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1999-11-12
So the new joke goes like this:
\"How many Aucklanders does it take to change a spark plug?\"
- 5, 2 to take the engine out, 2 to carry it over to the workbench and another one to re-fit a new spark plug.
- Well, at least that\'s what we did today. Probably the most extravagant spark plug change job in history. The full story is that we were plagued again today with some intermittent drops in power. I had wrongly assumed that this was a continuation of the problems which we had seen at Invercargill, they turned out to be a problem with the battery connection. - In our problem finding, we had gone through 2 sets of plugs, and had, I thought, stripped the spark plug thread in the head.
We rushed off to Southgate engineering who were going to re-tap, and Helicoil the s-plug hole for us and ended up removing the whole engine to allow them proper access to do the job properly. - False alarm, it turned out to be a sheared thread section on the plug itself! - So we changed them and put the bike back together again.
We had thought that this was going to be another of \"those\" weekends, but with a bit of luck the next couple of days will go smoothly.
Times today were promising, I\'ve beaten my previous best time by 0.3 sec. The gearing which I\'m running is absolutely superb and is allowing me to get through the whole of the complex infield in a single gear.
Fingers crossed...
1999-11-13
Saturday practice went well, the bike is running smoothly, I shaved another 0.1 second from my best time today. We tried to take the pressure off ourselves and conserve some body strength for the racing tomorrow by stopping a session short in the practices. This gave us a chance to stop, take a load off, and speak to some punters. It’s great to see so many people down at the track. Other than things going smoothly, there’s little to report except some pit gossip:
Dean Fulton came off he high sided; he is fine but there’s some damage to his bike; not sure how much.
Neil McKenzie has signed for a Ducati ride next year in the UK Superbikes.
GREG - 1999-11-15
Unfortunately, things didn\'t go well on Sunday\'s racing.
Chris went out for a few laps, but came in with the engine rattling & banging. After stripping the head and barrels off it appears that the #1 cylinder big end bearing now has 2mm of play and is essentially stuffed.
Chris (very gratefully) was able to borrow another YZF600 to race in the second race and managed to pick up some more points even though he came in last doing 9 second slower laps than on the F2 bike.
Chris is now busy assessing the alternatives to stay competitive at Ruapuna, some things buzzing thru his mind are \'Can we fix the motor in time\', \'Should we put Chris\'s road bike motor in the race frame\', \'Does he buy a new bike ....\'.
Tune into this web site to find out what the team decides to do. No matter what, Chris is determined not to give up without doing his utmost.
Greg, for Reuters Antipodes.
1999-11-15
Sorry that this is slightly late in coming, there’s been a lot going on, and up until now, I had no idea how this was going to end. As you know by now, we had major engine problems on Sunday, causing us to miss out on one of the races.
A huge thanks must go to Ben Houston of Christchurch who was extremely kind to lend me his Thundercat to complete the race distance in the second race. This allowed us to gain 2 points out of the day, so it wasn’t a total disaster.
Last night and this morning we’ve been faced with this dilemma; The engine is currently too stuffed to hope to complete a successful repair on it before this next round. At this point we’re heavily committed to racing this series in terms of the amount of time, money and effort that it has taken to get us this far. It would be disappointing to have to pack it in now, it would also be wrong to try to race the Thundercat before it is properly repaired in a none-rushed manner.
We were planning to get an R6 for next years racing, and would probably have to buy it at the latest June, but more likely in time for the Auckland Club Champs in April. That being the case, there are now several reasons to bring this purchase date forward to, say, this week…
The plan as it stands is as follows:
- We are buying a Yamaha R6 from Red Baron, Auckland. They have an Ex-Demo bike for sale which is in mint condition, and has done around 3,000 kms.
- Greg will be collecting this on Wednesday, and will ride it down to Wellington, then on to Christchurch for Thursday. That evening, we’ll be preparing it to be raced.
- We’re going to leave it reasonably standard, we’ll put the slicks on the bike, and I’ve managed to get hold of some front race fairings today. - So we’ve got all but the rear section ready to put on.
- We’re going to try to put braided brake lines on the bike, and possibly change the end can over to the Arrow one, we might also run some after-market brake pads, apart from that we’re going to run it standard.
- These R6’s are so impressive in their standard form that we should end up with a competitive bike with very little work required.
So there we have it, 2 steps backward, 5 leaps forward. Most people I’ve spoken to think that this is probably the best solution, albeit expensive.
- Watch this space, we might try to enter into the Proddy classes too!
For more info refer to the Nohair web site, and the Results.
