nodrog
25th October 2012, 15:43
this is a continuation of my years racing, the first report is here (http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/showthread.php/149304-Report-Classic-sidecars-Taupo-28-29-April)
my second report is nowhere cos I was too lazy to do one:cool:
These are ramblings of my 3rd ever race meet at the BSTTC labour weekend 2012, riding a BMW post classic sidecar #95. It’s basically a couple of facts padded out with lots of lies to make an interesting story.
Somehow we had managed to get organised during the week, so come Friday 4pm all Tina and I had to do was hook the trailer up to the van and hit the road. Now the Hiace van I own is abit of a Hot Rod, combined with the Beemer on the trailer and the LPG, we were hitting up to 63kph at some stages going over the Kaimai’s. That would have been bearable had it not been for the 120kph crosswind that was trying to push us off the side. After we hooked up with Steve and Tracen in Matamata we were off in convoy. Now, I thought we were having trouble with the wind, until I saw them in the Transit towing a caravan, It was like following a retarded pregnant snake, that was drunk.
We all arrived in one piece at the track at about 6, then had to wait around talking shit until they would let us in at 7. Met a couple of the Aussie sidecar guys, anybody body would think that we were in Antarctica with all the jackets and hats and scarves they were wearing. Poor bastards, welcome to NZ. The remainder of Friday night was spent unloading gear and sidecars, and giving a hand scrutineering. Then it was back to Pokeno Motel to get some sleep before the fun times.
Saturday morning rolled around, we headed to the track to chill out and wait first practice. Everything was quite relaxed, until a truck turned up with the Agip sidecar, somehow I managed to get roped into helping strip it down for its Tech inspection. All was well until I found out the fire extinguisher didn’t have a pin in it, putting the sidewheel cover on I leant on it and got a face full of powder, I got abit annoyed about that and may have said a swear word. 3 mins after getting it back together the Agip boys turned up (I’m sure the bastards were hiding around the corner until we had finished) and with them they had my swinger that I had imported from the south Island. Now I had never met Warwick before and people had me believe that he was a 200kg behemoth. So when this skinny 140kg man came up and said “hi I’m Warwick” I was surprised.
Before long we were heading up pit lane for first practice, now I was quite excited because it was my first time at Hampton downs, Warwick was quite excited because it was his first time on real sidecar, and the Beemer wasn’t really excited at all, so it decided to shit itself and not restart before we had even left pit lane, it wrecked our go!
After sulking back in the pits for a couple of mins, we ripped the righthand head off (not before I managed to rip my lefthand index finger to the knuckle bone) and found out we had dropped a valve seat, and not just dropped one, completely smashed it in half. That was us, sad faces were made and it was game over, so we thought. I decided best option was to drive back to Tauranga and get another head and sort it before tomorrow. Now I’m not a religious man, but if guardian angels are real, I believe they would be softly spoken men with goatee beards, and I was introduced to one. Nick was his name, he looked at the head and said “I live just up the road, and have a couple of BMW bits, would you like to borrow a head?” Smiles returned and I sent Warwick off into the back roads of Mercer with a man we had just met.
A couple of hours had passed and I was starting to think Warwick had been abducted, when he turned up with a standard head, with our valve springs and retainers fitted, choice, talk about going the extra mile! We proceeded to try and make it work so we could at least make qualifying. Now there were a few obstacles to overcome, like the fact the carb now faced inwards to just in front of my knee, and having to earth the spare plug lead (the beemer runs twin plug heads) abit too close to my scrotum. But we got there with minutes to spare.
Right, off we go down pitlane, for my first look at Hampton downs and somehow we have to make a decent qualifying time. The Beemer didn’t quite feel right and was bogging down abit, but atleast we were going around in circles, we put in 2 complete laps and on the 3rd coming up the hill to the start line the carb fell off and the catch bottle started spitting oil at me, so we pulled into pitlane and wondered what the hell was going on. After pulling the head of again we stopped being lazy and pulled the piston out to investigate, it wasn’t good. When the Valve seat had broken it had smashed into the piston and crushed all the rings, right down to the oil ring, so the rings couldn’t expand and all the compression was just blowing past the piston forcing the oil out into the catch bottle. I honestly thought it was over this time and that the piston was truly rooted so did everybody that saw it.
