vtec
24th September 2006, 23:24
Hi all, another chapter in the vtec chronicles for your perusal.
Well, we left Auck's Thursday evening, and stayed the night in Taupo, and some how with great effort dad managed to rein in his snoring. Met up with HDTBoy, as he had offered to be my pit bitch for the weekend, and he had bought along his riding gear just in case. Got down there, and it started pissing down just as we were unloading the 250 and 600. I still hadn't got round to setting up the suspension on the 600, so I decided it might be wise to leave it till I could get it some expert attention and not ride it until I was confident it wouldn't boot me off the bike. So after a while the rain stopped, and I went out on the track on the CBR250. Blasted around for a bit, had good fun wearing down my right handside footpeg, as I've put on a VFR400 one, and it's slightly longer than the old CBR peg, so I was trying to wear a bit off it so I could get more lean angle out of the bike, nearly lost the front end though due to too much weight on peg on the ground. It's good fun though when you can be confident enough on a bike to do that. Had to be careful though, as the track was still wet in a few places.
Gavin (HDTBoy) didn't have his bike along, as the engine is still in many pieces, and some of those pieces are still requiring work (like the crank). So it might have been foolish, and despite his history, me and dad decided to let him out on my road CBR with the crappy Cyrox tyre on the bike. It was good fun having two bikes with similar pace and handling characteristics, but mine with the GPR70's definitely had a big advantage. I dropped back a few times to follow Gav for a while, and watched him smearing that Cyrox all over the track, it really got quite melted I think.
After Gav had a couple of sessions, my dad decided that he would try his first run on a track on my road CBR250. He's never really ridden the 250 before, he's used to torquey monsters, so not only did he have a track to learn, he had a completely foreign screamer to learn how to ride aswell. I went through a few corners with him, but then I saw this R1 come through. So I switched to hardcore mode, and went sliding round the track after the R1. I got close a couple of times, but he was just making a little bit of ground on me each lap. And after about 4 laps of hard chasing, I had to admit defeat, but it was still great fun trying to make up heaps of ground on the brakes and in the corners. For some reason I feel that I ride my CBR250 more aggressively on practice days than I do on the race days. It's probably to do with the fact that you can afford to stuff up corners more on the practice days than you can on the race days. Good fun.
In the last session, Kicking Zebra had some relations come along and the Zebra suggested that they might like to go for a blast on the back of my road 250. Since Gav had flipped the shifter over to race patter to suit himself, I let him do the honours. I think he took 3 different kids around for a couple of laps each in the last session. He said that he was still riding pretty quick even with the pillions, and a couple of them had attempted to constrict his waist (to no avail however). The kids were pretty excited afterwards. A pretty cool start to their holidays.
After that session we packed up, and went back to the Raceway Court Motel. Where I met Gary Pendleton. Gav mentioned to him that we needed to do something about the rear suspension of the CBR600 before I could ride it confidently let alone race it. Gav suggested we sneak it into our room to work on it. I thought that was a bit cheeky. So we spent the next hour measuring the sag several times and dropping out the shock as many times to make adjustments until we were happy that it was set up as mild as suitable for a 600 noob like myself. I'd only ridden it once, on the practice day before VMCC 4 a month prior, and it had scared the crap out of me, jolting my feet off the pegs over bumps, and my arse out of my seat, so I was still very nervous about racing it the next day.
RACE DAY
Woke up feeling reasonable after a reasonable nights sleep. Destroyed a few Weetbix and bowl of Very Fruitful Flakes with tinned fruit, and cruised over to the track to set up. Didn't have to get up as early as usual, cause we've managed to get hold of an ezy-up tent, and the day was looking very promising. Got to the track at a leisurely 7.45am, and unloaded the bikes and the gear and set up the tent, as usual I had to shoot back to the motel to pick up the race licence (what is it about those licences? ... bah).
SCRUB IN
I went out in the scrub in session on the 600, cause I still haven't learned how to ride the bastard with this being my second day of riding it, and my first for a month. Sped around the circuit a bit, felt fast passing a few dudes, and felt slow being passed by some more experienced riders. Still I really enjoyed this session, and felt that I had got some reasonable control of the bike, still the rear end was sliding way too easily. Had to park up and jump on the 250 straight away for the Streetstock practice.
STREETSTOCK PRACTICE
Was really looking forward to this, cause I knew that I would be able to jump straight on the 250 and ride it ragged from the start, I've really mastered this bike. Got onto about my 3rd lap, and went a bit too hard into the tightening lefthander before the circuit extension rejoins the track, and ran wide and managed to haul it up mostly before having a very minor extra-track excursion. Straight back on, practice is definitely the time to make those mistakes. Went hard on the next lap, and I saw up ahead RG on his KR rejoining in exactly the same place I went off. Just caught up with him going into the high speed left hander and carried the extra pace around the outside of him before shooting into the sweeper. I think he'd rattled himself a bit.
Came in at the end of streetstock practice, and had to jump straight back on the 600. Hehe, 3 sessions in a row, I'm lucky that I'm so damn fit right now, just need more upperbody strength for muscling the 600 around.
