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View Full Version : Burt Munro Teratonga Paul Nixon Endurance Race!



TygerTung
3rd December 2006, 19:39
:scooter:

Well it is a bit late in the coming, but I'm going to do a write up on it! I have been pretty busy lately and haven't had a chance.

Tried to balance the lightweight crankshaft for the bucket on the monday only to find it was too far out of balance to take enough weight off around the crank pin so I have to put in some heavy inserts on the counter weight area.

Having found this I decided I would have to use another spare heavy CT125 crank I had lying in a spare engine. Pulled that out on tuesday and then on wedensday and thursday I built the engine and wacked it in the bike.

Had another look at the hot cam and hot head I was using to find that the cam was loose as fuck in the head, measured it and the cam was over 10 thou over the bloody minimum dimension! Having found that wasn't suitable I decided to use the standard 125S head and cam so it would be nice and reliable and not dodgy.:yes:

Worked till midnight on thursday and my mate came round at about 6.45 and we packed my gear and loaded that into the van, then shot down to my workshop and loaded my bike and tools and spares which took ages. The van was looking pretty low in the back with my bike+ tools and spares and his nice 1965 yamaha YA6 which is really heavy in the back as well. We then went and picked up my girlfriend and we loaded even more stuff in. Once we couldn't see out the back due to too much stuff we got on the road at about 11!

It was a very long trip down there with the HUGE wind, and the 1800 petrol liteace wagon touring special with 300k on the clock was a bit underpowered. Also rewarding us with a beeping sound when the odd occasion when headed downhill that we could actually GO over 105, it would beep loudly and anoyingly at us:angry:

We finally got there at about 8.30 and set up the tents.

We left christchurch in some nice warm weather :sunny: to find some bloody cold weather in invercargal, but I guess that's what happens when you live next to antartica eh?!

I found it pretty hard to try and crash start the bucket on the grass with slicks but managed to sort it on the dirt road going along so that I was able to take it for a spin around the site and go to the toilet.

Got to the toilets and left it idling outside and went for a whizz to come back to find a group of admirerers around it who had come over from england for the rally! (no doubt they were used to the freezing cold so that wouldn't be too much of a disapointment to them) they seemed to like the homemade backyard racer style of the bike saying they'd come over from england to see stuff like this!:love:

Went back to the camp and parked the bike and settled into a couple of much deserved double browns:yes:

It was really windy and rainy during the night and I thought that I probably should have put a rag in the carby to stop it filling up with water.

Drained all the water and fuel out of it and was trying to push start it for ages with my mate and we were getting real tired when I noticed that I had forgot to un kill the kill switch!!!!! Did that and she fired up.

Went down to teratonga and drove across the track into the pits at about 9.50 to see what was happening, talked to an old fulla down from nelson racing an old BSA with a dangerous spinning clutch which could easily take off ya foot and a old CB350 honda (yeah! honda!:love: )

Signed into the racing then headed off into invercargal for some kebabs for lunch and went to the racetrack for the riders briefing and practice.

Practice: Teratonga is a VERY fast and WINDY track, I was hitting full speed about 1/2 way down the straight and was in 6th pretty much the whole time so I decided I must need to gear it up a bit. You'd be sheltered by a bank around the back and then come around a corner to hit the wind FULL blast, lose about 10 kilometres or somthing, so yes it was windy, but that was good as it kept the track nice and dry.

Went back and changed my front sprocket to a 15 tooth from the 14 I had been running and got ready for the endurance race.

Endurance race: The endurance race was fun, had a le mans start which was fun, was right up the front and got a GREAT start, jumped down the bank, nearly fell over, sprinted to the bike which was waiting in second already bumped back onto compresssion, ran foward, jumped on the seat, she fired up with a drop off the clutch, clutch in, 9 grand drop clutch and she was away flying!!!!!!!!:scooter: Was raping hard, new gearing great, then all the GS1000's, GSX750's RD350 LC's came flying past, managed to take a couple around the sweeper, but then they fly away.

Was the smallest bike there, but not the slowest, over taking a couple of people but not the CB250 who had too much straightline speed, but I got REALLY bad leg cramp during the race, was flailing my leg around down the straight to try and ease the pain, had to pit in after a while to stretch my legs as the frame is very small, having about 20cm between the seat and the pegs. About 3/4 way though the race there was a bad accident, one young fulla on a RS125 or somthing got caught by the wind and lost the front and went sliding, got up only to be smashed by a flying bike from another rider who went down! Race was red flagged, but I understand it that each rider isn't too badly injured so thats ok.

Race didn't restart as it was too far though, but it was ok as there was heaps more racing after.

Had a few more 4 lap races after that, I was amazed at how late we were racing, we were racing until it would get too dark to see! Was in the last race mixed with the OLD girder fork bikes which was a real highlight to be racing with old indians AJS's etc with their old skool technology, some of those old bikes were really fast though! It started to get a bit damp with a bit of drizzle so I slowed down a bit as I was on slicks then it got worse and it started PELTING down on the last lap, race was red flagged and I went back in, it started hailing so I left my helmet on and quickly loaded the bike into the van.

We stayed at a friends house that night as the cheap tents had filled with water and on the way back the weather was fine, no wind so we got back way quicker!

Was a great weekend and will definatly be going next year!!!!:yes: :scooter:

gav
4th December 2006, 06:19
Great stuff, thanks for sharing!

Maido
4th December 2006, 09:48
Glad you had fun, good to hear. From general consensence it sounds like most people enjoyed it. There were a few teething problems but for the size of the event it went very well in its first year.
The weather was a little testing which is very unusual for Invercargill. :innocent: In all honesty that is the worst wind I have every ridden in. (it bordered on scary at some points) and believe me, from living down here, i have ridden in some crap.

SDU
4th December 2006, 11:55
Thanks for the great write up to whet the appetite for next rally. It would have been awesome to be there.
Did you get any pics.

ben444
4th December 2006, 13:45
Glad to hear you'll be back next year. The weather was a bit of a downer, but as a spectator it was a fantastic weekend. A very relaxed atmosphere all round. I managed to get to all the racing events, and everyone looked to be having a bloody good time.

Tim 39
4th December 2006, 16:34
Sounds like an awsome weekend in all from what I've been hearing, apart from the weather but hey that's just Invercargill for you! my first ever race on slicks, was down there and it ended up literally snowing so that was real nice of it. I have however been ther once yes ONCE when weather has been perfect but bike played up instead lol