Very cool forum! (sugilite)

**Deano** · 22nd November 2006, 13:19

Originally Posted by sugilite

Kawazuki RGV500
Unfortunately I never got it to Wanganui, I reckon it would have kicked butt there!

Uh oh - Fizzerman has recently scored himself a Yamasaki YZ490 KR1-S and is racing F3 at Wanga's.

Looks like I'm in big trouble.

**chanceyy** · 1st December 2006, 22:28

damn Ant .. still waiting for the next installment .. got nuffin else to read bud .. get them fingers typing

(waiting for my weekly laff)

**sugilite:Me** · 30th March 2007, 12:28

With the next nationals season coming up, Richard generously donated his GPZ900 and we were able to lease a OWO1 of Andrew Stroud. It was his ex Super Angel Race bike he had raced in Japan.
Andrew is legendary for being laid back to the point your wondering if his consciousness had called in sick that day.
I'll never forget the day we picked the bike up, We passed him the $$$ he gave us the bike. He did not even ask for my address!

The bike was fairly tired but had some pretty trick pieces on it, unfortunately they are what turned out to be the problem. The oHlins forks only used 2/3's of their travel and the trick $25,000 magnesium carbs (thats not a typo folks) did not come with any jets (special to those carbs) so as a result the bike only ran well at one track, Teretonga at Invercargill.

I vaguely remember doing the Masterton steet circuit as my one and only shake down ride before the first round of the nats at Puke., and I think it was only running on 3 cylinders for that meeting. :slap:

Traditionally I have never had a good time at Puke, and God forbid that I break with tradition!
In the 2nd free practise session on my warm up laps, this guy on a RS250 decided he needed my line more than I did and took me out. I remember Andrew Stroud sidled up to me nervously and said "you will look after the bike eh?" Personally, I cannot see what he could have been worried about?

I have no recollection of how I went in the races, so was prob not that flash.

The next round was the now defunct Baypark racetrack over at the Mount in Tauranga. It was only the 2nd time I'd seen the track and the 1st time I'd ridden there, I only got a few laps in on the KX/RGV500.
Lucky it was only 4 corners eh!
Turn one was my kinda corner. A fast bumpy sweeper that tightened up on the exit, where coincidently the largest bumps resided! I basic two wheel sledged coming into it and spun up the rear on the exit, fun! I seemed to have gathered a little fan club there, one of which I'm quite sure was Goblin!

The other turns were pretty much just one line wonders. (unless your Jason Mcquen on the Britten, in that case you could ram it up on the inside of the harpin on a line that us conventional bikes could only dream off!
I got a 6th and a 5th and butchered a sure 4th through a last lap race craft error, real 101 stuff too.

I did beat Tony Rees riding a Ducati on his home track though hehehe

There was a now funny incident with one of the scrutineers. The guy that scrutineered my bike looked suspiciously like he was the guy that planted the trees that went on to make Noahs ark.
He got to the Brembo floating front brake disks and immediately took issue with the fact that the floated and thus moved around. Shock Horror! It however was a pretty serious situation as he was going to fail the bike. Eddie Kattenberg was on hand and told him "Nah mate, that is how they are sposed to be" It was still not good enough for our crusty scrutineer.
Now normally Richard carefully hid sharp objects when I was taking issue with yet another scrutineer, but this time, I'm sure I saw him sharpen up a screwdriver and leave it within easy reach. Fortunately about that time The late great Robert Holden came through and gave his deity like opinion on the brakes, yep he just repeated what Eddie had said. The old soon to be retired in a bloody coup nazi general still was not convinced!!!
Lucky for him he got to avoid a pending shallow grave and draw the pension for what could surely be only a very short time more, by Robert Holden using a pretty harsh tone in his voice and repeating himself again, where upon the scrutineer finally relented and passed the bike, whew!

The next race was at Wanganui. Richard and I being the gun works team we were got to the pits early, got the bike out the van and then, erm got back in the van and fell asleep! I woke up just in time to get my leathers on and get out onto the track as they were just closing the gate on the 1st practise session! About lap 4 I was starting to get in the groove. I remember exiting turn one on a good line and then, hello what is this nurse doing looking down at me? And yeah if course i know my name ya stupid bitch! (she was actually a lovely person)
Turns out some guy had tried to out brake me but failed and ran straight into the side of me slamming me against the bales.
This being NZ where the "She will be right mate" attitude is king, they still let me race despite being knocked out cold a hour or so earlier. I only lasted one lap though as I'd fucked my shoulder well and truly.

Ruapuna in Christchurch was next and I rode injured, I have no idea where I finished.

Round after that, as far as I can remember was Teratonga. Richard and I arrived there on the Thursday night staying at the campground that was right beside the track. We had what was referred to as the F1 blues and we were feeling pretty down. That night it was COLD, being the poorly prepared guy I was, I had a light weight sleeping bag and Richard being the organized chap he is had the artic special. I wanted the heater on and he didn't and before we knew it, world war three had broken out.

Richard was going home the next morning and I decided I would go home too. This was no fun! Anyways, I'm like driving down the road and I see this hitchhiker on the side of the road that looked decidedly familiar. Well, anyway, I picked up Richard and we had a good talk (I bawled my eyes out being under pressure of F1 and personal family issues) and decided to get to the track and have some fun and not get so serious about things.
As it turns out it was one of the best days of my racing career, erm even though it was just a practice day! We were quite early still (We were quite fortunate we had had the handbags incident at dawn, rather than the afternoon)
We set up on a patch of grass and over the next hour all the other top F1 teams set up all around us, cool!

