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Drag Racing Drag Racing - Gunnedah NSW

Discussion in 'Motorcycle Racing and Track Days' started by GreyImport, Nov 9, 2014.

  1. risky

    risky risky

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    have seen and lips are sealed.has 2 wheels so not a unicycle.lol.
     
  2. Frankster

    Frankster Grey Pride...Adventure before Dementia Staff Member Premium Member Ride and Events Crew

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    Yeh, I'd hate to have to kill you!

    When are you planning on getting the FZR back on track?

    @Grasshopper how's that pink FZR of yours coming along. Are you racing it this weekend?
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2020
  3. Grasshopper

    Grasshopper Well-Known Member Dirty Wheel Club

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    Sorry, no progress... had to go to Thailand for someone's wedding :drinks:. I'll come up as a spectator.
     
  4. Frankster

    Frankster Grey Pride...Adventure before Dementia Staff Member Premium Member Ride and Events Crew

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    Great, Be good to catch up.

    Plus, we can talk about what you need to get the FZR to the track.
     
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  5. Murdo

    Murdo The Good Doctor Staff Member Contributing Member Ride and Events Crew

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    Packed and ready to roll. TDRA says they have plenty of loo paper too. :lolsign:
     
  6. Frankster

    Frankster Grey Pride...Adventure before Dementia Staff Member Premium Member Ride and Events Crew

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    Okay. Race report follows...

    Gunnedah Weeks of Speed – 14/15 March 2020

    Saturday 14/3/2020

    Good weather. Not too hot about 26 degrees. Little to no wind and clear skies. Good turn up of bikes. 8 in total, but 7 riders (1 greedy rider had 2 bikes!)

    Team 2fiftycc had Murdo (CBR250) and Frankster (TS185 Nostalgia Bike) with a ring-in (Pete) on a CBR250 MC19. Technically, there was another 250 (WR250F), but he was with another group. Good mix of bikes with an R6 drag bike and a HD cruiser thing there as well.

    Sat Team2fiftycc.JPG
    Sat others.JPG
    My main focus was getting the Nostalgia bike running and understanding how to ride it. This is one of Murdo’s old bikes that he freshened up. Main engine changes included removing the oil pump (and battery) and running premix; enlarging and lengthening the expansion chamber and an Iridium plug (more on this later). The rules for Nostalgia Bike racing in Australia are…it must be pre-1980. This means the frame and the engine and induction etc. Murdo dropped a Yamaha DT250 engine (1976) into a 1978 Suzuki TS185 frame and then added a 1974 YZ250 barrel (70mm bore and a 64mm stroke). He added a 38mm Mikuni and the rest I am not sure about. I’m certain Murdo will do a “what I did” post at some stage so he’ll go into more detail then.

    Sat tuning.JPG

    Murdo had taken the bike for a run up the street and said it was running rich. For the first run we left the original (170 I think) main jet in the carb. I’m not a 2-stroke person, so I have no idea about tuning these things. Murdo showed me how to change jets and after that we lined up for our (my) first run on the bike. The bike runs a tacho, but the needle bounces around so much I couldn’t tell you what revs I launched at. All I know is that it wouldn’t rev past 5,000rpm in any gear and, much to my shock, the bike went into a tank slapper as I approached the finish line.

    When I got my timeslip, I saw I had run a 14.98sec at 78kph. Pretty ordinary numbers and the tank slapper added to my angst. I was expecting to run 12’s on this thing straight out of the box. But, I guess that’s motor racing.

    Murdo spent the next couple of hours trying to tune the engine to rev, but to no avail. It would rev fine in neutral, but under load it just wouldn’t go over 5k. He went up in jet size and then back down, but nothing worked and the tank slappers were occurring on every run. On the first run, I had accelerated and leaned down on the tank to try and ride through the tank slapper, but it actually got worse, so I throttled off and prayed for it not to get so bad that I’d be saying hello to the pavement. It did reside enough for me to ride it to the braking area holding point. The bike doesn’t run a steering damper, so the tank slappers had me worried. I only brought along a Dri-Rider jacket and Kevlar pants, so going down wasn’t on my list of things to do. I wasn’t going too fast, but that bitumen still looks hard!

