Shane - Superlite (#43)

I'm really keen on the Redline Track day on Thursday. I took her out for a bit of a scoot again and I'm really starting to get excited after riding her a little.

The day started out a little late cos I couldn't be arsed getting out of bed. Probably had something to do with Nick, Brooke and Simon turning up on the doorstep at 10:30pm on Friday night with plenty of booze. I climbed into the Vodka while Brooke attacked the 2 bottles of red he bought for us (but I wasn't keen on it cos reds give me migraines). Simon had some Canadian Club premixers and Nick had grabbed a box of Cody's. Needless to say it was a late night so sleeping on Saturday night was really messed up.

Saturday I was going to go and do a few things on the bike, but because I was still half pissed I didn't leave the house. That night I was knackered and at about 7:00pm I was reading a book and nodded off. Woke up at 2:00am with the lights still on and the doors and windows wide open. I sorted that lot out but half an hour later I couldn't sleep so I got up for a couple of hours and pissed about. I eventually went back to bed and got back to sleep but it took ages and when I eventually woke again it was already 11:00am.

After pissing about with things like eating, scratching my arse and surf the web I went and pulled the bike out of the shed. Because I'm renting space in a friends shed I haven't got anything much there other than the bike and a few bits and pieces. So I took a stereo over that we haven't even hooked up since we moved 3 years ago because the computers do all of the multimedia.

With some music I was much happier so I got into changing the front sprocket. Brent had lent me the right socket with a decent power bar as it's a 3/4" drive and I've only got 1/2" stuff. As usual there wasn't really enough slack to be able to extract the sprocket without loosening off the rear wheel and chain adjusters. Once I'd done that the old 14 tooth came off and I put a 15 tooth in. I had 2 problems with the front sprocket, bending the lock washer over again and I managed to bend the bar I was using to lock the rear wheel as I was on the wrong side to hold the rear brake on. It was the short power bar out of the socket set unfortunately. However, it was only a short one and wasn't that much use anyway. I was always going to get a decent one so no big loss. Just damn annoying. I eventually climbed in the car and drove to Super Cheap and picked up some $8 variable mouth pliers that bent the lock washer over just nicely.

After that it was onto the front tyre. I hate changing tyres.

We'd made up a dodgy tool to undo the front axle and it worked perfectly. The pinch bolts were done up by a gorilla, typical of the idiots that had worked on this bike before. I didn't have any Locktite for the brake capilper bolts so I jumped in the car and shot back to Super Cheap and picked up some locktite and a tube of grease as I didn't have any. Once the wheel was off I then had to break the bead. I had a couple of clamps lying around that I thought would do the job but it turns out they sucked. I shot back home to pick up a different one but I got back and found out that one sucked too. So after much pissing about and swearing I jumped back in the car. I thought I'd try the nearest Repco but after 3 Repco stores I ended up at SuperCheap again. At least that store has eye candy working there on the weekends.

Once I got back and after a lot more swearing I broke the bead. I levered one side of the tyre off and flipped it over to find that the other side and reset itself so I had to break the bead again ffs. It's more difficult with one side of the tyre already off but after more swearing I got there. Getting the old tyre off the rim is easily the hardest part of changing the tyres. Needless to say, there's was plenty more swearing.

Miraculously I got the tyre off without too many drama's. The tyre levers I picked up from Super Cheap are great. They're nice long ones that you can get plenty of leverage with, making the job so much easier.

At this point I was almost falling over with hunger so I shot off to McDonalds and nailed a Grand Angus combo.

Once I got back I started putting the fairings back on, put the new battery in ($80 through a contact so heaps cheaper than from the bike shops) and double checked everything. After making the place look semi-respectable again I cranked her up and climbed into my gear.

Pulling out of the drive it was instantly obvious that the change in the number of teeth on the front sprocket had the desired effect, it'd lowered the gearing just nicely. I was going to head over to Brents place so he could see for himself that all the time and effort he'd put into the engine was worth it, but because she's not 100% road legal at the moment I decided to take the back roads and loop around the north end of Hamilton, outside of town.

Now that a good battery was in her the full dash was working so I had a rev counter again. It was good to have that working so I could see how the engine was performing at different revs. On the way to Brents I took it relatively easy, only taking her out to red line in a couple of the gears once. She definitely sounded different. Until she's up over 8 grand or so she sounds like a big, lazy twin that's not in a hurry to go anywhere. Over 8,000 she has a hint of the 600 howl mixed with lazy sounding twin. It's a most unusual sounding engine and seems to be quite deceptive because I had to watch the rev counter as I couldn't tell what revs she was doing from the engine noise.

I was definitely taking it easy, having an over inflated front tyre and a totally rooted rear tyre, especially on the right as it's last few outings had been at Puke. I found that I could probably live with the rear sets that are on her but it was right at the limit that I could work with. A shorter rider with skinnier legs would find them fine but they're too cramped for me. However, I'll leave them on for the first couple of sessions at Taupo and then change them over for the brackets that Andrew is sending me tomorrow.

When I got to Brent and Karens they both came charging out with big grins on their faces, really happy to see her ready and mobile at last. After a couple of photos we talked about how she was going etc and had a quick beer. Brent dug out some bolts because I'd forgotten to grab some from the hardware store to put the sprocket cover on.

The sun was starting to disappear so I had to bolt. While out and about many times during the day I'd seen plenty of cops pulling people over. Dunno if they were being particularly stringent or whether I just don't drive around town as much on a Sunday but I was keen not to get spotted. So on the way back I got a bit more active with the throttle on the back roads, driving a lot harder out of corners. Even with a rooted rear tyre the backend refused to let go so I'm thinking there's going to be lots of hard on the gas at max lean going on soon. I think I'm really going to like this. Gearing is going to be critical because the gears are quite widely spaced and being down a lung she doesn't have the same pull as she was designed to have, so I'm going to need to keep her cooking on the track.

But the sound ........ I can't describe it any better than I have done. A good hint of 600 howl mixed with big, lazy twin is as good as I can get.

I snuck back to the shed without any dramas, parked up and thought I'm shagged the rear tyre can wait. I think I'm going to pull the rear wheel then go next door and use the tyre machine instead of doing it manually. Hopefully they've got the right inserts for the tyre machine to do bike wheels. If they don't I'll just use the tyre machine to break the bead and will have to do the rest by hand.

Roll on Thursday. I can't fricken wait!!!