Debut

The bike wasn't ready, neither was I for that matter, but it was time for my first race of the 2016 season. It would also be my last...

Friday Afternoon

The bike and a lot of spare parts that would be essential in making the bike go were bundled into a trailer for the drive to Snetterton race circuit in Norfolk.

Camp setup is always a pain but having to build the bike as well would make my Friday even longer. Thankfully we had opted to share half of a garage which would prove to be invaluable for nearly the whole team that weekend. 

I had to:

• Fit a borrowed exhaust,
• see if the bike even starts,
• tune the fueling,
• get the bike through scrutineer,,
• learn the race track,
• more to the point learn how to race,
• maybe actually sign up to race?

I had lots to do and that doesn't even take into account sorting out my own needs for which a good supply of beer and BBQ would need to be prepared.

I had managed to get the wire locking done the night before on the bits the scrutineers cared about so with the loaned exhaust in hand I went to get that important job sorted.

I had noticed when fitting the engine that none of the exhaust studs looked great and two in particular would most probably do absolutely nothing having wasted where the nut would sit when tightened. 4 new studs had arrived in the post and Andy, one of my team mates, had brought along his stud extractors. 

Unfortunately after some hours of heat and toil, I had managed to remove exactly none of the studs.

Someone then mentioned to try doubling up the nuts. This, after a bit of a thread tidy up, worked a treat. The exhaust wasn't a great fit unfortunately and I didn't want to push my luck too far with these studs so leaks were kept at bay with the help of a healthy coating with copper silica set.

By now it was late so a run up would have to wait till tomorrow morning. I was going to have a stressful Saturday morning.

Saturday

Much how I would have like to get things going early I waited till a sensible hour before going for a run. I still had to mix fuel and feed myself though so there were sill things to do.

When the time came to fire the bike up I got a friendly team member to push the bike whilst I paddled along on the bike. Fuel was on, the bike was moving, the clutch went out and the engine burbled away but merely gave the odd cough. 

A spark plug inspection showed I had plenty of fuel so ignition was suspected. With the plugs pressed against the head we spun the rear wheel which showed a spark on the right and none on the left. Plugs were swapped but still the problem persisted. Much doubt was thrown at my ancient ignition in the paddock but still we swapped caps, and worked through other novel ideas that were being banded about, checking and rechecking for a spark which never came. 

Then I had a brain wave. I had disassembled the plugs from the stater to the ignition packs in order to root them correctly. There was a chance I had managed to get the connectors back in the plug in the wrong order. Which it turns out I had. 

The bike was hurried back together and I was yet again shoved down the road but this time I was accompanied by a crescendo of clattering exhausts noise.
She lives!
All be it the life of a hundred a day old woman cackling and coughing away in a thick cloud of smoke.
Even with the choke off the bike was bogging badly. The bike was clearly running rich but we also suspected that the sump might have a fair bit of fuel oil mixture from our previous efforts in it so we chose to drop the main jet a modest couple of sizes to be safe.
The bike was fired up again and although woolly and not wanting to hold a tickover without the choke, it worked and we were all to aware the cut off for scrutinizing was fast approaching.
 My bike got handed to a team mate to drag it through noise testing whilst I got my leathers checked out. Then once that was done the scrutineers had a look over the bike which thankfully they were happy with.

Practice

There was no time for further fettling as it was practice time. I was on my own in the second group in my class. I had not received a vest from the ACU so I had borrowed a marshals vest from the good people at Snetterton.

I had already noticed the clutch was heavy before but I assumed I just needed to man up. Well Now there I am on the right wondering why I can't find neutral "manning up" for far too long with the clutch pulled in and the revs far too high as the bike would just die if left it to try and tick over.

Finally we were let loose. the bike trundled forward before finally clearing her lungs and bellowing forward. I would have loved to have pushed her up into the revs where she seemed happy but she was cold and there was a corner to negotiate and OH MY GOD THE VIBRATIONS!

I bimbled round Riches taking in the acres of track and accelerated down the straight towards Melborne corner with that really happy tree (take a look, that tree is loosing it's shit over something). I tipped the bike round the hair pin cautiously, the bike responded by bogging and lurching badly whilst the front end  weaved under the command of uneven fork springs.

What fun.

Accelerating down the back straight the bike came back to something like normality and gave me my first test of that front brake into Brundle which felt really good. Handling remained 'entertaining' throughout the following corners but another problem was showing itself. Holding neutral throttle in Bomb hole and Coram curve was proving a difficulty as the bike bogged and surged.
When the throttle was closed off  whilst entering Murrays the bike died all together. My rear wheel skidded as the bike bump started back to life midcorner allowing me to plough on up the straight which aside from the terrible vibrations was proving to be this bikes only real strong point.

By now any bike that hadn't taken the opportunity to pass was staying a safe distance away from this idiot on his shed.

Riches, taken at more speed proved to be more comfortable if you ignored the horrifying weave from the front wheel.
As I braked for melbourne the bike just seemed to die in third gear which was a first (on a ride of many firsts). Feeling no resistance I quickly pulled the clutch in and coasted off the track suspecting some kind of engine failure and that was the end of practice.