I headed out for the 1st session and holey shit the bike was quick! Yep, the jetting was right for once!!! I felt so relaxed and cleansed from bawling my eyes out earlier

that riding the bike really quick was effortless!
At the end of the day we had set the 2nd fastest time just behind Jason on the Britten, sweet!
The Britten team even lent me a tire for the race, hoping I'd beat Russell Josiah and let Jason gain some points. Nice plan I thought! 1st race on Sunday, about 3 laps in, I was in the top 3 and looking good, until I hit my one and only false neutral at a mission critical time and ran into the dirt and went for a big tumble! Damn!
The bike was quite damaged and the crash sent us home early.

The final race was Manfield. In the very last practice session on Saturday I lost the front end coming in the esses. I had done nothing different from the lap before.
It is the only incident in my illustrious career in crashing that I have no idea how it happened.

So ended my racing career, even though Richard had financed the bike, such were the costs of doing F1, I had nearly bankrupted myself. All at the tender age of 25.

I did the family mortgage thing for more than a decade only making one cameo appearence at a 2 hour endurance race cajoled into it by my friend Sean Aitken. We got 5th. It was the 1st time I'd done the extended manfield circuit, so that was fun!

During retirement I bought a roadbike and later my ultimate dirt bike...will cover those next, when ever that is.

**cowpoos** · 30th March 2007, 12:34

u racin this weekend fella?

**Kornholio** · 30th March 2007, 12:36

Would this thread be avaliable as a 'Book on tape' From what I read was awesome but attention span is too short to read whole lot.

Well done tho bro...see ya at Coroglen sometime soon

**sugilite:Me** · 30th March 2007, 12:42

Originally Posted by cowpoos

u racin this weekend fella?

Nah man, the "plan" is just to do selected rounds of the actrix series on the 750

**cowpoos** · 30th March 2007, 12:58

Originally Posted by sugilite

Nah man, the "plan" is just to do selected rounds of the actrix series on the 750

furry muff!

**Goblin** · 30th March 2007, 13:08

Originally Posted by sugilite

one of which I'm quite sure was Goblin!

Yeah that woulda been me. I remember that meeting well!

Not the best pic but a fond memory all the same.

Thanks for the most excellent read today! Love your work!

**Keystone19** · 30th March 2007, 13:13

Awesome write up again Ant! Thanks!

**chanceyy** · 30th March 2007, 18:17

great write up as usual Ant ...

hmmmmmm since winter is just around the corner, hopefully we will not have to wait 4 months for the next installment

**babyB** · 1st April 2007, 23:33

way cool again sugi. dose enjoy the read. but dont leave it so long b4 the next

**sugilite:Me** · 30th July 2007, 22:41

Now I was a retired ex racer I decided to really embrace my lot and bought my next bike, A 1988 Honda VFR400 NC24 off a work mate for a paltry $1500. It had a fair few K's on the clock but seemed to be sound enough. As is Hondas way they had naff things on it such as this weird fucked up primitive anti dive that did not really work and also had the effect of making the brakes feel like the proverbial mushy peas!

My fix was to simply put in some fat looking washer I had lying around which prevented the anti dive from kicking in and hey presto acceptable braking was now available.

I'm not a big fan of Honda, but I must say, this thing thrived on neglect, handled just fine and sounded pretty decent for a 400!

I commuted on it for about 8 years or so and apart from frying two rectifiers, it never missed a beat.

I did race it twice, complete with commuter spec tyres!
The first time was a vic club hill climb, aptly on Mount Victoria. I cannot remember that much other than I had fun and was the fastest 400 on the day.

The second time was on the Wellington Street Circuit the V8 super cars used. The Vic club had somehow got a permit to run a bike meeting on the track. I entered just to help make up the numbers. Somehow I won the 400 class!
I remember losing the front HUGE and the fear of splatting on the armco helped me encourage the bike to stay upright and not crash! I guess commuter tyres were not the way to go, and racing at the pointy end of the field was probably not the best place to go for, but hey, after getting a good start it was my duty to throw the brain away and pin it

As mentioned I mostly commuted on it. I used to drop off and pick up the kids from Kohanga and later school on it too. I always used to say to them, you wanna go straight home, or the "motorbike" (read more corners) way home? Naturally it was always the motorbike way home, even beating out the dairy/lolly laden normal route!

Once every 3 or 4 years, I'd venture up the Rimutakas for a thrash and go back home wondering where the quick riders had all disappeared to!

The most fun I had on the bike was going to the Takas coming up against a friend of mine (also name sake of my nephew) that had come 2nd in the F3 nats a few times. He lived in Martinborough and commuted on his NC30. He had ex race tyres and I had my commuters on (still!)
I figured since he was a foot and a half shorter than my 6.6 frame put him at an advantage too

We went hammer and tongs up both sides recklessly punting our bikes to at least 100 kms an hour in places

I only just pipped him both directions, but our HUGE grins said it all

Best Crash Amazingly after 8 or 9 years that I had it, NONE!

Best near crash, On said Takas assault with Jeff, I lost the front end huge, it was right of the ground whilst fully cranked over. I believe this was the same corner Jimbo600 lost his 1st GSXR600. It was as close as it gets, whew!

I knowz this installment was probably not as exciting as my other ones, but hey it was my commuter bike after all!

**cowpoos** · 30th July 2007, 22:45

cool bro!!! keep the installents rolling!!

**chanceyy** · 30th July 2007, 22:50

lol . can just picture the kids eggin you on .. not hard to do though huh .. hmmm so how long til the next chapter .. this would have to be the slowest book ever ..