Extremely good bike weekend

As the title says - the Extreme performance bike weekend was one of the best events so far.
The weather was perfect despite a damp start on Saturday, and with no cars running at all it was pretty quiet. The atmosphere was great and lots of people had personal best times and speeds .... including me.

There are too many pictures from the event to post here so check out Sams new site for the full compliment of great shots.

When i was building the bike i was told it could probably run into the high 8 second bracket, so that's what i set my sights on.... to get the bike into the 8's.
The best time prior to this weekend was a 9.2 from the last event at SCR
After the trouble i had at that event, with the bike going to the left each run and the clutch burning itself up, this was the first chance to see if the changes i made have worked.
The first run was really good apart from a couple of problems, the clutch was too hard and the bike almost stalled on the line when i let the lever out. It shows the difference a new pack makes as i had the same base pressure as the last run and that slipped the full length of the track. Anyway, despite it bogging down off the line it then picked up and flew down the track straight as an arrow, to a new best ET of 9.1. It would have been quicker but i had the return of the missing 5th gear gremlin and so had to cross the line flat out in 4th
I pulled 20lb of base pressure out of the clutch for the next run. This worked well and this time the bike went much harder off the line, running on the wheely bars for the first 3 gears, once again it just gripped and went perfectly straight. The time for that run was a brilliant 8.8718 seconds.
Here's a video of that run. Thanks to Sirus for filming.

At the finish on that run the bike just cut out completely. We spent all of the time between that round and the next going through the wiring looking for a fault but couldn't find one. And sure enough in the next round it cut out again but this time at half track.
I'm not really sure what the problem was, the air shifter kill plunger was the prime suspect (we thought it might be sticking on) so we cleaned and rebuilt it. The next 2 runs it didn't do it so it might well have been that, but I'll go over everything again when i have more time.

The 8.8 run was also notable for the stated top speed, an incredible and slightly suspect 189.54mph! It must have been some kind of glitch with the timing equipment as it runs in the 150mph zone usually. Still it's an impressive looking time slip to own!

The 3rd qualifying run, as mentioned suffered from an electrical failure and the bike cut out at half track. It was a little disappointing but i was really pleased with the way the bike launched and looking at the time slip afterward showed that it had indeed left quicker than before with a 1.3466 6oft time - a big improvement and proof that i was finally getting close with the clutch settings.

Sunday morning was the last round of qualifying. Not all the bikes bothered to run and i didn't improve my time. In fact i have a feeling i turned the nitrous bottle off as it failed to come on. It was however the fastest no nitrous run it's done so far and another improved 60ft time.

Going to this event i was doubting my chances at qualifying, 11 bikes entered and I'm usually the one that doesn't make it. But this time i managed to qualify 7th!
In round one of eliminations i went up against Dave Peters. He ran an incredible 7.4 so that was the end for me.
My run was a very rough - popping and banging 8.9 and the launch really caught me out, throwing me backwards straight away and i was bouncing around in the seat for most of it!

A full gallery of pictures from all the racers in Competition bike can be found on Sam's Photobucket page There are simply too many to post here. Many thanks to Sam for those and to woody for the loan of the lens!

Here's a vid of the last race. Thanks to James for filming this clip.