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

Unlike last time

We missed the Summer Nationals event last year due to a fair amount of destruction at the previous meeting and not having an engine that was ready. As it happens we didn't miss much as it rained a lot and was so windy that the bikes were only able to race over the eighth mile.

This time we do have a working engine, and tomorrow we will head down to Santa pod, where of course it won't rain and there will only be a refreshing gentle breeze just to keep everyone cool .... sorted.
If we get there early enough we may enter Fridays test day, it's a lot of money but we do have a couple of things to test. Gearing is one change we've made, due to miscalculations and being distracted by bigger problems we noticed that the gearing was some way out, so hopefully the right combination of sprockets has been fitted and we no longer have a ratio set for 190mph.

All the coverage is being taken care of thanks to the always fabulous eurodragster.com, with live commentary and webcam, as well as end of day galleries and pit notes.
check it out HERE

Red White 'n' Blue

The next race meeting - the Summer Nationals, is now just a couple of weeks away. The entry list for all bike classes is quite impressive and just shows how many bikes there are out there in the wings.
The latest entry list has 9 in comp bike, which isn't bad at all but the real surprise is funny bike, which has come back from the brink of extinction in the middle of last year to 12 bikes at this one.
So whos new in comp? well.... the list looks like this:

1	Philip Leamon	Suzuki GSXR 750	1290cc
2	Harold Wolfenden	Suzuki Hayabusa	1299cc
3	Phil Crossley	Suzuki GSX	1500cc
4	Tony Clark	Suzuki GSX	1500cc
6	Jemma Venables	Suzuki Hayabusa	1300cc
7	Lizz McCarthy	Suzuki GSX	1428cc
24	Mick Winyard	Suzuki GSXR1100	1216cc
42	Alan Davies	Suzuki GSX	1428cc
627	Kevin Osman	Suzuki Turbo Busa	1300cc

Both Kevin Osman and Mick Winyard have previously been 8.50 bike racers. I've spoken to a few 8.50 racers recently who are planning the move to comp bike, so there may be even more entries to come later in the year. 8.50 is proving to be the stepping stone that it was intended to be.

Paintwork is 99% finished, it's certainly looking a lot less stealthy than the previous matt black affair.

Paintjob part 2

Paintwork is making progress, it's about half done but I've run out of paint, one more can should do it but I'll have to get it mixed up one day this week. It's worked out cheaper to spray with cans than using the spray gun so that's what I've done. New vinyls are on order too and should be here before the end of the week. Here's a photo to be going on with... hopefully next weekend will see it finished other than cutting and polishing.
The bodyshell has seen better days, i should really use it to make a mould and make a new one as the gel coat has cracked all over and it's been repaired underneath several times and has become a fair bit heavier than it should be. But it'll look presentable enough and do another few seasons should it need to.

One rather obvious thing that's come to light recently is that the gearing on the bike is miles out. Why we haven't noticed this before seems a bit of a mystery but a larger front sprocket was fitted to the bike not long after i built it and since then i guess other things like broken engines have been the focus of our attention, and somehow this has escaped our attention. It's currently geared for over 190mph! so i've done some sums and ordered a larger rear sprocket and added a link to the drive chain.
It may help sort our still slightly off pace 60ft times and definitely gives an increase in torque so it'll be interesting to see what difference it makes.

And lastly, for those who don't do facebook, this was posted on our page after the last event. It's the shakey cup! the first cup/trophy thing we have won since the bopchop team started racing.