Eat my epoxy

We were in for a pretty mixed bag this weekend. Friday's test day started with rain, but dried up quickly and became very warm. We got a couple of runs in, which is all we hoped for really.
First run was the obligatory - nitrous didn't activate type of run, where surprise surprise ..... the nitrous didn't activate. It still went 8.8 even with 12 degrees of timing out, and felt somewhat slow. After waggling every electrical connector and all the fuses, we went out again and ran a better 7.94 @ only 161mph. that run netted us the best 60ft time to date as well, close to the 1.1's we've been after for ages with a 1.2003. It seems the revised gearing was doing the trick, but we're not sure whats happened to the MPH.

Onto qualifying on Saturday, and the wind had picked up dramatically - luckily it was blowing clean down the track and helped dry off the mornings rain. It was early afternoon before we got our first run in. the bike left well, but drifted towards the centreline towards the top end and i ended up shutting of early and ran an 8.20. On the second run we added 5% to the nitrous start percentage and that was enough to get that elusive 1.1 60ft (just) with a 1.1992, the rest of the run was good too, it's actually worth selecting 5th gear now as well, whereas before i would only just make 5th before crossing the line. It was also a really good close race with Liz McCarthy, neither of us knowing who'd won. The time was another 7.9 and would be my best qualifying time of the day. The final run which was in the cooler air of the evening looked promising and another improved 60ft, but it failed to shift into 3rd gear and that was the end of that.
I'd suspected something was wrong however as the bike wasn't still running on tickover at the end of the shutdown area as usual. So back in the pits i pulled the plugs out and found nothing wrong, then the torch down the intake showed a more revealing sight.... pretty much all the epoxy in no1 cylinder was missing, most of it was discovered further down the port jammed against the valves, and so we needed to pull the head to look for any other damage, and to replace the epoxy. A chunk had wedged a valve open and at first it looked bent, but it checked out ok and after scuffing the port up sufficiently i globbed some rather runny epoxy in there and tried to stop it running out.

Not the way we hoped to spend the evening but by 11pm it was all complete and pretty much ready to go. It ran ok when we tried it in the morning, and so we went out for the first round of elimination. We'd qualified 3rd and so were against no6 qualifier Tony Clark. the last 2 times we've run against Tony he's beaten us and this was to be the 3rd! I had an unbelievable half a second holeshot, and the first part of a good run, but both of us headed left and i had to shut the throttle or cross into the other lane, and at that point Tony came past just before the finish.
Unfortunately, it started to rain just after that and so the meeting came to an end right there.

Quite a good weekend for the Competition Bike class as a whole, only about half a second separating the whole class in qualifying. Possibly the quickest qualifying field for comp ever?
Well done to everyone for making it happen.
All Photos are courtesy of Sam and her new canon 650D ..... fancy! The rest of her photo's can be seen HERE