We decided to go and see our friendly BMW chap Nick again and see if he had any ideas. We turn up at his house and it looks like a drop in center for people with broken Beemers as our 2-wheeled chum was there with his scooter in bits as well (I bet $10 he checks his crankcase breather next time before he takes his gearbox out). Nick takes a look at the piston and doesn’t seemed as concerned as we are, abit of heat, some special tools and a lathe and it’s as good as a new one. Mint!
The rest of Saturday night was spent in the pit garage reassembling the Beemer, and sitting around talking shit, and drinking (orange juice, because you can’t drink alcohol in the pits). Back to Pokeno Motel and at about 11.30pm the funniest thing happened. This siren goes off in our room and an automated voice was saying “warning warning, danger will robinson, please evacuate the building” or something. For a couple of seconds I just lay there wondering how the fuck Scrivy got into our room and put some joke alarm thing in there. Lucky Tina was onto it and knew it was the fire alarm. So we all went outside wondering what was going on. Turns out it was just Mike Pero having some spots on the cooktop in his room or some shit.
Sunday morning was a horrible wet day. Awesome, my first race at Hampton Downs is going to be in the wet, should be interesting! I decided to check our grid position, and found out that we had managed to get the only narcoleptic timekeeper in the world. They must have been sleeping when we went past, as they had us down as doing 1 lap at 4.37 (I reckon I could Piggy back Warwick around there quicker) oh well, back of the grid for us. The grid positions changed 3 times and there were a few people who didn’t know where they should be so I was glad to be on the back row, and I had a plan, just go like a mad bastard into the first corner and hope everybody would shit themselves and stay away. It seemed to work and we came home in 7th overall, 4th in our class with a 1.45 best lap. I don’t remember much of the race, probably because I couldn’t really see, at one point we nearly went off roading when I thought I had heaps of time to try and wipe the water out of my visor, I didn’t, and I think a little bit of poo came out. We had a good little battle with Keith and Carl on #68 swapping positions every lap of the race. It was fun, we probably would have been faster if I wasn’t pissing myself laughing at how sideways you can get in the wet.
The rest of Sunday was rained off, so what else do you do? May as well go to the Mercer pub and have a nice meal and a quiet drink. Everybody else had the same plan by the looks. So after reminding the Aussies and the young fullas to take it easy on the booze as there is still one more day of racing, we decided to stay until closing and get completely rat arsed, oops!
Monday Morning came around abit too quick for my liking, and I was so hot it felt like I had a fever. Until I remembered my master plan of putting all our gear into the Motel bathroom with the heater on full bore for 12 hours, the heated toilet seat effect was nice, but the burning bathroom door handle was abit of a stink side effect, oh well at least our gear was dry.
The track was drying out and it looked like it was going to be a mint day. We were told we were going to be on track at 8am, that didn’t happen until 9am, just enough time for my hangover to nearly disappear.
First race of the day was good, and thanks to a couple of people jumping the start (I have no idea how Johnny B managed to still win with a 20 second penalty, the guy is a legend) we came home 6th overall, 4th in class with a best lap of 1.33.
Before the second race we pulled the electrics apart on the Beemer to check for water, as it was lacking any sort of top end power and felt like it was hitting a limiter at full throttle on high revs. We couldn’t find anything wrong, so we just put it down to the standard head and valves on one side. It still did the job though so we soldiered on.
Second race we got another good start and were holding off Keith and Carl, until the last lap where they stuck it up the inside at the right-hander before the dipper and basically stopped right in front of us (good move) I hit the brakes and stalled. I was clutching it in 2nd gear trying to get it started, but we were rolling that slow it wouldn’t pop, so I banged it into first and dumped the clutch, well something happened that I wasn’t expecting, we did a wheelstand, I shit you not, the front came up that high that I actually looked around to make sure I hadn’t tipped my load off, nope Warwick was still there and we crossed the line behind Keith and Carl. But as luck would have it, they jumped the start, so we finished 5th overall 3rd in class with a best lap of 1.34.
