2009 Quinte TT Race Report - part 2
2009 Quinte TT Race Report - part 2
Sunday morning's sole practice revealed the clutch spring shim and
bolt fix had worked, and that I hadn't forgotten how to ride. It was
raining a little, but the only parts of the track where I was finding
it damp and slipppy were the usually-WFO exits of turns 1 and 4.
First race of the day was P3Heavy, I was up to the hot pits early,
eager to go kick ass. We were delayed a bit, and the bike got cold -
thus it took me three attempts to push start it, leaving me at the
tail end of the pack heading out for the sighting lap. I found this
annoying, as they were going so slow. So on the back straight, I
goosed it a bit to round a few of them, and when I braked for the
hairpin, I immediately tucked the front. Victim of "Cold tires, cold
brain", as my friend Scott Lilliot once told me. I was in disbelief as
I skidded along the pavement behind the bike - I can't be crashing! on
the warm up lap? Then the familiar tumbling sensation kicked in and I
got alternating views of ground and sky. Yup, we're crashing all
right. Thankfully, I missed taking anybody else out - my buddy Bert
said he was watching the front tire coming at him and getting awfully
close. When I came to a stop, just off the track, and did a quick
mental body inventory (nothing but a whack on the left elbow), I
hopped up out of the way, and over to the bike. The bike was drooled
some oil out onto the track from a cracked left-side engine cover, and
it appeared that all the left side foot and hand controls were cleared
off. We pushed it off onto the grass and then took inventory. My
helmet cam was flopping, so I removed it. I was obviously, (to myself
anyway) without any serious injury. The bike was, ok, in need of new
stator cover, probably handlebars, tach (we don't need that), clutch,
shifter, linkage and footpeg, oh, and a big ugly, multifaceted dint in
the top corner of the tank. How unbelievably stupid.
I got the marshals to ok me to hop the wall and walk back in, walked
to the medical centre, with some quick conversations along the way
revealing I'm not the first to crash in warm-up (or warm-down for that
matter). The EMT cleared me, after questions and treating the small
friction burn on my elbow. So I went back to the pits and started
seeking what I'd need to repair the bike to go back out for Race #7,
P4F1. After obtaining some JB Weld, I tracked down one of the other
GS's there that weekend (only two others?), and he happened to have a
GS1100 in his trailer that he'd just bought. I went and fetched my
deadblow, impact driver, plastic mallet, and we leaned the bike over
on a milk crate and pulled off the cover. I brought it back to my pit
and started gathering the other parts I'd need from my spares. I had
handlebar, grips, clutch lever all ready to go, but the footpeg and
linkage were unsure - might have to drill new mounting holes in the
aluminum mounting plate. The GS1100 engine cover was iffy too - I
didn't know if it really was the same as the GS1000.
It was about then that my racing friends Rudy and Bert showed up,
escorting the Dreadnought home, as well as street riding friend Alain
Galarneau who had arrived to spectate. So I put them all to work - to
finish scraping gaskets off the GS1100 cover, stripping broken parts
off, transfering controls to the new handlebar, mounting a replacement
number plate, and sorting through the various footpeg & rearset parts
to see what we could do to replace the peg, lever and rod. It became
apparent that the GS1100 cover was not an exact fit: the mating
surface was the same (or damn near), but none of the lower bolt holes
matched up, and those had to hold the oil in. There was a flange of
aluminum though that covered one of the GS1000's lower threaded holes.
So I jury-rigged a heimann transfer punch[1] out of an old bolt and
the angle grinder, got some long bolts to align the cover, then
center-punched the drill location. I drilled the hole, and the
alignment was fine, but there wasn't a flat, parallel bearing surface
for the bolt head - instead there was a rounded angled one. We put on
a washer and just hoped it would work - and it did. The rest went
together reasonably well, but we didn't have exactly the right length
linkage rod for the shifter (some SV1000 stock rearsets that I had
matched the bolt spacing of the first-gen SV650 Vortex rearsets that
had been on the bike). So the lever was a bit lower than I would have
liked, even after having ground a bit off the threaded length.
With a race to spare, we passed tech inspection, and Alain went up to
the stands to spectate. I rode my bicycle up and checked the gridding:
fourth, front row outside. Pack to the pit and started suiting up.
Then the loudspeaker barked, "Attention in the paddock, attention in
the paddock, First call for race #7, P4 Formular 1 and P4 Formula 2"
To be continued....
- Richard
[1] Thank you MIT TechTV Machine Shop HowTos for showing me what those are:
http://techtv.mit.edu/genres/24-how-to/videos/142-machine-shop-1
