Rowrah - May 2001

Saturday 5th May 2001  
There were many things to try on the bike. We wanted to have a change so we'd altered the gearing on the back sprocket and used a 5-speed gearbox in place of the 6 speed that we'd used all last year. The carburettor had also been changed over winter, so we needed to make sure that this would work okay at the racetrack.

The carburettor was our first problem. Initially the power band was very small, the bike would rev hard but it easily dropped out of the power when changing gear. The plug colour looked fine so we weakened the mixture, the smaller jet made the bike run better, so we weakened it again and felt happy that it was not getting too hot. It's funny how the smaller jet gave us more bottom end power, maybe the bore on the new carburettor is too big or the needle height needs altering further. 



Next we had to get the gearing set-up, we weren't pulling top gear along the straight, so the new back sprocket was relegated to the subs bench and last years sprocket was bolted back onto the bike. Instantly it was transformed. We spent the rest of the day making sure that nothing nasty could spoil the rest of the weekend. This year we're not going to change things unless there is a problem, so we didn't put a new ring in the bike at the end of the day. 

Although water-cooled bikes could be used in practice they were few and far between. One of the RS framed water-cooled bikes was stunningly fast, but at the moment the jury is still out about whether it's a good or bad thing.


Sunday 6th May 2001
Sunny, calm weather for the first race of 2001. We got a reasonable start and settled into a rhythm. Steve was racing for the first time in 2 years, but he soon found his feet and started enjoying racing again, he got faster as the weekend went on, but didn't fall off (unlike Lea and me!). The bike was out on the track for the full 6 hours.

Everything was running fine, until 5 and half hours into the race. I was doing the final session on the bike, when at the bottom of the hill going into the right hand bend someone fell off right in front of me. I should have ignored them and watched what I was doing, but I panicked and touched the brake when leaning over too far, the end result - one bent handle bar and no front brake. I soon got used to riding with only the back brake, but I certainly wasn't going to start racing with people, so I just kept circulating until the end. Luckily we didn't get black flagged! I didn't have any 'dodgy moments' during the last half hour, but we did lose a bit of time.


After the race, I realised that I had done the right thing. We wouldn't have been able to mend the brake with only 30 minutes of the race left, one of the banjo bolts had moved and brake fluid was leaking from this.


By the end we'd done exactly 300 laps and ended up 4th in class! Our fastest lap was in the 1m 04s so we were pretty happy.



In the paddock we bled the brake, straightened the handle bar. Again we didn't touch the engine. Everything was ready for the 4 hour race.



Monday 7th May 2001
Another nice day, maybe the hottest so far. We had a pretty quiet 4 hour race. Lea dropped the bike twice mid hairpin, but didn't break anything. The bike was reliable, and we all had great fun battling with anyone and everyone. Steve was now head down arse up, knee out and going for it. So all three of us were keeping the bike circulating. At the end of the race we'd done 202 laps which put us in 4th again with a similar fastest lap to yesterdays race. Another great weekends racing!

The championship have us in 3rd place in class 2. Bike 123 was excluded due to an oversized engine. It's very rare for people to get caught cheating. Anyone can make a bigger engine go fast, it's much more difficult to make a 50cc engine go fast and be reliable!



The Championship looks like this.

1st	105	Mad Maxi	40
2nd	115	F U Cups	38
3rd	109	Team ARSE	34
4th	149	Bell End Racing	33
5th	135	Armageddon 1	32

See you at Elvington in June!