Last race of the weekend was the Trans Tasman Challenge, which basically meant they were going to punish us by making us do 6 laps, 50% more than what we had been doing all weekend. I was already feeling abit puffed so It was going to be interesting. The start line marshals actually put everybody in their correct grid position for this race, so I got to start a couple of rows up which helped. This was my funnest race of the weekend, we were having an epic battle with Will and Julie on #74. Now, I have watched Will and Julie from the sideline for years with great respect and in awe of how they get so out of shape yet still manage to go around corners. But I tell you what, there is no better seat in the house than being 2 feet away as they come around the outside, sideways, at turn one, it is bloody hilarious and amazing, so much in fact I forgot I was actually supposed to be racing them and was cheering them on in my helmet. I actually thought we had them beat in this one, but Will has been in a couple more races than me and is a cunning little bugger, and if you make a mistake he is in there like a rat up a drain pipe. And chasing them down on the last lap of the last race, coming out of the last corner, I finally figured out why the beemer had no top end power, I lifted my right leg and it took off (the bike not my leg). Because the carb now faced inward towards my knee it couldn’t actually suck enough air at full throttle, I wish I had the wisdom to try that in the first race! We came home in 6th overall 4th in class with a best lap of 1.32.
It was an awesome weekend and I had an amazing time, but the highlight of the weekend was watching Tina passenger for Barry Fane on #47 in the moderns. I’m stoked that she is so into it as much as I am, and I am so proud of her, people were getting sick of me saying “look there goes my cool missus, I loves her heaps, she’s pretty choice aye!”.
I would like to thank the following for making it such an enjoyable weekend (it’s not in any order so don’t get your knickers in a twist if you don’t come first).
Steve and Tracey Bryan, Steve for sharing his toys with me (sorry for breaking it Bob), and Tracey for bandaging my finger, and keeping our pit garage tidy.
Warwick Demmocks, for coming up from the south Island and letting me use him for Ballast.
Nick and Wendy Plouge, (I’m guessing that’s how you spell it) for going out of their way fixing the Beemer to make sure I didn’t have a stink time.
NZCMRR, NZPCRA and NZSCRA especially Chris and Jan, you guys did an awesome job.
Sherson Auto Centre LTD BMW specialist Tauranga.
Liquid Effects, for all your race numbers and graphics, custom painted helmets – 0800 HELMET
Biketranz, for doing an amazing deal and bringing the Agip boys up to play with us.
Tui, for providing the after race refreshments.
Panadol, for providing the morning after cure.
And Tina Stirton, for looking after me, for sharing the fun times with me, and not being a stink missus!
Cheers
Gordie McKeown.
my second report is nowhere cos I was too lazy to do one:cool:
These are ramblings of my 3rd ever race meet at the BSTTC labour weekend 2012, riding a BMW post classic sidecar #95. It’s basically a couple of facts padded out with lots of lies to make an interesting story.
Somehow we had managed to get organised during the week, so come Friday 4pm all Tina and I had to do was hook the trailer up to the van and hit the road. Now the Hiace van I own is abit of a Hot Rod, combined with the Beemer on the trailer and the LPG, we were hitting up to 63kph at some stages going over the Kaimai’s. That would have been bearable had it not been for the 120kph crosswind that was trying to push us off the side. After we hooked up with Steve and Tracen in Matamata we were off in convoy. Now, I thought we were having trouble with the wind, until I saw them in the Transit towing a caravan, It was like following a retarded pregnant snake, that was drunk.
We all arrived in one piece at the track at about 6, then had to wait around talking shit until they would let us in at 7. Met a couple of the Aussie sidecar guys, anybody body would think that we were in Antarctica with all the jackets and hats and scarves they were wearing. Poor bastards, welcome to NZ. The remainder of Friday night was spent unloading gear and sidecars, and giving a hand scrutineering. Then it was back to Pokeno Motel to get some sleep before the fun times.
Saturday morning rolled around, we headed to the track to chill out and wait first practice. Everything was quite relaxed, until a truck turned up with the Agip sidecar, somehow I managed to get roped into helping strip it down for its Tech inspection. All was well until I found out the fire extinguisher didn’t have a pin in it, putting the sidewheel cover on I leant on it and got a face full of powder, I got abit annoyed about that and may have said a swear word. 3 mins after getting it back together the Agip boys turned up (I’m sure the bastards were hiding around the corner until we had finished) and with them they had my swinger that I had imported from the south Island. Now I had never met Warwick before and people had me believe that he was a 200kg behemoth. So when this skinny 140kg man came up and said “hi I’m Warwick” I was surprised.
