Nice calm settled weather greeted us on Saturday morning we took the bike straight out onto the track and found out that we could easily ride it in top gear everywhere except the hairpin. We hadn't altered the gearing since Rowrah so it just shows how much faster Ty-Croes is! We put a 14-tooth sprocket on the bike and tried again. This time it was better but we felt the bike was running a little rich, so we put a smaller jet in and tried again. The bike now revved harder, we were lapping in the 1m 13s bracket which was similar to last year. It does seem funny that at Rowrah we have been getting faster and faster, however here at Ty-Croes the bike doesn't seem to improve in the same way.
We were happy with how the bike was going so we spent the afternoon scratch racing and enjoying the nice weather. After practising had finished we replaced the Piston ring as normal ready for the last race of 2000.
The weather was quite different. There was a stiff breeze and it was cloudy. I thought that it was going to start raining all day as the clouds were quite low and grey. We were lucky to make the start, everything happened very quickly. We hadn't got the transponder so I had to run and sign for it while most bikes were already lined up on the grid, we'd just got the bike to the line when the flag dropped and we were off! Unfortunately the bike didn't last long! I did 5 laps and the bike went pop. Going up the hill the engine started to tighten and at the top it made 'the rattle of death'. I pushed it back to the paddock, we looked at the plug, it had melted. We took the head off and found a nice neat hole in the middle of the piston.
Plan B - The bottom end of the engine was full of alloy, the barrel had survived the abuse. We decided to swap the bottom end of the engine, use a spare piston and ring. We also decided to go back to the original jetting (Make the wholething richer) The only draw back was the spare bottom end had only 5 gears. After doing only 5 laps I had realised that the wind meant that the gearing was too tall, so we also decided to put the 13-tooth sprocket back on the bike. This took about 50 minutes, I went back out for a shake down. The bike would only run with the choke on. I brought the bike off the track again and we put an even bigger jet in the bike. After doing this we'd lost about 1 hour. However the bike was now running okay. Both me and Lea were really surprised, the bike would now go flat out in top gear all the way around the track, but to do this meant that you were on the limit at both the right hander half way up the hill and through the chicane.
Occasionally rain started to fall but we just kept going. I had one or two 'moments' but the weather soon changed again and the rain held off.
Our fastest lap was 1m 11.8s which was pretty reasonable considering all the changes we'd had to make. (It is about a second quicker than last year). By the end of the race we'd done 209 laps. We've blown it for the championship but that's racing! We ended up 15th in class and scored 6 points! Here is the class 2 championship at the end of 2000.
| 1st Brew X1 | 78 Points |
| 2nd Noisy B's | 75 Points |
| 3rd F U Cups | 66 Points |
| 4th Armageddon | 62 Points |
| 5th Team ARSE | 58 Points |
