Two wheels, no motor!

After all the issues with the race bike, it was almost a relief to go back to something a lot simpler in terms of the bicycle. I did the Iron Horse (Durango to Silverton) last year with some friends, and returned to it this year with the idea of beating the train. I even planned to train (hah!) for it on the Crest here, riding with a Wednesday night group and getting actually into shape, and signed up with the Tailwind ‘beat the train’ group.

All I had to do was ride 49 miles over a claimed 6,800′ of climbing and two 10,500’+ passes in 3 hours, 30m. Easy, right??

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First Race weekend — or not

June 20-21st was the first race weekend at SMRI, and I thought that thanks to a lot of work from Jesse Beck and the crew over at PJs Triumph that the Daytona was going to be at least raceable — so far as to even go get a set of GP-As for the wheels, and to sign up for as many races as I could. Didn’t think the bike was going to be perfect, but we thought it should at least be rideable for seat time, experience, and MAYBE a couple of championship points somewhere (though the rider was going to be the limitation there).

I should learn to tailor my expectations, especially after the tuning saga. It was definitely not to be, and the track day showed it. Short version — that 8k lag was more like an 8k hole, and after 8k it wasn’t spectacular nor fun. Half the track day was spent fetching bits and trying to troubleshoot, but there’s a strong indicator that it’s fuel related, not electrical. The long, sad tale after the jump.

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First year race bike — trials and tribulations!

I’ve been told by my friends who have raced longer than I have that the first year with a new bike is always a challenge. I’ve certainly experienced that with both my last two (and only two) bikes. Apparently, I also have an innate ability to acquire leaky radiators.

After the Arroyo Seco trip, the 6-8k bog on the engine was worrying me, so figured I’d do a quick dyno pull on the bike and see what was going on. I was confident that — if things were bad — we could map around them with TuneECU. What could possibly go wrong??

Yeah. Right. After the jump…

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Shakedown — bike and rider

D675 on the trailer
Off to see the wizard — or at least the track (still need to remove the TechSpec stickers!)

Finally. Weather co-operated, bike co-operated, timing co-operated, and even work co-operated. (Thanks Boss — though I know he doesn’t read this). Got the bike all loaded up for a trip down to Arroyo Seco Raceway for their track day. This is the same one that was the shakedown for the RC51 last year that ended up with this:

Crashed RC51

The plan was to do a bit better than that this year — and to get a little more seat time in, since my last experience with a supersport of any description was in May 2013, and I could never figure how to get that out of a hole

The short version — went round in circles, didn’t crash, had fun! Long version after the jump. Photos are here, including the awkward ‘I do not know the track where the bloody hell am I going and how does this bike work’ ones. Just for added embarrassment!

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