Between the last race weekend and this one, I pulled the front forks, changed the nasty looking oil in them, matched spring heights by pulling the
springs out of the spare set of forks, and generally got them back to
reasonable facsimiles of stock front forks. I still need the gold-valve
emulators and a set of the correct straight-rate springs, but one step at a
time, right? I found that the awful front-end chatter I had while turning
last week was probably due in large part to the fact that the steering head
bearing nut walked itself off by about 3/16ths of an inch. The Honda F2
triples don't jam that nut in place the way the stock triples do, so I'm
going to have to arrange something to fix that. For this weekend I just kept an eye on that nut. It stayed where it belonged. The static sag of both ends
was found to be about 20mm, which is a little stiff, but certainly not TOO
bad, so I pretty much left that alone.
Saturday July 15th, 2000
I arrived at the track with Tim (my 11yo son) at 6:40 am, and got in the
registration line which was just beginning to form for the window-opening at
7am. Registered for two races: Lightweight GT (the half-hour "endurance"
race, which is dominated by SV650s that just run away from me) and the
15-minute LW Sportsman's race (in which my bike has a real chance to be
competitive). Then headed down to the garage to unpack.
The weather forecast was 30% chance of rain, and light-grey clouds started
rolling in mid-morning, which helped keep temperatures in the comfy 70's
range, but looked a little ominous. Despite the threats, no rain developed
all day.
I sat out the first practice, instead getting my gear together. Well, that
part of it that I remembered to bring, anyway. After an exhaustive search
of the truck I decided that the Held gloves I had set next to the door at the house while
saying "Don't forget these!" were probably still next to the door at the
house. I looked through the offerings of the two dealers at the track, and
considered buying a cheap pair to get me through the day, but remembered
that the last time I went on track with a cheap pair of gloves I got exactly
2 turns past the green flag before someone else threw it down in front of
me, and I crashed over his bike. So I bought another set of Held's from
Street 'n Competition. At about $170 they're a little pricey, but I really
love 'em. The old pair will be relegated to street duty and backup for
these new ones that I'll try to use only for racing. I also bought a
fork-tube clamp so I can install one of the steering dampers that I have
lying around. It's certainly a good idea to have one.
Before my race, I went up to T3 to watch the rookie race, which isn't really a race, it's a test to see if you can ride around the track four times without falling down. Nobody wins it. There are no trophies. But if you fall down, you're not supposed to get your license. Well, there were three guys waaAAAaaay out ahead of the pack coming out of T2 on the first lap. The fastest of them came into the braking area for three, locked his rear wheel for a bit making a nice smoke puff, decided the turn wasn't happening, tried to stop in a straight line, but focussed on the tires coming up in front of him at 15 miles per hour or so, and fell over. He got right back up, and seemed to be ok, so it really was just kinda funny. I saw a bunch of the Sportriders crowd up there in the bleachers, as well. What a great day to come out for a race!
Race #3, GTL
Due to my late registration, I was in the last row of grid, behind the first
race as well as all the SVs in my race. My start was not especially
glorious but at least I wasn't last into T1. That was nice. The race pretty
much lasted forever. I passed a couple of guys, which hasn't happened since
last year at this time. My stock EX motor with the Muzzy & jetkit
definitely had motor on the stock EX's, as I was able to pull them along the
straights. Having not dyno'd the bike, this is the best gage I have that
it's working OK. I am braking too much into T1 and T6, and repeatedly think
to myself as I pass their respective apexes "I could be going much faster
here" but somehow I haven't got that message to my right hand yet. I was
able to outbrake a few guys into T3 as well, with the front beginning to
squirm by the end of the race as I braked harder and harder. With the sticky
Pilots and twin discs, the amount of stopping power is *awesome*. On the
penultimate lap I turned that fastest-for-me-ever time of 1:26.498, and
actually caught an expert from the race ahead of me! YeeHaw! This is within
3 seconds of most of the fast guys in my classes and within 5 seconds of the
wickedly fast guys on basically stock EX's. I experimented with shifting down a gear at the top of 9, which seemed to give me a better drive into 11, as opposed to the bottom of 10. If I remember to do it, I will shift at the top from now on, I think. Took 10th, with 19 registrations, for another 3 points.
