PROJECT BIKE ME! RACER PART VII

by Dino

The Supreme Riding Soviet try to keep nervous people and invalids away from Dino when he has his race face on

The Triumph was all back together and running at last, so we figured it was time to get it on the track and see if the modifications to the front end work in practice -- by banging it round Eastern Creek as fast as I could and seeing if it fell over.

With all the rain on the days prior to Sunday I thought I would never get in on the track, but miraculously on the day the weather was perfect: not too hot , nice and dry, a little wind -- just how I like it.

The track day was run by Super bike School and my good friend Terry Wetton was in charge and very helpful.

Because the 675 needed running in after its new big ends, Terry put me in medium fast to get a few laps on it without getting in the way of the fast guys in A group.

The proceedings were lent a certain piquancy by the fashionably late arrival at the starting grid

I only took it up to 9000 rpm in the first session, but even at these low revs the Trumpet was lapping markedly faster than the rest of this group so I was asked to trade in my yellow wrist band for a red A Group band.

Then the next session came around and it was time to give it the berries and see what needed improving.

I found the handling outstanding, with enough ground clearance to keep my feet from scraping, which has been a problem for me since I badly busted my right ankle back in '01. Since then I have found that every bike I ride on the track (and some I ride on the road) don't have the clearance for me to get my foot up out of the way, so not dragging my foot was a real bonus.

It ran straight, which is always a good thing on a race bike.

It was very steady, gave no un-nerving shudders and shakes, and handled the bumps on turn one better than any bike I have taken around there before.

So I can now advise with some confidence that if you have stuffed your front end on your 675 you just have to buy a Suzuki GSXR K4-5-6 front end and bolt it straight on. It goes on with a minimum of fuss and you will have a bike that handles as good and possibly better than one with the original front end. To sweeten this even more, our front end came from the States via EBay and cost a grand total of A$420.00 landed.

Cornering was great, but brakes need a little more work: the radial calipers are set for a larger diameter rotor than the Gixxer's, so we were only getting about 60% pad on the rotor.

We have just bought a set of Tokikos from the States again (for A$67.00 landed). These should fix our pad on rotor problem.

We were severely down on power all day and found later that this was due to the butterfly in the exhaust pipe.

The Triumph 675 it has this whiz bang butterfly set in a cast Stainless Steel section of the pipe controlled by an electric servo motor with cables to open and close it at different revs. We dismantled this unit and tried to lockwire the butterfly permanently in the open position but the wire stretched and partially closed the butterfly at high RPM.

The Triumph whizbang butterfly thingy: a speed bump on the road of progress no longer

We have fixed this permanently now by having the catalytic converter and butterfly section cut out and replaced with a straight through pipe, saving 1.5kg and giving a great boost in power. Just how much power we will know later this week when we get it on the dyno down at Motorcycle Weaponry in Mona Vale.

So stay tuned.

Dino