PROJECT BIKE ME! RACE BIKE PART XI

BEARS Nationals Round 2 Winton Raceway

by Dino

Sometimes, after his fortieth bourbon, Dino has difficulty in making his mouth and his harmonica meet

After suffering a distinct lack of horse power and soft front suspension at the last round something needed to be done.

So I spoke to the father of Tune Boy, Wayne McDonald; who generously offered to personally re-map my ECU.

After a few hours with Wayne and Roger on the dyno at Motorcycle Weaponry we had 4.5 HP more but more importantly we had a perfect torque curve (obtained with a combination of fuel mapping and ignition jiggling). Such is the versatility of the Tune Boy.

Unlike the Power Commander, the Tune Boy re-programs the bike's own computer, allowing you to do really clever things like extend the rev limiter, remove fault code lights on the dash, advance or retard the ignition, or re-map the fuel delivery at any stage of the throttle opening.

So check out the Tune Boy Website and compare it to other EFI Tuning devices on the market, I am sure you will be well impressed!

So now we have a bit more power it was time to sort out the shocks.

For this I went to Steven Cutting at Motorcycle Weaponry again. After measuring things like static sag and total sag (sounds like I know what I'm talking about, eh?) he decided to up the spring rate on the front and turn some of the pre-load off the rear.

To try out the new settings, I took it down to Winton Race Way south of the border for the BEARS National Round.

Friday practice started badly. It had rained in the night and left patches of wet track, and Winton has lots of surface repairs which have left lines of smooth shiny black tar. There are some cracks in the track on some fast corners which hold water well after the rest of the track has dried out.

I fell foul to one such crack in the first practice session, on turn 5. It's a fast left hand double apex sweeper with a water filled crack in the middle. I lost the front, both feet came off the pegs and my arse came out of the seat. I couldn't get around the corner or pull it up, so I ran off at a good speed through the wet boggy infield and a nice big muddy six inch deep puddle. Luckily I am no stranger to this sort of terrain and wrestled the Triumph through it and back on the track for some more fun.

I lost the front twice more in that session so back in the pits I wound off some front preload. The next session was sweet and dry.

The rest of Friday went off without a hitch and I felt happy with the set up. The power delivery was awesome compared to Broadford, so it was with the dial smiling that we packed up our gear and headed for the pub.

Saturday arrived in a flash, and still a little groggy from the previous night at the pub I fronted up a little late and skipped the first qualifying session, I thought I would get a better time in the second one anyway as the track would be well swept and warmer by then. The time came and out I went to give it a good go, but I couldn't get a clean run. On the only near clean run I got, I managed to T Bone an F5 rider in turn three. We both managed to stay on through sheer good luck but if he had been 20kg lighter I'm certain we both would have crashed our brains out.

With no apparent damage, I pressed on to get a respectable time and managed seventh on the grid for the first race.

It was a good start, and I got past a couple of riders to hold on to second place, which turned out to be a win as Dave Butler on Penrith Ducati's brand new 848 was not running the Bridgestone control tyre, so I managed to grab 25 points. This was helped by my main rival in F2, the very fast and all round nice chap Chris Panyi stacking his ride and DNFing.

In race two I got a crap start, getting swamped by riders before turn one. This was not what I wanted as Chris was starting from the back of the grid and I wanted a chance to capitalize on this if I could get a bit of a break. It wasn't to be, and he caught up fast and passed me with three laps to go. I tried to stay with him and dropped my lap times by two seconds, but didn't get close enough to have a go. It was about this time that I noticed that my break lever was getting very soft. All the way to the bars soft!

Back in the pits Mal "Aunty" Churling and Phil "Goose" Grey debriefed me and plied me with lots of welcome encouragement, and the nice chaps from Penrith Ducati offered lots of help and suggestions regarding my fading brakes.

Sunday came with glorious sunshine and after a night of serious red wine consumption thanks to Goose, who turned up with the biggest bottle of shiraz I have ever seen. Vintage 2000. A very good year. I was feeling a little groggy again.

But we soon got into race mode and decided to drain the break fluid and replace it with some special fluid provided by the Penrith Ducati boys. This seemed to do the trick and I got a really hard break lever, but alas after practice it had softened up a little again so we re-bled it on the assumption that we missed a bit of air when we bled it the first time.

I had a crap start again on race three. This was getting to be a bit of a habit, and one I wanted to break. Again I was back in the pack fighting my way forward with little chance of getting close enough to the leaders to get in the mix, and again my brake lever got really soft; but I managed to gain a respectable second and another 20 points.

Not a good start again in race four. There were more riders to pass to have a go with Chris and I was making up ground when I saw out the corner of my eye a few drops of wet stuff on my tank. On further investigation (which was brief because of the speed I was going at the time) I realized it was brake fluid and it was leaking from my master cylinder. With three laps still left my lever was already coming in to the bar and I just kept getting visions of it letting go completely and spearing me off the end of the track.

So, I had to pull my late braking back to safer distance, which unfortunately cost me a position: I was pipped at the post by a wheel length -- a Ducati 748R whose rider's name escapes me, I do apologize.

After packing the bike on the trailer and getting all sorted and ready to leave I was killing time larking about with a few fellow BEARS members when I thought it might be a good idea to get a photo next to the Yamaha team's two bloody great pantecs, so I ran across the car park in their general direction, and was maliciously attacked by a circle of parcel binding death tape.

Dino thought he'd found Thommo's Road Train, but it was just a semi

Yes, I tripped over a ring of carelessly discarded packing tape and sustained a broken left index finger, a bashed elbow, some gravel rash and kidneys bruised to the point of pissing blood.

But I was happy with the weekend's results:

1 x first 2 x second 1 x third

...leaving me a mere 2 points shy of the lead held by Chris Panyi.

Next round 13-14 June 2008 at Eastern Creek.

Dino would like to say a big "thank you" to the following, for their help and generosity, without which this project could not have got to this point.

Steve Eric Arthur & Roger at Motorcycle Weaponry
Mat Mladin, Geoff Bonfield & all at Mat Mladin Imports
Carl Barnard from GB Racing Products, Australia
Datalok: Thanks for the art work, Col
Ray at Easyrider Imports
OLEON Specialty oils& lubricants
Wayne McDonald from Tune Boy