Well, we left Auck's Thursday evening, and stayed the night in Taupo, and some how with great effort dad managed to rein in his snoring. Met up with HDTBoy, as he had offered to be my pit bitch for the weekend, and he had bought along his riding gear just in case. Got down there, and it started pissing down just as we were unloading the 250 and 600. I still hadn't got round to setting up the suspension on the 600, so I decided it might be wise to leave it till I could get it some expert attention and not ride it until I was confident it wouldn't boot me off the bike. So after a while the rain stopped, and I went out on the track on the CBR250. Blasted around for a bit, had good fun wearing down my right handside footpeg, as I've put on a VFR400 one, and it's slightly longer than the old CBR peg, so I was trying to wear a bit off it so I could get more lean angle out of the bike, nearly lost the front end though due to too much weight on peg on the ground. It's good fun though when you can be confident enough on a bike to do that. Had to be careful though, as the track was still wet in a few places.
Gavin (HDTBoy) didn't have his bike along, as the engine is still in many pieces, and some of those pieces are still requiring work (like the crank). So it might have been foolish, and despite his history, me and dad decided to let him out on my road CBR with the crappy Cyrox tyre on the bike. It was good fun having two bikes with similar pace and handling characteristics, but mine with the GPR70's definitely had a big advantage. I dropped back a few times to follow Gav for a while, and watched him smearing that Cyrox all over the track, it really got quite melted I think.
After Gav had a couple of sessions, my dad decided that he would try his first run on a track on my road CBR250. He's never really ridden the 250 before, he's used to torquey monsters, so not only did he have a track to learn, he had a completely foreign screamer to learn how to ride aswell. I went through a few corners with him, but then I saw this R1 come through. So I switched to hardcore mode, and went sliding round the track after the R1. I got close a couple of times, but he was just making a little bit of ground on me each lap. And after about 4 laps of hard chasing, I had to admit defeat, but it was still great fun trying to make up heaps of ground on the brakes and in the corners. For some reason I feel that I ride my CBR250 more aggressively on practice days than I do on the race days. It's probably to do with the fact that you can afford to stuff up corners more on the practice days than you can on the race days. Good fun.
In the last session, Kicking Zebra had some relations come along and the Zebra suggested that they might like to go for a blast on the back of my road 250. Since Gav had flipped the shifter over to race patter to suit himself, I let him do the honours. I think he took 3 different kids around for a couple of laps each in the last session. He said that he was still riding pretty quick even with the pillions, and a couple of them had attempted to constrict his waist (to no avail however). The kids were pretty excited afterwards. A pretty cool start to their holidays.
After that session we packed up, and went back to the Raceway Court Motel. Where I met Gary Pendleton. Gav mentioned to him that we needed to do something about the rear suspension of the CBR600 before I could ride it confidently let alone race it. Gav suggested we sneak it into our room to work on it. I thought that was a bit cheeky. So we spent the next hour measuring the sag several times and dropping out the shock as many times to make adjustments until we were happy that it was set up as mild as suitable for a 600 noob like myself. I'd only ridden it once, on the practice day before VMCC 4 a month prior, and it had scared the crap out of me, jolting my feet off the pegs over bumps, and my arse out of my seat, so I was still very nervous about racing it the next day.
RACE DAY
Woke up feeling reasonable after a reasonable nights sleep. Destroyed a few Weetbix and bowl of Very Fruitful Flakes with tinned fruit, and cruised over to the track to set up. Didn't have to get up as early as usual, cause we've managed to get hold of an ezy-up tent, and the day was looking very promising. Got to the track at a leisurely 7.45am, and unloaded the bikes and the gear and set up the tent, as usual I had to shoot back to the motel to pick up the race licence (what is it about those licences? ... bah).
SCRUB IN
I went out in the scrub in session on the 600, cause I still haven't learned how to ride the bastard with this being my second day of riding it, and my first for a month. Sped around the circuit a bit, felt fast passing a few dudes, and felt slow being passed by some more experienced riders. Still I really enjoyed this session, and felt that I had got some reasonable control of the bike, still the rear end was sliding way too easily. Had to park up and jump on the 250 straight away for the Streetstock practice.
STREETSTOCK PRACTICE
Was really looking forward to this, cause I knew that I would be able to jump straight on the 250 and ride it ragged from the start, I've really mastered this bike. Got onto about my 3rd lap, and went a bit too hard into the tightening lefthander before the circuit extension rejoins the track, and ran wide and managed to haul it up mostly before having a very minor extra-track excursion. Straight back on, practice is definitely the time to make those mistakes. Went hard on the next lap, and I saw up ahead RG on his KR rejoining in exactly the same place I went off. Just caught up with him going into the high speed left hander and carried the extra pace around the outside of him before shooting into the sweeper. I think he'd rattled himself a bit.
Came in at the end of streetstock practice, and had to jump straight back on the 600. Hehe, 3 sessions in a row, I'm lucky that I'm so damn fit right now, just need more upperbody strength for muscling the 600 around.