 Consensus in the pit was the bike was running super rich and the bike dying was probably not a worry. A quick check of the spark plugs showed a very wet engine so we opted to drop a couple of jet sizes and give the carbs a damn good clean in the hope it would bring my tickover back.
More importantly I had decided to swap the clutch springs back for the old ones. Thankfully I had brought them with me and aside from making quite a mess it wasn't too hard a job. By sticking the bike on its side I didn't even lose a lot of gear oil which was a bonus.
As you might have noticed I am appearing in a few pictures here. Craig Hornsby was down and capturing some moments on his camera which I wold never have had the time to do myself resulting in some me in front of the camera for a change.
My rather expensive quick throttle adjuster nuts were not doing well with the vibration and working loose. Apparently this is very common and the best answer is to tape them up. Glad I spent the money on them no!?!

Race 1

 The bike still did not want to tick over and despite my much more comfortable clutch she still didn't much fancy going into neutral either.
There were a few of us racing air cooled 250's including: Sy, Andy, Chris, Jim and myself on RD's and Mick on his Suzuki X7.
Mick was having some real trouble with his ignition with the bike cutting out and stopping suddenly a few times before he noticed his stater was damaged. A spare was used and this became damaged. It was then that they noticed the crank was misaligned and on later inspection was found to have completely snapped! Jim was also joining me with fuel problems. His was causing his bike to suddenly starve of fuel after a short while riding. He would spend the whole weekend chasing this.
I managed the sighting lap but the bike was still bogging badly and cutting out so I chose to pull in to get some more spanner time. The others finished with an overall  5th for  Andy, 7th for  Sy and 10th Chris.

Race 2

 Race two was very much like one for Jim and I. I finished the sighting lap and pulled off for another DNS and Jim got a free lift from the marshals.
It was this race that my number board started spinning as well which made me worry more about the vibrations this bike was kicking up.
This time Sy swapped with Andy for a 4th place leaving Andy in 5th and Chris in 10th.





As I had the whole evening to work on the bike I didn't rush into the garage and instead grabbed my camera and captured a few frames of bikes thundering up the start/finish straight. As you can see from the image on the right that things were pretty close with Andy and Sy. I think that is Ian Bain behind (looking at the results) but I am not too sure.
My little bimbles round the track were building my confidence with the bikes handling and my understanding of the track. I was looked forward to getting out the following day.
Sy found me a spare set of carbs which I gratefully fitted with a 50 drop in jet size.
The bike now ticked over and sounded a lot crisper. Things were looking good for tomorrow.

Sunday

Race 3

So here we all are on an overcast Sunday smoking up the place ready for our first post classic 250 AC race of the day.

I made it round for a steady sighting lap, Mick pulled off for the last time leaving Jim and I gridded up at the back of the grid. In fact my grid position was miles back as this was my first actual start and since then there had been a few bikes drop out.
In my mind all I had to do was get round. Everyone else had a whole days racing on me let alone any other experience they had that I clearly lacked.

Once we set off I staid steadily behind a a chap, following him round . This built my confidence in the bike till I was happy to pass the much slower machine and on to the next bike and so on. 

Every lap I made small improvements and found new areas to improve upon.

The bike was still a bit woolly and the handling woeful but now my own ability was playing a big roll.

I was lapped by a few guys although when Sy and Andy passed me at Murray I was pleased when my bike staid with them a fair way up the start finish straight. This proved our efforts with the engine, even with a random pipe and swapped out carbs had worked great. More to the point I finished with a 7th in class or 16th overall, most importantly though I had finished and I wasn't last!

 As for the other guys Andy took 5th, Sy 7th and Chris keeping his 10th.

Race 4

We talked about dropping some more jet sizes during lunch but as I wanted to just get round the track and not  push my luck without a dyno; I left things well alone. The only thing that was done to the bike was to tighten up the right footpeg and stick some wire locking on it as I had noticed it had worked loose. John, who had been helping Sy coax some laps out of his Honda mt125  kindly did this for me whilst I messed with fuel mixing and trying to figure out what was wrong with Jims fueling.
Out on the track I felt like things were improving as I pushed the little Yamaha harder. on the 4th lap I was caught by the race leaders  up the start finish straight. At the same time my left foot peg disappeared completely.   Realizing it had dropped off I elected to leave the track on the entrance to Riches and watch the rest of the race from the side lines. Little did I know I was receiving some ridicule from a rather cruel commentator.
Scared off being lapped indeed.
As it happened only Andy finished this race taking a 4th overall. Sy's 250 had joined the rest of his bikes in breaking, Chris hit problems early on and Jim lasted for 6 laps before the bike died again. Very frustrating.

Closing

 We had got this bike from nothing to verging on competitive in one race meeting. Fueling handling and locking would all still need improving mechanically. Sadly [or excitingly] very little of the bike I took to Snetterton was going to stay as it was. Some of the changes I will make will cover these areas anyway but I will be effectively starting again.

This racing weekend was a very helpful insight into racing and dealing with these machines. My own abilities as a rider would need to be improved with regards to the finer arts of track racing, something I would later do on my GSXR400 at Blyton park.
Sadly work would get in the way of Silverstone so this was my first and last race of the 2016 season.
As time ticks down to the first meet of 2017 I look forward to seeing that this bike can do.