing how fast the gravity assisted descent on scooters can be from our experience in 2023 I thought if I haven’t caught them uphill, there’s no way I’m catching them downhill so I just pushed on to Featherston to refuel because I didn’t have the fuel range to make it to Waiorongomai Station. On arrival in Featherston I realised I’d offloaded the 2T oil into the ute to save weight, as a logistician this oversight represented unacceptable failure, even when sleep deprived, and was a low point in the day. In hindsight, I could just have gone to the motorcycle shop in Featherston and got more 2T oil and got underway again. Not sure why this didn’t occur to me at the time. On the upside. it did mean that I had an hour to kill waiting for Mat, drinking coffee, drying out and warming up after getting dumped on for the 45 mins. Weather in Featherston was blue sky with cloud so things were looking up, even if I couldn’t see them particularly clearly. Still no sign of any scooters, but the guy at the petrol station did ask me if I was part of the ride and said he hadn’t seen any other than me yet.    

Mat arrived a while later, we gassed up and dosed the fuel tank with 2T. About this time the first scooters started coming into Featherston. So yeah, I was way ahead, which is obvious now. Deciding three long blacks in an hour wasn’t enough I had another with Mat and then got underway in the glorious sunshine. This lasted till about 3km out Featherston and then it started bucketing down again, which I wouldn’t have minded too much apart from the fact I’d just put on my spare dry gloves, which then got drenched. Bugger! On arriving at Waiorongomai Station the organisers were surprised to see me pull in and asked me where I’d been. To which I replied “I was busy winning this thing!” And walked off to get lunch. Now when you have dental braces solid food is the enemy unless you have a way to clean your teeth. Bits of food get caught in the braces so I generally just have a smoothy for lunch most days now. I hadn’t packed a smoothy this day though because 05:20am start and I had variator weights to change, so I had to chance the burger offered or risk starving. Bits of this kept my tongue occupied trying to clean them out for the next four hours, which distracted me from how cold and wet I was so it wasn’t all bad. Luckily I was wearing a helmet for most of it so others were spared the gruesome spectacle of “trapped meat patty smiles”.

The excitement levels died down a bit after meeting back up with everyone and Blue Magic is a thoroughbred so doesn’t do that well in the “peloton” just coasting along at 50-60km/h. The clutch engagement rpm is all wrong and it starts to foul the spark plug because of the rich jetting designed to keep the engine cool during extended periods at wide open throttle, like all day in this case. So I had to resort to making my own fun. Because Red and Blue Magic are so much faster than the other scooters I’d pull over to the side of the road, wait for everyone to pass, then start the bike up, hammer the throttle, adopt the racing crouch, catch up and overtake all the peasants on standard scooters, then pull over once I hit the pilot vehicle at the front of the convoy. The rinse and repeat. On about the second iteration of this random shuffle on the Spotify playlist decided “Highway to the Danger Zone” was appropriate. Yes, yes it was. Anyway, some of the others on faster machines that were 125cc swapped cottoned on to what I was doing and soon there was about half a dozen of us that were doing this. They had more torque than me so sitting in their draft till I was almost at max speed allowed me to perform a “Shake and Bake” manoeuvre to overtake. Ricky Bobby would have been proud. Anyway the 125cc “Diesel Boys” (cos they ride 4T bikes) were impressed by the Blue Magic and couldn’t believe it was only 65cc. Naturally I replied with the timeless quote “It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”, sleep deprivation effects must have been subsiding with the increase in caffeine because I’d normally have thought of this response about two days after the fact.

Then we were pretty much in the final 10km stretch to Masterton and the clouds were threatening  another dump of rain. I finished my final high speed run through the pack and adopted Blue Magic’s rightful place at the front of the convoy. I’d love to say this was because I wanted to be recognised for the total speed dominance I’d displayed throughout the day, but the actual reason was to try and make the pilot vehicle go faster by tailgating them so we didn’t get soaked for the umpteenth time. I was cold, wet and tired, but surprisingly not hungry as the burger had kept providing little morsels throughout the afternoon. Anyway the tailgating tactic sort of worked, we sped up from about 55km/h to about 62km/h. Things stayed like that as we rolled into the finish at Henley Lake Park in Masterton, where I did the obligatory jump off the speed bump while overtaking the pilot vehicle and taking first place. Always finish in style.

