There's a first time for everything

Last weekends meeting at Santa Pod was a good one, and had a few surprises in store.
There were 3 qualifying sessions on Saturday, the first run was messy as the bike lost traction off the line and headed right so i had to roll the throttle for a large part of the track until it was headed back in the right direction and it crossed the line with a time of 8.8 seconds. At the time that was good enough to qualify 5th or thereabouts.
Oddly i discovered the main switch had suffered the same fate as the one that let me down at the last meeting, so a new switch was fitted and it was encased in the sponge from a washing up scourer pad, and covered in tape as a preventative measure. needless to say it's still in tact so that works well!
The next run was not a proper one, as i knew the bike wasn't running properly after the burnout so rather than break something i just trundled up the track.
Back in the pits we started looking for the cause of poor running. The plugs were changed, wiring, coils and leads checked. Valve clearances - all sorts but to no avail, it still sounded wrong.
Then i remembered the missing epoxy episode that we had recently and shining a torch down the intake revealed the problem. Another piece of epoxy (at the opposite side of the engine this time) had fallen out leaving a hole to the outside world and letting air in. Knowing we would be called for the 3rd run any minute i cleaned the area as best as i could and mixed up some epoxy putty. The instructions said to leave it an hour but we didn't have that long and we ran about 40 minutes later. The run was nice and clean but the top speed was down and i noticed I'd only selected 5th gear just before the finish, normally I'm into 5th much sooner. The result however was a great 8.04 which bumped us up to number 3 qualifier, our best qualifying position so far!

Race day then and we were against Dutch racer Maarten Zilstra, Maarten had been running well but had changed to a different type of tyre after his had started disintegrating and it gripped harder than expected and his bike nearly stalled. Whilst i had a pretty good run and crossed the line ahead of him and ran an 8.1. Once again the top speed was way down at just 155mph.
Back in the pits an on to the next round then, and i discovered the routing of my clutch cable altered when the bodywork went on, the effect of this was all the freeplay in the cable was taken up, and instantly i knew this was the cause of the top speed problem. The clutch had been slipping the whole length of the track! It took at least 6 turns on the adjuster to get any freeplay.

With that sorted i thought surely we are going to run faster in the next race and there's a chance if i cut a good light we could win against Harold wolfenden, who was running very consistent 7.8's. The outcome however was very different. I staged, opened the throttle to the stop bringing the engine onto the 2step, and i threw the clutch away as usual. Only the light hadn't changed yet and i immediately saw the redlight on the tree. I wasn't the only one misbehaving though, several other racers also redlit during that round, plus the split pin fell out of my airshifter partway down the track so it didn't change gear anyway.
I knew straight away taht all this time I've been anticipating the starter without realizing it, he normally doesn't wait but drops the tree very quickly. It was a different starter. That is the first genuine redlight i have ever pulled, and I've now made approx 120 runs. So that's not too bad ....

The journey home wasn't without it's incidents either, shortly after joining the M6 near coventry the oil light came on on the van, it went off again shortly afterwards but it was odd as I'd checked the levels recently. Then a few miles further i could smell burning oil slightly, this descended into definite smoke in the cab and required the windows winding down. It was just a couple of miles to the next services so i carried on slowly. But the last mile the van was now smoking heavily and we could see it in our mirrors, it made it down the slip road and cut out completely so i pulled the clutch and stopped in a handy lay by, smoke pouring from the engine. It was very close to bursting into flames so i grabbed a fire extinguisher ready. It wasn't needed and an hour later it had almost stopped. No compression from the engine though. The Vito was finally dead.
Not having relay on my AA cover meant no tow home so instead we got them to tow us to a quiet residential area, meanwhile Sam and Stuart drove back to Manchester where Sam emptied her transit and headed off back to rescue us. We swapped the bike and everything over and siphoned most of the fuel from the Vito too (I'd just filled it!). It was gone 2am before we were home. The Vito will get scrapped next week when i go down the the extreme bike weekend. I'll meet the scrap guy there and grab the tax disk out of it too.
Fortunately 'd been looking at vans recently and had made an offer (pending a test drive) on a Long wheelbase high top Citroen relay just a few days before. So Mondays activity was getting a new van! as it happens the van drove ok and i bought it, fingers crossed it's a good un. The plan is to convert it into a motorhome over the winter so we no longer need the trailer tent.

The extreme bike weekend is a week on Saturday and is the last race of the year. The entry list hasn't been updated yet but i would imagine a similar number of entries.