Before long we were heading up pit lane for first practice, now I was quite excited because it was my first time at Hampton downs, Warwick was quite excited because it was his first time on real sidecar, and the Beemer wasn’t really excited at all, so it decided to shit itself and not restart before we had even left pit lane, it wrecked our go!
After sulking back in the pits for a couple of mins, we ripped the righthand head off (not before I managed to rip my lefthand index finger to the knuckle bone) and found out we had dropped a valve seat, and not just dropped one, completely smashed it in half. That was us, sad faces were made and it was game over, so we thought. I decided best option was to drive back to Tauranga and get another head and sort it before tomorrow. Now I’m not a religious man, but if guardian angels are real, I believe they would be softly spoken men with goatee beards, and I was introduced to one. Nick was his name, he looked at the head and said “I live just up the road, and have a couple of BMW bits, would you like to borrow a head?” Smiles returned and I sent Warwick off into the back roads of Mercer with a man we had just met.
A couple of hours had passed and I was starting to think Warwick had been abducted, when he turned up with a standard head, with our valve springs and retainers fitted, choice, talk about going the extra mile! We proceeded to try and make it work so we could at least make qualifying. Now there were a few obstacles to overcome, like the fact the carb now faced inwards to just in front of my knee, and having to earth the spare plug lead (the beemer runs twin plug heads) abit too close to my scrotum. But we got there with minutes to spare.
Right, off we go down pitlane, for my first look at Hampton downs and somehow we have to make a decent qualifying time. The Beemer didn’t quite feel right and was bogging down abit, but atleast we were going around in circles, we put in 2 complete laps and on the 3rd coming up the hill to the start line the carb fell off and the catch bottle started spitting oil at me, so we pulled into pitlane and wondered what the hell was going on. After pulling the head of again we stopped being lazy and pulled the piston out to investigate, it wasn’t good. When the Valve seat had broken it had smashed into the piston and crushed all the rings, right down to the oil ring, so the rings couldn’t expand and all the compression was just blowing past the piston forcing the oil out into the catch bottle. I honestly thought it was over this time and that the piston was truly rooted so did everybody that saw it.
We decided to go and see our friendly BMW chap Nick again and see if he had any ideas. We turn up at his house and it looks like a drop in center for people with broken Beemers as our 2-wheeled chum was there with his scooter in bits as well (I bet $10 he checks his crankcase breather next time before he takes his gearbox out). Nick takes a look at the piston and doesn’t seemed as concerned as we are, abit of heat, some special tools and a lathe and it’s as good as a new one. Mint!
The rest of Saturday night was spent in the pit garage reassembling the Beemer, and sitting around talking shit, and drinking (orange juice, because you can’t drink alcohol in the pits). Back to Pokeno Motel and at about 11.30pm the funniest thing happened. This siren goes off in our room and an automated voice was saying “warning warning, danger will robinson, please evacuate the building” or something. For a couple of seconds I just lay there wondering how the fuck Scrivy got into our room and put some joke alarm thing in there. Lucky Tina was onto it and knew it was the fire alarm. So we all went outside wondering what was going on. Turns out it was just Mike Pero having some spots on the cooktop in his room or some shit.
Sunday morning was a horrible wet day. Awesome, my first race at Hampton Downs is going to be in the wet, should be interesting! I decided to check our grid position, and found out that we had managed to get the only narcoleptic timekeeper in the world. They must have been sleeping when we went past, as they had us down as doing 1 lap at 4.37 (I reckon I could Piggy back Warwick around there quicker) oh well, back of the grid for us. The grid positions changed 3 times and there were a few people who didn’t know where they should be so I was glad to be on the back row, and I had a plan, just go like a mad bastard into the first corner and hope everybody would shit themselves and stay away. It seemed to work and we came home in 7th overall, 4th in our class with a 1.45 best lap. I don’t remember much of the race, probably because I couldn’t really see, at one point we nearly went off roading when I thought I had heaps of time to try and wipe the water out of my visor, I didn’t, and I think a little bit of poo came out. We had a good little battle with Keith and Carl on #68 swapping positions every lap of the race. It was fun, we probably would have been faster if I wasn’t pissing myself laughing at how sideways you can get in the wet.
The rest of Sunday was rained off, so what else do you do? May as well go to the Mercer pub and have a nice meal and a quiet drink. Everybody else had the same plan by the looks. So after reminding the Aussies and the young fullas to take it easy on the booze as there is still one more day of racing, we decided to stay until closing and get completely rat arsed, oops!