So Blue Magic ran flawlessly again, but what of Red Magic? Well we know that she’s running lean. We have some theories as to why, but have to test them. First, because it’s a different style of carb it may just need a bigger jet. However, Red Magic’s carb is very similar to Blue Magic’s and it’s already running a jet a couple of sizes bigger than it is. Second, the jet might be too long and there might not be enough clearance between the jet and the bottom of the float bowl to allow the volume of fuel required to flow. We’re only talking a few mm difference in length though (photo shows comparison between smaller stock jet and larger aftermarket one). The reduced volume would lean out the bike and cause temps to rise quickly after any time at wide open throttle. Another possibility is that the cap on the bottom of the float bowl needs to be clocked precisely to allow fuel to flow into the cap where the jet pick it up from. It wasn’t clocked correctly when I took it off (photo shows what I mean). This means that not enough fuel is flowing into the cap to keep up with demand, which would also lean it out. Fourth, the float height may not be adjusted correctly, which means there’s not enough fuel in the float bowl to supply the engine at full throttle. Lastly, the power jet, which is a jet that supplies additional fuel to the motor at wide open throttle, might not be working. Again, this would cause a lean condition and engine temps to rise quickly. I’d be a little surprised if it was the last one because the main jet is so big in Red Magic’s carb it shouldn’t matter if the power jet is working or not. 

Finally, for all those that donated to the Cancer Society thank you very much. Mat and I raised about $1000 in total. If you’ve read this account of how things went and are thinking “I feel obligated to support this type of lunacy” and want to donate you can still do so here https://www.c2cscootersafari.org/s/53/207

Until next time…

It’s a kind of Magic - Update 5

It’s a kind of Magic - Update 4

It’s a kind of Magic - Update 3

It’s a kind of Magic - Update 2

It’s a kind of Magic - Update 1

It’s a kind of Magic - We’re doing it again!

Kia ora everyone,

The “It’s a Kind of Magic” team is revving up to ride in Cancer Society Wellington's 🛵Scooter Safari once again. 

We’re going to ride 206km on very fast 50cc Suzuki TR50 Street Magic scooters over the 555-metre road peak of the Remutaka Ranges and race through the beautiful rolling Wairarapa countryside making a hell of a racket, leaving plumes of synthetic 2 stroke oil in out wake. Somehow the route looks the same as two years ago, but is now 25km longer. This is no problem, we’re scooter endurance riding specialists now after doing the 660km ride to Napier and back. So we’re going to ride back to Wellington from Masterton afterwards, because that’s how we roll.

One of the scooters may not be in running order at the moment after we blew it up on the last ride, but this won’t stop us. The exhausts that fell off on the last ride have all been fixed (n.b. 50cc scooters can be surprisingly loud without mufflers). And we have all the bits to fix the one that isn’t running. 

The Street Magics are even more highly tuned than they were the first time we did this. We’ve got iridium spark plugs, bigger carburettors for even worse fuel economy, high performance exhaust systems that hopefully won’t fall off this time, low profile handlebars for better aerodynamics, and cylinder head temp gauges to avoid seizures all fitted. We’ve also got 100km/h gearing imported from the Netherlands to still put in them, and new digital speedos to cope with the new top speed (stock speedo only does 60km/h - no bueno). If 12 inch wheels were sketchy and even small bumps spine jarring at 85km/h, they’re going to be terrifying at 100+km/h. We did upgrade the brakes on the Street Magics as well though, because that’s what responsible people do. 

If riding a scooter at 100+km/h on tiny wheels is that dodgy, why do it you ask? 
To raise awareness + money to support people with cancer as they go through treatment. That and Mat has just bought a new motorcycle airbag crash protection system so he’s essentially immortal now. We need to test it. 

Please donate to support me and the Cancer Society so no one has to go through cancer alone.

You're awesome, thank you in advance! Target this year is $250 each for Mat and I otherwise we aren’t allowed to take part. And that would be unjust because the world needs to experience the sheer epicness of a 100+km/h Street Magic.

Here’s a link to my page: https://www.c2cscootersafari.org/s/53/207

Nik