Race #9, LW Sportsman
A small grid of just 12 bikes for this one, with a heavyweight race in the
wave ahead of us. Dana Temple was in the front row to the right of center, while I
was in the third row to the left of center. I lined up very near the middle of the
row hoping to squirt between the two guys ahead of me on the start.
Unfortunately, Dana did a mega wheelie and got all out of shape and damned
if I didn't have trouble figuring out what to do with the shift lever to
deal with it. I'm learning to live with the GP-pattern (which is the
reverse of that on a normal motorcycle) during regular racing, but sudden
situations still screw me up. While I figured out what to do to get where I
wanted to be, most everyone took off. I wasn't last into T1, but I was near
the end. Basically I stayed there for the race. Ran consistent 1:28s, and
was beginning to make dumb mistakes by the end. I must have been getting
tired, though I didn't recognize it at the time. On the strength of my
motor over his, I passed Rob and his stock EX out of T2 about lap 6. He
stayed with me as we caught a KLR650 which was ahead of us. I pulled even
with the KLR into 1 and 3, but just couldn't get the job done. On the
next-to-last lap, I got too hot into T11, and got my undies in a twist about
leaning enough into T12 to make the chicane, so I cut across the grass a
bit. I lost about 50 feet to the KLR, but Rob didn't come by....I caught the
KLR into T1, but again couldn't get the job done, and followed him around to
T6, and was hoping to just drag-race him to the end, but going up the hill I
downshifted when I wanted to upshift, and suddenly I was going backwards
while Rob came around me. DAMN! I stayed on his butt through the back
infield, and tried to set up for the last dragrace, which I lost by about 4
feet, taking 9th, while chasing for 7th, coming away with 4 more points. This was by far and away the best race-fun I've had in a year. It was a blast. I'm glad to at least be back
in the hunt sort of.
Miscellaneous bike notes:
Sherry Landry (who is a very fast expert and races a bike much like mine
now) runs just one front rotor. I think a single floating disc and new pads
are in the cards for my bike, as well as a set of emulators and springs.
When changing my oil this past week, I decided to just try plain old oil.
The Mobil-1 is really nice, but it's a *bear* to clean off the track if you
fall-over-go-boom and split a case. So the bike got the cheapest Wal-Mart
dino-oil that came in a 4-quart jug, which turned out to be 15W-50. A little
thicker than I'd have selected, oh well. *shrug* It worked fine. No clutch
slipping or other trauma after the first 45 miles worth of racing.
TJ noted last week that he had actually melted a hole in his longer oil
filter with the Muzzy exhaust once, and he suggested going to the shorter filter.
As it happened, the little stash of stock EN filters on the shelf are the
shorter version, so it worked out well. The shorter filter leaves more
clearance, and should run cooler.
The one-piece solo-tail from SRAxis just didn't work well for me, so I
windowed the seat-section of it with a Dremel and installed the front half
of a stock seat. This gave me a platform more to my liking, but caused me to
beat up the SRAxis fiberglass pretty bad at the back where I lean back into
it sometimes. I think I will reinforce it with some additional fiberglass.
Or not. We'll see. I think Airtech makes a solo-tail that fits over the
stock seat quite snuggly to accomplish what I did with my dremel. Maybe one
of those will show up here some day, too. Or not. Regardless, having the
stock seat on there was real nice.
I changed the gearing to 15/43, up from 15/44. By going 4 seconds faster this weekend, The change was hard to judge, but I think there's another gearing swap in my future.
See you all at the races in two weeks, right?
Wade Bartlett
CCS#371
