The good things about this weekends racing were the weather, which was pretty much perfect, and the improvements in my elapsed times.
And the bad things about the weekends racing?? Well lets start with run 1.
Run 1 - I didn't select neutral properly and stalled after the burnout. Sirus, who had never stared my bike before had to come and have a go at getting it running again in the burnout box. He was shaking a bit when i met him back in the pits, apparently two cars had started burning out at each side of him before he had chance to get away! The run went ok but for some reason i couldn't shift into top gear and ended up backing off slightly in 4th through the finish. It was still the best time so far, a 9.61 even without 5th. On the return road i could get 5th gear with a foot shift, so i wasn't sure what the problem was. Nothing had changed since the last event and it had no such problems with 5th gear then.
For the next run i decided to make sure i had exactly 120psi in the air shifter and give it another go .... hoping it was just a one off.
It was a good run, although it did bog down just a little in 1st, but once again i couldn't get 5th gear, so i just held it open on the rev limiter across the line. Top speed wasn't too good but i recorded another new best time of 9.545 seconds.
After speaking to Dave Beck about the 5th gear problem we made some changes to the airshifter to make sure it had enough travel to select each gear. Feeling fairly confident that it was now cured we went for another run.
I made it to the line fairly quickly as there was no queue but when the lights changed and i dropped the clutch it just stalled. Sirus came running with the starter but it wouldn't turn it over so i rolled back to the pairing lanes where i tried to start it again. I got it running and so went straight back out for another go. Sandra Chaplain on her comp bike was in the opposite lane, the lights dropped and once aging the bike lurched forward and stalled! Once again Sirus came running and this time he got it started. I restaged, got a good launch, but when i pressed the button for 3rd gear the bike just cut out and that was the end of that. I had to wait for the Santa pod crew to tow me away!
The problem turned out to be the Shift Kill switch had failed. I tried to fix it but to no avail. Luckily Dave Beck sold me a new one so fitted that and went for one final run. This time i posted another 9.6 second run and once again i still had no 5th gear.
That evening, knowing that there were only 3 qualifying runs scheduled for Saturday i decided to put the bigger nitrous jets in and set the controller on a fairly progressive 3 second build time.
I can't remember who was in the opposite lane, but i got away fairly well only to realize halfway down the track that the nitrous wasn't working. I know i opened the bottle valve and flicked the switch on the startline, but for some reason it didn't work and i crossed the finish in another 9.7 second elapsed time.
Back in the pits i went through the wiring checking everything, and i noticed that the Schnitz nitrous controller was displaying strange things on it's screen. It usually says <<< schnitz_motorsports="">>>>, only now it was displaying garbled nonsense ....
The controller was dead!
The only solution would be to dump the controller and just spray all the nitrous in when i hit full throttle, so i rewired it and tested that it was working. Unfortunately i missed the next qualifying round completely because we couldn't get the bike started. It turns out the fuel that had been sprayed in whilst testing the nitrous solenoids was still pooled in the cylinders and was raising the compression to high for the starter to turn it over. We sussed it out just minutes to late for a run.
I know i turned the bottle on so it wasn't that, and i remember arming the switch just before staging so it's a bit of a mystery as to why it didn't work. The result though was that i hadn't qualified, sitting 9th out of 9...... Bummer.
I'll continue this waffle another time ......
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