    After 3 runs, I couldn’t get the bike to go any faster than a 14.12 as I was changing gears when I got to 5,000rpm as it was pointless waiting for anything else to happen. I was also a bit gun shy of the inevitable tank slapper. The tank slapper didn’t appear to be related to bumps or anything that I would normally attribute it too. It was so instant that it was really worrying. Murdo had ridden this bike before (10 years ago I think) and it had not displayed any handling issues whatsoever, so something has obviously changed. The tires are very old. The rear tyre is 24 or 34 years old (I think 34 as there is no triangle to indicate 1990’s). The front tyre is a 10 year old Dunlop Harley Davidson.

    TS175 Front Tyre.jpg TS175 Rear Tyre.jpg

    Murdo said he had a new plug in his kit, so we should change the plug to see if that has any effect on the revving issue even though he had put a new Iridium plug in the engine. Once I realised we were running an iridium plug, I immediately suggested we switch to a normal plug. After swamping plugs we started the bikes for our 4th test run and after a little while the engine died and would not restart. I missed the 4th run. The replacement plug looked pretty old, so one of the spectators (thanks Warren) went to the local auto shop and got me a new one. We put that in and off I went for the 5th and final test run of the day. 14.79sec later we had our answer. The problem was the plug as the bike revved out to 6,500rpm. Not smoothly, but it still got there. I had missed a gear on the run and coasted, so I wasn’t too worried about the poor ET. The shift lever is too high for me, but I couldn’t adjust it down as it was hitting the frame rail and thus I couldn’t select 1st gear and going down gears would have been close to impossible.

    In the meantime, Murdo had run a 9.5 best and Pete had taken his street CBR to several 10.2sec runs.

    Sunday 15/3/2020

    Good weather. Not too hot about 27 degrees. Some wind and clear/cloudy skies. Great turn up of bikes. 9 in total.

    Sun Team2fiftycc.jpg
    Team 2fiftycc was ready(ish). Pete would go on to run a PB later in eliminations.

    Armed with an engine that at least revved out past 5,000rpm, I was keen to see what we could run while I tried to stay upright. After 3 qualifying runs, I had managed to run a 13.28 at a slowing 72kph. I dialled in at 13.00 to make it a bit easier for the other riders as a few had quick 7sec bikes and asking them to wait for 6 seconds was bad enough! Another Harley (this runs 7.8) and a 1000cc Yamaha showed up on Sunday, so we had a 9-bike field which means someone gets a bye run.

    Sun extra bikes.jpg

    Normally it’s the fastest, so the R6 (7.00sec) got the bye and the rest of us lined up against whoever was in the other lane. When they called us for the first round, we all started our bikes and as we all moved away to the dummy grid, my bike died. I spent the next agonizing minutes trying to restart the bike. The kill switch had broken off earlier in the day, so I was worried something had happened to that as the bike stalled like it had lost electrical power or the plug had fouled. Anyway, just as I was about to step off and call it a day, I managed to start it and with plenty of revs raced to the back of the dummy grid. I was lined up next to the HD cruiser who had been running 8.5sec times with deadly accuracy.

    Frank and friends.JPG

    We both staged and I was gone. A .064 reaction time meant I was on my way, but the bike bogged and my 3.054 60ft time was always going to hurt my time. Just to make sure I effed the run up properly, I missed 4th gear and a 13.64sec @ 74kph run meant I was going home early unless the other guy red lit or broke out (he did neither).

    Murdo also went out in the first round. I guess the previous day of kneeling down and bending over working on my bike had taken its toll on him and he was in pain most of the Sunday. Probably a weekend both of us would have liked to have had turn out differently. At least we had a good catch-up and plenty of laughs and a few red wines too.

    Sat Broken Engine mount bolt.JPG

    In the first round, Pete ran one of his 10.2 ET’s and progressed to the second round. I had already left before the second round, but Murdo told me Pete broke out in the semis, but achieved a PB ET of 9.98. Well done Pete. The only good way to lose is to run a PB. Thanks also to Andy (Grasshopper) for coming out Sunday for moral support.

    What next for the Nostalgia bike? Well, new tyres would seem a “no brainer”. Maybe some thicker fork oil (very spongy front end). Maybe change the 21inch front wheel to something smaller (19in). The rear shocks are also very spongy, so maybe something a bit stiffer. The engine doesn’t want to rev cleanly, so I need to find a 2-stroke person in Melbourne for ideas and maybe some help. I’m wondering if the larger and elongated expansion chamber has had a negative effect on the engine’s power and revving issues. The bike weighs around 70kg and should have 20-25hp, but when riding it you notice it is slow and doesn’t have the power you’d expect.

    TS175 Air Filter.jpg

    Maybe a new tacho as this one is not great. A new air filter (this one is falling apart).