Monday Morning came around abit too quick for my liking, and I was so hot it felt like I had a fever. Until I remembered my master plan of putting all our gear into the Motel bathroom with the heater on full bore for 12 hours, the heated toilet seat effect was nice, but the burning bathroom door handle was abit of a stink side effect, oh well at least our gear was dry.
The track was drying out and it looked like it was going to be a mint day. We were told we were going to be on track at 8am, that didn’t happen until 9am, just enough time for my hangover to nearly disappear.
First race of the day was good, and thanks to a couple of people jumping the start (I have no idea how Johnny B managed to still win with a 20 second penalty, the guy is a legend) we came home 6th overall, 4th in class with a best lap of 1.33.
Before the second race we pulled the electrics apart on the Beemer to check for water, as it was lacking any sort of top end power and felt like it was hitting a limiter at full throttle on high revs. We couldn’t find anything wrong, so we just put it down to the standard head and valves on one side. It still did the job though so we soldiered on.
Second race we got another good start and were holding off Keith and Carl, until the last lap where they stuck it up the inside at the right-hander before the dipper and basically stopped right in front of us (good move) I hit the brakes and stalled. I was clutching it in 2nd gear trying to get it started, but we were rolling that slow it wouldn’t pop, so I banged it into first and dumped the clutch, well something happened that I wasn’t expecting, we did a wheelstand, I shit you not, the front came up that high that I actually looked around to make sure I hadn’t tipped my load off, nope Warwick was still there and we crossed the line behind Keith and Carl. But as luck would have it, they jumped the start, so we finished 5th overall 3rd in class with a best lap of 1.34.
Last race of the weekend was the Trans Tasman Challenge, which basically meant they were going to punish us by making us do 6 laps, 50% more than what we had been doing all weekend. I was already feeling abit puffed so It was going to be interesting. The start line marshals actually put everybody in their correct grid position for this race, so I got to start a couple of rows up which helped. This was my funnest race of the weekend, we were having an epic battle with Will and Julie on #74. Now, I have watched Will and Julie from the sideline for years with great respect and in awe of how they get so out of shape yet still manage to go around corners. But I tell you what, there is no better seat in the house than being 2 feet away as they come around the outside, sideways, at turn one, it is bloody hilarious and amazing, so much in fact I forgot I was actually supposed to be racing them and was cheering them on in my helmet. I actually thought we had them beat in this one, but Will has been in a couple more races than me and is a cunning little bugger, and if you make a mistake he is in there like a rat up a drain pipe. And chasing them down on the last lap of the last race, coming out of the last corner, I finally figured out why the beemer had no top end power, I lifted my right leg and it took off (the bike not my leg). Because the carb now faced inward towards my knee it couldn’t actually suck enough air at full throttle, I wish I had the wisdom to try that in the first race! We came home in 6th overall 4th in class with a best lap of 1.32.
It was an awesome weekend and I had an amazing time, but the highlight of the weekend was watching Tina passenger for Barry Fane on #47 in the moderns. I’m stoked that she is so into it as much as I am, and I am so proud of her, people were getting sick of me saying “look there goes my cool missus, I loves her heaps, she’s pretty choice aye!”.
I would like to thank the following for making it such an enjoyable weekend (it’s not in any order so don’t get your knickers in a twist if you don’t come first).
Steve and Tracey Bryan, Steve for sharing his toys with me (sorry for breaking it Bob), and Tracey for bandaging my finger, and keeping our pit garage tidy.
Warwick Demmocks, for coming up from the south Island and letting me use him for Ballast.
Nick and Wendy Plouge, (I’m guessing that’s how you spell it) for going out of their way fixing the Beemer to make sure I didn’t have a stink time.
NZCMRR, NZPCRA and NZSCRA especially Chris and Jan, you guys did an awesome job.
Sherson Auto Centre LTD BMW specialist Tauranga.
Liquid Effects, for all your race numbers and graphics, custom painted helmets – 0800 HELMET
Biketranz, for doing an amazing deal and bringing the Agip boys up to play with us.
Tui, for providing the after race refreshments.
Panadol, for providing the morning after cure.
And Tina Stirton, for looking after me, for sharing the fun times with me, and not being a stink missus!
Cheers
Gordie McKeown.