In 4 days there were only 4 chances to get down the track and out of those we only made 2 passes. The first was missed due to work in progress on fitting the slider clutch, which was somewhat of a mammoth effort, and took a lot more time than anticipated, and if it wasn't for the loan of washers and shims off other racers it wouldn't have gone in at all.
We made it out though and amazingly the clutch worked straight away and got us down the track ok. An 8.6 run which wasn't bad considering i was on and off the throttle 3 or 4 times due to it drifting towards the wall.
The next day and this time it was a perfectly straight run with no drama, clocking in at 8.06 at 167mph, very nearly a personal best and quick enough to place us number 1 qualifier. The odd thing was the 60ft times were no improvement over previous runs, in fact the 8.06 was with a very poor 1.39 60ft time.
Slow-mo video of the 8.06 run
I'd noticed when stripping the clutch out to check it that the clutch plates were covered in oil and the steels blue. It turns out your meant to block the oil feed to the clutch bearing and not knowing this I'd been running a pressurised oil clutch, no wonder it hadn't been leaving well.
I made up a bung to stop the oil flow and looked forward to the next run. However, after waiting the whole of the next day to get out, and finally making it late in the afternoon, i did the burnout as usual and found i was unable to get the bike out of 5th gear. We pushed it back to the pits to try and find out why.
The only thing i could find was the air gap seemed to have increased, so maybe that was part of the problem, i can only think that for some reason the clutch was dragging and preventing getting it out of gear. On the plus side we were still number 1 qualifier and should get a bye run in the first round so straight into the semi-finals!
Rain and more rain prevented anything at all going down the track on race day and at 12.30 they cancelled the event.
The next race is in 4 weeks time - the Springspeed Nationals at Shakespeare county raceway. Not too long to wait to see if the new - and now dry clutch can help get us into the 7 second zone.
There is now a facebook bopchop drag racing page, so if you have your face permanently implanted there you can now check us out at http://www.facebook.com/thebopchopmotorcycledragracingteam
Sam has updated her photo site with pictures from the event, the latest album can be seen here:
http://s399.photobucket.com/albums/pp78/caprigirl13/Easter%20Thunderball%202012/
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