45 of us, lead by Tony Iannarelli and including a bunch of Sport Riders Of New England rented Loudon for the day. Cool, no? It rained like crazy in the morning, cleared some in the afternoon, but was cool all day. Several people took soil samples with their street bikes, including one formerly pristene ZX-6 which a friend of mine rode to the track, and I had to trailer home for him. The B-motor from my parts bike ran like a champ, has no leaks, runs cool, idles better than the A-motor did, but has some serious throttle lag. Time to adjust the jetting a bit. I'm still running the A-motor carbs, so the jetting is probably not quite right for this stock head. I'll pull the A-motor apart as soon as I can to see what's up, and get it ready for when I blow up this motor. I need a set of 1mm over-so I can still run production twins. Yesterday I turned a couple of 1:33 laps, but lots of slow traffic and passing restrictions kept me closer to 1:37-1:38 most of the time. Twice I got off the line (once too much entry speed in turn 1A, and once trying to pass an F3 on the outside of turn 2) and while trying to pull it back onto the line I lost the front end. In hindsight, I think I should have LEANED more, and TURNED less. Pulling on the bars is what got me in trouble. I'm still a little sore. The big lesson here being: STAY ON THE RACE LINE!
On both occasions, while tumbling, I had plenty of time to think about the discussions concerning "how to fall gracefully and safely". I've heard it said that sticking your arm out will help stop the tumbling, and get to a sliding mode. But it didn't work, I kept tumbling. But I didn't break my arm, so the proponents of that theory aren't right all the time either. The VANSON leathers and HELD gloves did their jobs very well. Patricia Clark had a spare brake lever which she generously loaned to me to get me back on the track. THANK YOU PATRICIA! Fortunately, I didn't grind through any covers, since I loaned my spare waterpump cover to TJ last weekend (which he promptly sanded through again). Time to find some case guards. I'm starting to push harder, and am closer to the limit, so these seem more important now.
Early in the day, an FZR1000 (I think) tucked the front end coming into turn 3...I was setting up to pass him on the gas on the outside after the apex (one of those passing restrictions I mentioned earlier). I would up scraping the hell outta his windshield with the right side of my front axle, but missed him, did not hit the wall, and stayed upright. YAY! Later an examination of his bike revealed almost no damage other than that nasty gouge, and a major black streak from my tire. Go figure.
Other than those two occasions when I tried to redirect the bike too hard without enough lean, the Metzler tires (150 rear, 120 front) worked pretty well, sliding a little, then hooking back up in 3,4,6,and 12 especially. I ran about 25 psi, after a session on the track, they were up to 27 front and 28 rear, so that's about right (I've heard that I should shoot for 10-15% pressure rise). Upshifts going over turn 4-5 while leaned over a bit would step the rear out a little, then it'd come right back in line (probably as much a lack of HP as good tires )
It was cool to blow by 750's and liter-bikes into the turns, but then they'd take it right back on the front straight. DAMN! Actually, most of the riders there were not racers (though some used racer-like body language, hanging off and all) so passing them wasn't a great feat. It may have given some of them pause, though, to have an EX500 zoom by. Most of them were intimidated by turns 7-9, so even though they could easily have passed me, most did not.
An odd thing about this motor/tranny was a lot of driveline lash, which manifested itself as a jolt about 1.5 or 2 seconds after I rolled off the throttle. Very disconcerting coming into turn 6 especially. And I need to do the shift-kit thing to this motor, as well. Found false neutrals a couple times.
