Saturday 24th June 2000
The bike initially was fine, we ran rich to feel safe, after all the problems mentioned above we didn't want to knacker up the engine straight away. We decided to weaken the mixture mid morning so put a smaller jet in the carburettor, Lea also moved the needle higher in the carburettor to see if this made any difference, as it was the first time we had used this carburettor anything was worth a try!
We were now happy with the engine, but by lunchtime I had started noticing a strange vibration through the bike when going through the chicane at the far end of the circuit, the whole bike vibrated mid corner when it was changing direction. I came into the pits but we couldn't see anything, nothing was loose or hanging off the bike, Lea took it out and had the same problem. Over lunch we had a brainstorm but couldn't fathom what was going on, by early afternoon it was getting worse and in most braking areas the bike was now vibrating badly! There was definitely nothing wrong with the running gear on the bike, wheel bearing were fine, the headstock and shock linkages had no play in them, the brakes weren't binding and the pads looked fine! We decided to swap the bottom end of the engine, this at least would prove that the vibration wasn't coming from the engine. As we started to undo the engine bolts Lea noticed that the front engine bolt was already loose, we decided to tighten everything up and try the bike again, it did look a bit like clutching at straws, only the front engine bolt was loose the other two were tight. However on the track the bike was transformed back to it's former glory! One loose engine bolt and the whole bike felt like a complete bag of nails!
At the end of the day we put a new ring in the engine and had a few laps to make sure the bike was now running okay. The weather had been dry all day, there was a breeze but it wasn't windy. The day got better and better, by evening it was sunny and settled.
Sunday 25th June 2000
There had been showers over night but by the morning everything was dry and settled. The race started and we soon got into the rhythm, the bike was running fine and straight away I was lapping in the 1m 4s. The bike was faster that the May meeting, but the real benefit from the changes were in the versatility, we now have more mid range and can use this in traffic without losing quite as much time.After about an hour someone dumped oil everywhere and the race had to be stopped. To say how dodgy it looked the marshals soon had everything under control, the race was restarted behind a 'pace moped!' It did look very dangerous, concrete dust was everywhere and certain places were either slippery from the oil or dusty from the concrete. I was taking it well easy, to be honest most people adapted very well, there was very few people crashing because of the oil, this did surprise me!
As the race went on the track got better and better, our bike was running fine, both Lea and me could keep doing 1m 4s laps so we were happy. I had a few near misses and did touch one or two bikes (I'm sorry if I got tangled with anyone who's reading this THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT! I apologised to Ape Racing for bashing into them at one point!)
About four hours into the race Lea had an accident at the right hand hairpin, he'd exited the bend and was looking forward when he caught the kerb which sent him lock to lock and over the top! The tank flew off the bike and Lea did a somersault down the tarmac, however he was soon back on his feet, he came straight into the pits, the bike looked fine so I took it out while Lea collected his thoughts. He'd banged his shoulder but hadn't done anything too serious. In my last stint I got a faster lap that before but it was still in the low 1m 4s we were running 13th or 14th overall and 3rd or 4th in class by the end. Again we didn't look at how many laps we'd done. The bike had been reliable again and we'd had another great race.
The results confirmed a 3rd place we did 255 laps and scored 18 points. We were 7 laps behind the class 2 winner Brew X1 and 5 laps behind Noisy B's. We only need 1 lap per hour challenge for a class win! Our fastest lap of the race was 1m 04.18s the bike was over 1 second per lap quicker than the May meeting. In the championship were 3rd place it looks like this :-
The Class 2 championship looks like this :-
1st Brew X1 (130) 59 points
2nd Noisy B's (123) 57 points
3rd Team Arse (109) 52 points
4rd F U Cups (115) 50 points
5th Armageddon (147) 49 points
One round to go. Will everything be reliable at Anglesey at the beginning of October?
