Ok, The planets aligned, the ratbike had been successfully driven up and down the road, and I had some money in my pocket, so I knew the time had finally come to get back on track. I packed up the van Thursday afternoon. First the bike, then the spare wheels, then the 16" wheels and tires that I'd like to sell to someone (anyone), then the boxes of EX parts I'd like to sell, then the toolboxes, lawnchairs, bolts/parts boxes, helmets, leathers, boots, airhose, front and rear stands, the bag of tubing, and basically everything in the garage. Ugh. I need a bigger van. It had been 8 months (since Oct 99) since I raced, and somehow, I had forgotten how much stuff I wanted, and even with the van full, there was more stuff I should have brought: hand towels, a bath towel, oil, and a cooler full of ice come to mind immediately. Next time.
I had planned to arrive at NHIS friday morning about 7am in order to take the advanced Penguin school, but reality conspired to keep me home working until well after 10am. Once the immediate brushfires were doused, I headed out, arriving there around noon. I was able to pick up my transponder at the check-in booth right then, which saved me from one long line at registration later in the day. After arriving and looking at the bike in the stark light of day again, I realize I still had stuff to do to make it track-worthy, and decided that I'd try to have it together for the 3-6pm practice session in the afternoon. So I spent the rest of the afternoon drilling & wiring the caliper bolts, axle bolts, messing with the fairing's attatchment, adjusting the chain, installing the mounting for the new style transponder, filling the gas tank, and wandering back and forth to the Michelin garage trying to buy tires.
The Michelin man still wasn't there by about 2pm, so I bought the new tires from Miles & crew at Street-n-Competition, who were still light on work, and got them right on. Michelin Pilot DOT Race Softs. Wow. My first set of new tires for a racebike. Ever. I have always bought beat-up bikes with decent tires, so I never had to buy any 16" tires for the EXs. The front was $160, the rear $200. Yikes! I've bought entire EX's for that before!
When I put the newly mounted and balanced front wheel on, the brakes dragged. Well, that's not strictly correct. Once I bolted the left caliper in place, the wheel didn't spin at all. There had been a little bit of drag before, but I thought I had it corrected before I left home. Fortunately, I had a spare caliper and carrier. I swapped out caliper carrier first, hoping the slider pins were bent. No dice. I swapped out the caliper bodies, bought some brake fluid (for $4.50 or so) and bled things out. No dice. I shimmed the caliper body off the fork-tube mounting points by 0.050 on top and 0.035 on bottom. That improved matters enough that I was game to try it. The rotor sang while rolling at low-speed, like a crystal goblet as you run your finger around the rim. (*Shrug*) Whatcha gonna do? I puttered around the pits a while, and found that under firm braking, the forks compressed enough to allow the front fender to whack the bottom of the fairing. The fairing bracket would need adjustment. While I was messing with the caliper, the first general practice session started (at 3pm), then ended suddenly after about 4 laps when the skies, which had been cloudy all day, suddenly opened up and poured on everyone.
I didn't miss much by missing *that* practice, I guess, and I was *very* glad to be in a garage! The guys in the garage next to mine were comparing their cost per lap for practice. The fast guys were down to $8 per lap. Ouch. The track dried through the afternoon, and the last session had a good track, but I didn't bother going out. I went up to register for Saturday's races, instead. Getting there 1/2 hour before they opened at 6pm was a good thing, and got me registered & outta there by 6:20, leaving behind a line at least 50 people long. I went back to get the bike through tech. Ratbike got a pretty thorough looking over, and I was advised to lockwire the rear caliper bolts (D'oh! I think I saw them at the same time Brian did.) Also, Betty Bluenose (from scoring) advised me that the side plates were good, but the front plate was too small, and if I didn't get full-sized numbers on there for racing I *would* be DQ'd. Why argue? I'm all for keeping the scoring people happy.
SATURDAY, June 10, 2000:
Up about 5ish. At the track about 6:30am. Warm for New Hampshire in June: it was in the high 50's already, I think, headed for mid 80's. There was a little fog, but the clouds looked harmless. The sun eventually won out, and it was a beautiful (if slightly too warm) day. I pulled out the 6' long iron bar and pried the fairing up an inch or so, bought a stick-on number plate and put full size numbers on the windshield. Someone later said I was easy to spot, as I was the only one with two sets of front numbers, one on top of the other.
I was in the second practice group, and headed out on new tires. The first time around T2, I shifted the wrong way, but after that I seemed ok. Just press down going out of turns, lift up coming into them. Sounds simple, right? I spent the session trying to wick it up slowly, and found that I immediately had some chatter around T9, and by the end of practice I had a lot of chatter there, but wasn't focussed enough to determine if leaning over the tank helped or hurt the problem before my session was ended by having no shifting capability at all. The bike was stuck in 5th gear. I rode back to the pits and remembered that I had neglected to put the circlip on the shift-shaft to hold the lever on there. After looking at it and thinking "I need to find a clip for that or it will fall off" in the garage when I put it together. Doofus. A little begging around the pits turns up a few hopeful leads, but no circlip. Street-n-Comp came through for me, though. Thanks folks! I turned some 1:34's. Ugh. That's about ten seconds slower than the fast EX-guys on DOT tires. Not quite slow enough that they would lap me in the sprint race, that would be demoralizing.
