As close as it gets

It was a pretty good weekend at Shakespeare County Raceway considering the weather played a large part in the proceedings. Intermittent rain, thunder, sun, rain and sun again meant most classes only got one qualifying run per day. Only raceday itself remained largely unaffected by the wet stuff.
The first run was a little daunting, as i was so convinced that the engine was going to break again.
I'd taken steps to slow the bike down in that i'd fitted smaller nitrous jets and taken static timing out, dropping it from 34 to 31 degrees. I wanted to change the 2 step rev limit too but the MC4 ignition was not communicating with the laptop so i couldn't log in and change it.
On the first run the bike drifted left quite a bit and i had to roll the throttle more than once to bring it back and i crossed the line in 4th gear. To my amazement though the cases were still in one piece and it ran an 8.8
The second run was better with no changes other than a shorter nitrous build time, and it went straight and managed an 8.3.... still with no problems. On the tow back to the pits, just 10 meters from our gazebo there was a big bang and we skidded to a halt with the back wheel locked solid. It seemed it had dropped into gear on its own and we were going to have to remove bent bits from the gearbox.
I've not had to make shift fork or shaft changes before so it was a new experience. Not particularly fun, with hot clutch parts and oil everywhere. One of the shift fork shafts was the offending item and it took some real hammering to drift it out from the opposite side. Luckily i'd already drilled holes in the blind side of the cases to aid in this scenario.
With the shaft out and new forks etc in place it went back together quite smoothly and the box seemed to be working ok. While all this was going on Comp bike were called again for the 3rd round of qualifying. We would have missed it but to our advantage it started to rain which gave us more time, and eventually racing was called for the day anyway.
The major problem really was getting the bike in a position to access the sump. Leaning it on it's side worked best but i may have to make some sort of stand for it incase we have to do it again.

Raceday then and we were qualified 5th and would be against Phil Leamon in the first round.
Al Young - Competition Bike

We were having major problems with very poor 60ft times, running 1.5 sec on one run, so in an attempt to make it stick i took a gamble and took an extra 1.25psi out of the back tyre.

Mike Chislett - Competition Bike

I dropped the nitrous build time some more too down to 3.2 secs and a 50% start. The tyre does seem to like being so soft and it left the line a lot better. Phil Leamon got away first with a tenth of a sec advantage, but i'd passed him by 330ft and crossed the line still ahead with an incredible 8.027, a personal best and about as close as it gets to a 7 second run.

The next round was going to be a lot more difficult as we had Stu Crane who runs regular sub 7.5 second times. The race never happened though as my bike cut out just as i was about to do the burnout. Not the cases this time! but a £2 toggle switch, which decided it was time to fail when a terminal broke off the back. And that was the end of that!
Stu went on to take the event win with 2 bye runs. Well done Stu