    TS175 Tacho.jpg

    The engine also vibrates way too much, to the point where the entire bike is (badly) vibrating. It broke an engine mount bolt on Saturday, which Murdo spotted (luckily) on Saturday night and was able to semi fix for Sunday.

    Sat Broken Engine mount bolt 2.JPG

    I went for a “test” ride down a country road Sunday morning and the vibration was something else. I used to ride a neighbours’ Honda MT125 Elsinore back on the farm. It’s the only other single cylinder 2-stroke for me to compare to this bike. The vibration from this thing is epic!

    And, the tank slappers...Murdo tightened up the head stem on Saturday, but that had little affect. On Sunday, we changed the rear tyre pressure in an attempt to address the stability issues. The lower pressure seemed to help, but it didn’t cure them, so need to sneak (baby steps) up on this problem. The bike was a big hit with the public, as many spectators and fellow competitors stopped and had a good look over it. Murdo’s machine was a popular entry and the retro looks were a big hit with young and old. It’s a shame no-one took any video as it sounds awesome too.

    The bike’s best ET was 13.28, best speed doesn’t matter and best 60ft was 2.54sec. Get rid of the tank slappers and it will run low 12’s easy with its current tune. Get the engine and vibration sorted and 10’s are on the cards.

    Sat Promo.JPG

    The Nostalgia bike is a WIP, but it will need to be put on hold as we need to start testing the ZXR250T (Turbo) bike in preparation for the salt next year. Hopefully, Murdo can finish the Turbo engine soon, so we can run that bike at the next meeting in May.

    And hopefully more 2fiftycc team members will show for the May meeting.

    Cheers
     
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    Last edited: Mar 18, 2020
  7. risky

    risky risky

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    hope to.lol.
     
  8. GreyImport

    GreyImport Administrator Staff Member The Chief Contributing Member

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    Great report Frank .... looks like a busy , and interesting, weekend :thumb_ups:

    Good to see so many bikes too
     
  9. Frankster

    Frankster Grey Pride...Adventure before Dementia Staff Member Premium Member Ride and Events Crew

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    We missed you Chief.

    @Grasshopper has promised to get his FZR ready for the May meeting! Add @risky on his FZR and maybe yourself on something and we'll have a serious Team 2fiftycc representation.

    @Murdo and I are thinking of going to the Dubbo All Bike drag meet now that the VJMC Rally has been cancelled.
     
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  10. GreyImport

    GreyImport Administrator Staff Member The Chief Contributing Member

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    I know it wont be in the '500 people' catergory but there isnt much that isnt being cancelled ... and maybe it was only being run to coincide with the main rally ... we shall see I guess ... like everything else
     
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  11. Andych

    Andych Moderator Staff Member Premium Member Contributing Member Dirty Wheel Club

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    From what I am hearing from my customers in Dubbo that Rally is a big deal. Not sure how it will affect the Drags though.



    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
     
  12. Frankster

    Frankster Grey Pride...Adventure before Dementia Staff Member Premium Member Ride and Events Crew

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    We'll see I guess. I just realised, I can't go to the Dubbo drags anyway, so care factor dropping slightly.
     
  13. GreyImport

    GreyImport Administrator Staff Member The Chief Contributing Member

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    murd.jpg frank.jpg
     
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  14. Frankster

    Frankster Grey Pride...Adventure before Dementia Staff Member Premium Member Ride and Events Crew

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    That's perfect. That photo was taken on Saturday and I'm staring at the tacho. Also, not sure what's in those marker pens, but yesterday I tried to get the number '39' off the front fairing and it had "burnt" into the paint. Even though it eventually came off, the front fairing now has a permanent 39 imprint on it.
     
  15. Murdo

    Murdo The Good Doctor Staff Member Contributing Member Ride and Events Crew

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    Need to get it off the next day. Have you tried metho to remove stain?
     
  16. Frankster

    Frankster Grey Pride...Adventure before Dementia Staff Member Premium Member Ride and Events Crew

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    No. i thought metho and paint didn’t mix. I will try it & see how it goes.
     
  17. risky

    risky risky

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    metho will not affect 2 pak but can affect acrylic laquer.. try wax and grease remover.
     
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  18. GreyImport

    GreyImport Administrator Staff Member The Chief Contributing Member

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  19. GreyImport

    GreyImport Administrator Staff Member The Chief Contributing Member

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  20. GreyImport

    GreyImport Administrator Staff Member The Chief Contributing Member

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