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April
9-10 WERA West So I thought the leak on the 250 was fixed, until I spent an entire day at Buttonwillow and rode only two sessions, both of which ended with my foot covered in oil. Not only did I have this hazard to deal with, but my longer rearsets which I desperately needed did not fit the pipe hanger thingy or the bodywork. The 250 has been set aside for a while. All the time at the track worrying over it and working on it has left me little time for practice. We drove to Las Vegas Friday night. It became windier and windier the closer we got to Vegas. Once there, parts of the suburbs had no power and large branches were strewn across the roads. We made our way to a neighborhood built in the 1950 where we were staying at Jack Pfeifer's place. His neighbors are non other than Siegfried and Roy. Siggie and Roy live in a house at 1639 Valley on the corner of Vegas Drive. This isn't a big secret: if you want to be anonymous, you don't put a big gold "SR" on all your gates, which by the way are huge and gilt. White lions top the massive white-stucco wall that lines the property. Across the street are much smaller houses, also sporting the gold "SR" on their gates. These have been purchased by the Austrian magicians as guesthouses and tiger training houses, turning the whole block into a sort of compound. With no 250 to race, I took the 125 to practice at LVMS Classic Course. There is a USGPRU race there at the end of April so I thought it would be good to get some practice in since I had only been there once before, 2 years ago. It was very, very windy. So windy, in fact, that out of a turn that went straight into the wind I could be in first gear and still need the clutch just to move forward. I could barely go in a straight line. Much less feel my suspension, which was starting to have issues I would find out about too late... Sunday the wind calmed considerably. John Hjelm and Leonard Mellgren were out practicing for the USGPRU round as well. I must say, Leonard has one of the trickest bikes I have ever seen. A full JHA motor in his Honda and computers all over that bike. They were quick and I was slow. A new kid even beat me. I felt like I was going to lose the front out of every corner and the bumps really upset the bike. I left having bettered my best times from two years ago by only 2.5 seconds. This would seem like a good thing but two years ago I had only been riding the bike for 4 months total and at all the other tracks I have bettered my times by 5-8 seconds two years later. |
 Just a little breeze.  Nothing to see here... |
| Fortunately,
I did find out the reason for this. Unfortunately it was AFTER the
first double points weekend at WSMC and also the first paid race of the
season for the F3 class. (California Race Services now sponsors the
class). I had big problems and didn't finish either the 250 or the 125
race in April at WSMC. I found out a couple days later when
removing the shock for servicing, that the plastic shock guide had been
working its way between coils of the spring. I had felt the bike
getting worse and worse and even said at one point that I thought
something broke in the forks. I thought it was the forks because the
rear settings were the same as they always are, and it was gradually
getting worse, unlike the first time this guide jammed in the spring last year and ruined a few races. So now friends, I guess the lesson has been learned. You may say I should have known to check the shock since this has happend before. Well, I spent practice breaking in a new crank so by the time I got to trying to push hard I had run out of time. The guide had been working it's way in there gradually so at first it felt like a fork issue. I enlisted help from everyone I could (JM was gone) and no one could figure anything out. In fact all the changes made everything worse. So now I have to approach bike inspection with a plan. I will write every change down. I have numbers to call to ask questions when I don't know what is wrong. I will change my fork oil more than once a year (I know, I know...) I will put the correct shim stack in the shock so I don't have to set up the front to compensate for the rear. I only have this bike to race this season so I can't get by on riding around problems anymore. |
 It's not total conciousness, but we did get team shirts. So I've got that going for me, which is nice. |
