The CE2 goes home to Louden

This photo really isn't relevent to anything but it's holding some space until I can round up some photos from the recent efforts. I promise to make it worth your while to come back and see...

Fortunately the multiplier works both ways, so the good carries twice the celebration. This project is shaping up to be a more interesting challenge with every trip out on the track. It is fun being the oddball team--the only single, the only custom chassis, the team most apparent of advantage and disadvantage--and there seems to be a lot of people rooting for us.

We go to VIR on Thursday for another round, so stay tuned.

Todd

Although Loudon is our home track, I forget how hard it is to go fast there. The turns are stop and go, braking is abrupt and bumpy, and there is no place to rest. Chris and I went there to race last weekend, a little behind the 8 ball in setup and without much sleep. After a weekend of constant adjustments, mechanical mishaps, flash flood rain storms, and bad coffee we ended up with an 8th place finish, in the money and in the points. I ran consistent 1:17's for the race, best being a 17.1. It was a wild ride. I had a mid pack start, been up to 7th and was ready to hunt for 6th, but as the laps went on the fatigue turned my arms into overcooked pasta. I missed the half way flag and didn't know how much race was left, getting lazy and unwilling to hang off as much. I almost low sided in T11 just riding off the inside of the tires, and knew it was time to slow down or fall down. I lost a place and rode home in 8th.

Eric Wood dominated the race. Since I usually watch him on TV it didn't matter to me much. I couldn't match 1st and 2nd, but I wasn't loosing any ground on the others ahead of me. This is promising. We give up a lot of horsepower on the start, and I'm not used to being mid pack in T1--it is a frightening place to be! I need to be more aggressive in the first lap and not let the leaders string out.

Troubles, by type:

PREPARATION--the engine didn't go together until the night we left. Cases piston and cylinder were new. We threw everything in the van and headed to Peter's for dyno work, breaking in the engine and testing some secret rocket fuel that gave us a horse and a half more power. Without Peter's help we would have lost more time in carburetion and ignition adjustments. Happy and sick from rocket fumes, we drove into the wee hours of Friday morning.

MECHANICAL--in GP singles the bike stalled on the line. I was paddling off to the grass when Chris jumps the wall, car battery in one hand and starting tool in the other, as officials ran after him yelling "GET OFF THE TRACK!" In a heartbeat he fit the starter to the crank and we were back to life. Two laps later the steering damper fell off. I wagged and wiggled my way to 4th place.

For LWGP the starter tool drained the battery, proving you can't start a bike when the fuel is shut off to the motor. The world round, fools are still forgetting to turn on the petcock, mystified as to why the engine won't start. In qualifying I began to feel a toxic cooling sensation on my legs: the fuel tank slit and was spilling. Chris was off to the welding garage (love those NHIS amenities) and by 2nd call for Super Singles, a class we wanted to win, we were fitting the tank and filling it up, only to discover a second crack. We were spectators for that race.

These are the bad things, but they were small. The engine never ran better, and it shifts much smoother without cracks in the crankcase.

RIDING--Pushing is a gradual process, and I'm more gradual than most. I had some real loser sessions out there, on partially damp surfaces sometimes, with handling issues other times, or wasting laps behind slow riders without the confidence to pass. Two days before we left I hyper-extended my knee, caused by...no, not motocross, jumping rope. The bend to the pegs is delicate. Excuses excuses.

SET UP--the troubling theme of the weekend. Loudon brings out the worst in a bike's handling. We were 1.5 inches up on rear ride height to get it to turn and made many damping adjustments only to conclude that the front spring is too soft. Penske sent us a lighter one overnight, their lightest, and it is still too hard. The front and rear are not in sympathy, making the bike wavy and shaky mid turn. We lowered ride height by an inch to take some nervousness away from the front, which helped. We had high speed chatter in T1 and are maxed out on damping, so a revalve is probably in order. There is some thought to going to a falling rate linkage for the front, as the shock seems to cease to work well at some point in its travel. As you might observe, our choices range from turning little dials to re-engineering leverage ratios. We've found our way to the ballpark, but we are not yet sure if it is the right ballpark.

CONCLUSION-- Racing as a team is a new experience. The responsibility is cut in half and the pressure is doubled. We took turns being mad at ourselves.