During the second session I played with my weight bias as I went around 9 and decided it seemed better if I pushed my butt back a little, suggesting that I needed less preload on the front. I trimmed a few seconds off the laptimes, but was focussed on the front end thing. The twin-disk F2 front brakes were GREAT! Wow! I also decided that the bare glossy fiberglass seat was pretty slippery, making it hard to not slide up onto the tank when I brake, and making it difficult to keep myself pushed to the rear while turning. I'm still not sure what I'll do about that.
I backed out the fork preload-adjusters by a mile or so, and TJ pointed out that one of my fork tubes was higher than the other. By about 10 thousandths. Hmmm. I thought I put those in evenly (see Wade furrow his brow). So I fixed that, and hoped that these mods would improve matters. Tim (my son) and Connie (my fiancee) arrived around 1-ish, a little before my first race. It's nice to have a cheering section!
My first race, #3, was an Endurance race: 30 minutes. About 22 laps. A half hour at NHIS is about as stenuous as an hour at Willow Springs, for me, because this track is so much tighter & technical. Lots of hard cornering, few long sweepers. Anyway, I got a pretty good start, but slowly everyone went past me. I turned a 1:36 early, then 1:34, then 1:32, then around lap 7 I got a 1:30.7, which was my best for the day, I think. After that, the chatter got progressively worse throughout the race, with T9 being the worst, but Turns 1 and 6 also generating enough chatter that I couldn't go in like I wanted to. The tires stuck GREAT! I am convinced (though I can't and won't try to prove it) that chatter like that would have had my 16" tires skittering across the pavement, putting me in the weeds. I think the money was well spent. After Lap 7, I just tried to hold my pace, and ran consistent 1:31-1:32 times to the end. Basically, I served as a backmarker for everyone, and just tried to use clean lines so people could go around me without hurting any of us. Sherry Landry went by me like I was chained to a rock, followed a little later by Shandra on what used to be *my* SV. (sigh) A couple times I caught myself getting ready to shift the wrong way, and corrected it before I goofed. Once I knew I wanted to down shift, but couldn't for the life of me decide which way to move the lever, so I just stayed in that gear until I was in a clear space and could focus on shifting again. On the penultimate lap, I suddenly saw TJ as I came out of T2, and began to give chase. I gained on him steadily, and was right behind him into T12 as we headed for the checkered flag, but coming out I lifted the shiftlever instead of pressing, and got the rear wheel sliding sideways (probably less than two feet). The tire beheved well, and as soon as the engine caught up to the tire, I was back on track, but it was too late, finishing about 2 bikelengths behind TJ. Later I learned that I was the third EX, but the 15th in the race. (The r
est were of the class-dominating SV650 breed.). There were 22 entrants, with a couple DNFs and DQs, so I wasn't last! Yipee! I count this reeentry to racing on a bike I put together a success.
The brake disks were fairly warm to the touch, but livable, so I decided not to mess with them. Between races, I relaxed, poured water over my head, and had a nice time chatting with everyone.
Race 9, LW Sportsman. I got a good start, and was 4th as we came into T3. My goal fopr this race was primarily to NOT CRASH. I was successful, and even passed a couple people. The slower corners were no problem (T1A, 2, 3, 10) and I worked on braking less and leaning more there. The faster corners just sucked with the front end chatter, but it was improved after the bike got to sit for a while between race, leading me to suspect the old, thin fork oil may be responsible for some of my troubles. I will put new oil, and set the sag front/rear before the next races. This time around I just put the forks on with whatever they had in them when I bought them. Yeah, I know that was silly, but I didn't have time for that detail. And it's that sort of detail that wins races. On the last lap, I came around start/finish to see Nick holding the white flag curled up in his hand, so I figured he was about to give the white flag (last-lap) signal to the race leader, who was closing on me. But noone passed me on that lap, and Nick had the waving checkered out for me next time around. It was not clear to me if I actually finished the race at that point... I hoped I had, and pulled into the pits. Preliminary results seemd to place me 7th of 13, so I guess that's a good thing. Once I fix the forks life will get better. I love my Pilots.
I still have enough points to go to expert, but until I'm closer to the front, that's not going to happen! See you all at the next event!
Weekend Totals:
Race Entries: $150 (one endurance $100, one sprint $50)
Tires: $360
Misc Parts: $20
Food: $20 (we didn't eat at the track much)
Pit Passes: $45 (me & connie, Tim's still free!)
Gas: $10
Garage: $30
Finishes
One 17th of 21 or so GTL
One 7th of 13 or so LWSP
