Saturday 16th October 1999
The weather was amazing for mid October, we'd spent weeks talking about how cold and wet it was going to be, so sunshine and clear sky's were a real lift.
Initially the bike wasn't running properly, if the throttle was opened fully the engine bogged down. Looking at the plug helped, we were running far too rich! Down jetting sorted the problem although we had to progressively use smaller jets. Lea was 'going for it' straight away and fell off the bike 4 (yes four) times in the morning. This was like the old days where we first started racing but we've been doing this for 6 years. The bike was standing up to the abuse pretty well only peripheral parts were getting damaged. I don't know weather our tyres are getting knacked or maybe the cold track temperature was causing the accidents, but unless you got the tyres warmed up properly there was no warning before the tyres let go! All in all we were happy with the setup of the bike and didn't change the bike.
Sunday 17th October 1999
The bike ran faultless all day, we were the weak link. We all fell off once, luckily each time the bike wasn't damaged! Here's a picture of me on the deck! Rowrah suits our bike and we all thoroughly enjoyed the race. We did 261 laps and usually we were doing 1m 7s or 1m 8s this was better and more consistent than the May meeting. We finished 7th in class 1 which is our best result to date.
It was nice to see so many of the 'Fast' RS framed bikes having mechanical problems. Long live the 'Moped' aspect of Mayhem, some teams look to be taking it far too seriously. Keep it cheap and cheerful, if people want to throw £1000's at it let them, but make sure that these teams don't take over with rule changes etc. There's nothing better than a dodgy class 3 step through winning and getting their name on the trophy. The name of the game is (and should always be) 'Moped Mayhem' I think it's a mistake to start calling it '50cc Endurance Racing' If people are that serious about their racing get and ACU license and race RS125's (they've probably already got a frame!).
I took some photos here are a few of them :-
So at the end of 1999 we finished 16th in class 1, altogether we did 842 laps! The only disappointment was the first race at Rowrah in May when the bike wasn't running correctly, otherwise the bike has ran reliably and is getting faster.
In 1998 we finished 10th in class 1, the bike was slower back then but didn't break down. So all in all we're happy with 1999 and looking forward to 2000
Saturday 26th June 1999
We soon had the bike setup, it's always the same at Ty-Croes. Trying to get the gearing right is quite difficult. On one hand you want to go down the straight as fast as possible but you have very little power to get up the hill. The wind also changes direction frequently which also interferes with bike setup. However this was soon overcame and a comprimise was reached. The bike ran fine all day and in the evening there was very little work to do.
The weather forecast wasn't good for Sunday and most of Saturday night there was quite long spells of rain.
Sunday 27th June 1999
The weather steadily got better on Sunday morning and by the time the 6 hour race started the track was dry! We had a good race keeping the bike out on the track all day. Lea fell off 4:30min into the race, but the bike wasn't damages and Lea only had a few scratches and scrapes. Again the electronic tagging made the racing more proffesional, you could quite easily see how the race was going and keep an eye on lap times etc. We were doing 1m 13s or 1m 14s ocasionally we could do 1m 12s when the wind was in the right direction!
In the end we did 242 laps and finished 15th in Class 1. Due to our disaster in the first race at Rowrah we're 20th overall in class one.
Saturday 1st May 1999
The bike worked well straight away, changes made over the winter were definitely an improvement. We altered main jet to see if any advantage could be made but on the whole these changes had very little effect.
Sunday 2nd May 1999
Electronic tags were to be used for the first time, this made the whole process of lap scoring much simpler and the everything seamed to become more 'professional'. In the warm up before the 6 hour race the bike started playing up! Typical. We altered the bike frantically but we were not happy, we didn't want to destroy an engine, the mixture was weak, up jetting didn't richern the mixture, there must have been an air leak somewhere. We ran for half an hour but then decided to spend the day getting ready for tomorrow's 4 hour race. We swapped the engine and started setting the bike up, by the end of the 6 hour race we'd improved the lap times from 1m 17s down to 1m 8s and we felt confident that the bike would stay reliable. All in all we did 155 laps, this wasn't enough to score points but we had kept the show on the road and still had the 4 hour race to look forward to,
Monday 3rd May 1999
A much better race. The bike ran fine all day and we didn't fall off or damage the bike. We managed 184 laps which made us 11th in class one scoring 9 points! Lap times were between 1m 8s and 1m 11s.
Overall we were 20th in the championship after Rowrah and we'd had a great weekend.
