Shane - Superlite (#43)

The big day finally arrived!!

I woke up at 5:00am, probably cos I was excited that I was finally getting my bike to the track. I stayed in bed rather than getting up cos it's just wrong to be getting out of bed when it's still dark. Eventually my alarm went off, I turned it off and didn't move. It's bloody cold at 5:45am

Dragging my arse out of bed I climbed into some clothes, picked up the 4 necessaries (keys, wallet, phone and glasses) and headed out into the fricken cold. I'd gotten everything ready and packed the night before so I literally had nothing to do except go. It's very strange being out and about when there's no traffic on the road.

Because the hirage for the trailer was less if I picked it up in the morning rather than go for 24 hours I had to go to the Shell. I made a slight detour on the way there for a Sausage and Egg McMuffin Combo with a hot chocolate then shot across the road to the servo. I went and saw the dude inside who was just opening the doors for the day, filled in the paperwork and grabbed the shackle and lights lead. After hooking the trailer up I tried to lift the front fold down part up as it was down. Bastard thing wouldn't move. After much swearing and a good couple of kicks I went back inside and dragged the womble attendant out. He had a few goes at it and ended up bended the pole he'd brought out. I said fuck it and hooked up a trailer with a cage on it instead.

When I got to where the bike is I backed the trailer so that the wheels were in the gutter as I wasn't sure if there'd be enough clearance or if she'd belly out while loading. This left the car taking up most of the road with only a narrow piece clear. But I thought who the hell is stupid enough to be out of bed at this time and ate my half warm breakfast. Turns out half that damn street go to work before 7:00am and had to squeeze past with me waving apologetically. Bloody typical really.

Loading up wasn't a problem. Tied her down with 2 big, stong Gorilla tie downs at the front and wound a cheapie around the rear wheel so she wouldn't move around. Trying to get the bloody buckle onto that one was a mission though. After pissing about with it for 10 minutes (and plenty of swearing again) I gave up and just tied it off. It's not taking any weight so she'll be right.

Hitting the road I was out of Hamilton at almost exactly 7:00am. With a trailer on the fastest way to Taupo is straight down Sheep Highway 1 so I got into cruise mode and quietly wandered along. It was an uneventful trip fortunately.

The BP on the edge of Taupo nearest to the track was where I gassed up the bike and filled the 20 litre race can.

I pulled up at shed #27 just as Fred was blasting around checking out the track before the rider briefing. A couple of minutes later everyone was gathered around to hear what Darrin had to say. It was the usual Redline briefing, have fun, no racing, don't crash. Chur.

Seeing as there was a balls up with the booking we were allowed out on track at 9:00am on the dot instead of the usual 10:00am. However, my bike was still on the trailer so I unloaded her and got the tyre warmers on straight away while I pulled the rest of my gear out. After getting stuff sorted I went for a little wander to the coffee cart for a flat white.

Savouring the lovely warm cuppa I watched from the pit wall as everyone went tearing past. Even though it was only just after 9:00am it looked like the track wasn't stone cold and there seemed to be plenty of grip out there. Even on the oil spill one of the Formula Fords had laid down the day before. It started at the exit of turn 7 hairpin and went all the way around to the main straight. However, it looks like they'd done a great job of cleaning it up as there didn't seem to be any less grip. We just had to get it through our heads the dodgy looking line wasn't slippery.

Once the caffeine started to work it's magic I started getting ready for my first session.

After climbing into my gear, getting my lid on I went to take the tyre warmers off and found I'd bumped the switch on the multi box so the warmers had been turned off for about 15 minutes and the tyres were still cold to the touch ffs. So I turned the warmers back on and pulled my helmet off and wandered off muttering away.

I gave them 15 minutes and then pulled the warmers off cos I wanted to have a ride. Knowing the tyres wouldn't be right up to temperature I decided to take it nice and easy.

She really does sound lovely. She's got a real throaty bellow without all of the vibration and rattles of a v twin, mixed with the manic howl of a 6 hundy. It didn't take long to figure out the gearing was miles out. Later on I realized that I was meant to go with a larger rear sprocket, but I'd been to busy being a bloody idiot and had changed the front sprocket instead. That was one of those days where I should've just stayed in bed.

Still, the first session wasn't bad, just rather slow. The footpegs were as I expected, too high and too far back. Someone with long, skinny legs would probably find them ok, but they were aweful for me. I couldn't get my feet on them properly and I kept catching my feet when I tried to move. They were tilting me too far forward so I had too much weight on my arms and the whole thing was just uncomfortable and wasn't conducive to controlling a bike. So I pulled the plug after about 10 laps.

Andrew had kindly made up some new brackets for the footpegs so it was time to try those out. Unfortunately he'd used packing tape to tape them together and the packing tape didn't come off nicely so there was lots of crap all over the brackets. A quick wander around the pits and it seems nobody had any Meths handy so a rag and petrol would have to do. After much rubbing I had all the crap off them and patiently fitted them. I've found in the past that rushing is very, very bad as you always miss something and end up regretting it later. Lucky I did too because I spotted a bolt that had worked loose and was literally sitting on the bottom engine mount. After much swearing and skin loss I eventually got it done up enough to last the day. At least I knew where that phantom oil spot on the floor was coming from!! Up until then the suspect was a dodgy seal on the gear shift.

Once I had the pegs back on and moved the gear lever I could see I was still going to have a problem with changing gears, but I thought I'd give it a go as it was and see how the pegs were before drastically altering the gear lever, just in case I had to go back to the old brackets. Just idling up the pits the pegs felt 200% better as I could now balance on the pegs with no weight on the seat and very little on the bars. Wonderful.

Out of pitlane, onto the track and a yellow thing up ahead of me goes down hard at the start of turn 2. The rider was up before the bike stopped, but I was still going to have to go in because they'd red flag the track until he was sorted. So I quietly wandered back to the pits and got to work on moving the gear lever.

As always there's someone who has the tools you need at the track. Eventually I tracked down a drill, some drill bits and some bolts. Attacking the gear lever it was pretty bloody clear that these drill bits were about as sharp as a meat pattie. Luckily Gah had another one and this time it took 3 seconds to go right through the gear lever (and almost through the trailer, but it was a hire so meh).

After taking the relevant bits back to their respective owners I put the lever back on and wrapped a crap load of tape around it. I thought the bolt was looking a bit short but I thought I'd get out there and try it out and make sure. I had to hurry because they were closing the track temporarily soon and we'd be using track 2.

As mentioned earlier there was a balls up with the track booking and the organization that runs the track double booked things in the afternoon. Muppets. So we went from track 1 in the morning, to track 2 for a short while, then back to track 1 while the car boys were doing their classroom stuff, then back to track 2 for the rest of the day. What a pain in the arse.

It was immediately apparent that the bolt was too short, however, it was heaps better than earlier. I managed about 4 laps before the red flag came out and in that time I could tell the front end didn't have enough compression damping so it was back to the shed.

I found a much longer bolt and threw that in, wrapping it up with another crap load of tape. I added somemore compression damping, noting that it was now literally only 1 click out from max hard. I wasn't sure if I should go slightly harder or softer with the rear compression so I went slightly softer as it was almost maxed out as well.

You could say I was a little impatient to get out there by now so I headed out again. For about the 3rd time I'd bumped the switch on the multi box so the tyre warmers had turned off and once again the first lap was very quiet.

Because the gearing was so thoroughly wrong I wasn't changing gears anywhere on the Track 2 layout except for in and out of the turn 7 hairpin. So I was pretty much riding the entire track in 2nd gear. Shame I'd left the other sprockets in the shed. But then I'd spent more than enough time pissing around and I was just happy to get out and actually ride for a while.

By about 3:45pm I thought I'd head out and stay there until the red flag came out. I started getting into a rhythmn, not going hard just concentrating on being smooth and getting things right. When the gearing is fixed up and we pull the flywheel off so it drops revs much quicker making gear changes faster and easier I'll start looking at picking up seconds, but for this track day I was just happy to get out there and ride around and around and confirm we found everything the muppets messed up. The engine was lasting very well, showing no signs of having any big problems. Brent did a good job bolting it back together and it felt nice and solid.

About 1/4 of an hour into the session I came around the turn 8 sweeper and see some very long scrap marks, a rider tumbling around and a bike stuck in the tyre barrier of the chicane onto the drag strip straight. This guy had only just come past me a few corners earlier and he wasn't being shy. I immediately slowed and stuck my hand up, heading straight for the pits. When I got in there they didn't have the yellow/red out so I told the marshall in the start/finish tower there was a bike down way over the other side.

Lots of radio chatter went on because they couldn't see him at all and there was still one guy out on the track going like nothing had happened. Eventually they got the red flag out and Darrin and someone else jumped in the ute and went out to see what the story was. A while later the ute was back with the bike and rider and we were let out again. I'm sure it looked like the same bike that went down earlier on in the day but it can't have been.

The short Track 2 layout means there's nowhere to stretch the legs except very, very briefly on the start/finish straight and because I wasn't quite used to the position yet I was starting to cramp up so I decided to ride through pit lane and give my legs a chance to straighten out. I should've just pulled in and called it a day because once I got back out on the track I was still getting a touch of cramp so that was me for the day.

Most had packed up and gone already and I was the last to actually leave because I just took my time packing things up. It's the end of the day so no point rushing as it wasn't going to make more than 10 minutes difference to when I got home.

I achieved what I wanted to though. Namely, have a ride and make sure the muppets didn't (accidentally) boobie trap anything, get the pegs/bars/seat relationship sorted, find out exactly what she's like to ride and find out what sort of state the suspension is in.

Unfortunately the batteries I grabbed were equally as flat as the batteries that were in the bike camera I borrowed off Quasi so I got a bunch of 5 second long clips of me turning the camera on before it turned off. I did, however, find some awesome places for mounting the camera so next time I'll have some fantastic footage to put up.

Lots of fun and the good thing is, there's more to come!!!