Shane - Superlite (#43)

Not long until it's done and I can ride it. I'm really looking forward to the end of this month.

I got a message saying my bike was back together and running!! After some hurried organisation I was all set to travel down to Wellington, put the bike on the dyno then take it up to New Plymouth to sort the suspension out.

Originally my wife was going to go with me and make a trip of it so I'd organised to stay with Pete McDonald. That way she could wander around town and go see her former workplace, the National Museum, while I was at the bike store doing the dyno work. However, because I hadn't expected the bike to be ready quite so soon (hoped it would be but hadn't expected it) and she was going to be at a conference I was doing the trip alone.

Sunday I got moving nice and early seeing as it was going to be a long trip. I'd had the car in the garage for new tyres a couple of days earlier but they were having trouble sourcing them so it still had the old worn set on it. That meant it was going to be a longer trip than normal as they were bloody nearly bald and it was raining. Before I'd gotten past Cambridge I'd already had two moments so slowed right down. Crashing 20 minutes into a 7 hour trip isn't a clever thing to do.

Taking it easy I made my way to my uncles place in Taupo. I stopped for a cuppa, but also to drop my fairings off to him so he can paint them. The fairings were brand spanking new from Billy at Autocycle Refinishers and Fibreglass. They were ridiculously cheap, coming in at about 1/3 the price of everyone else.

Moving on I made slow and steady progress, stopping a couple of times for coffee, food and to walk around. Eventually I got to Wellington and headed for Wellington Motorcycles. Once around the back of the shop I rang Pete as he was going to get me to park in the secure area there. However, I'd put the wrong number in the phone and got emergency despatch instead. Lots of swearing ensued. Luckily I had a G3 signal and he was listed in the White Pages. After correcting the number in my phone I found out he'd forgotten to grab a key so I'd have to take the car to his place. Unfortunately I only had the name of the building, not an actual address so the GPS took a best guess. It was close, but I would've been closer by guessing myself. After ringing Pete again I got to the right place.

Looked like Steak and home made chips were on the menu so I shot down and grabbed some beers. After a perfectly cooked Medium Rare steak, chips and a little bit of salad (didn't want to over do it) we settled in to watch the Moto2 and Moto3 races. MotoGP was going to be on too late but the other 2 classes weren't. There was some good racing and I can't wait to see Crazy Joe let loose on the Ducati. Pol Espargaro should really be moving up as well but there's a limited number of seats. At least he'll go into next year as the clear favourite in Moto2.

Next morning and it was hosing down. Vertical rain and really heavy. We got around to Wellington Motorcycles to find out they'd already had to mop things up because it flooded through the back door of the workshop, almost making it to the showroom.

The bike had been delivered to Paul who had brought it in and got it all set up on Saturday, that way we'd be able to get the dyno tuning over and done with in a day rather than running through into Tuesday. All I had to do was update the Power Commander firmware so that I could put an Ignition Module on. However, on the Power Commander website they don't tell you that you another cable to update it so I wasn't going to be able to. That means no Ignition Module until sometime in the future.

I did a couple of tidying up bits and pieces under the tank and seat while waiting for Paul to turn up. Once he arrived, we grabbed a coffee and talked about what had been done to the bike.

Into the dyno room and we need to warm the bike up but it wouldn't start. It started and ran perfectly on Saturday before Paul left so he was really surprised it wouldn't start. Because I'd done some bits under the tank and seat we started poking around there, looking for anything disconnected or in the wrong place. When we didn't find anything we started unplugging/replugging things but to no avail. After that we took the Power Commander out in case it had been damaged somehow but still no go. I then started following wires and the second one I followed was the crank sensor wires, one of which was broken. Looks like it had been damaged sometime in the past and me poking around had finally broken it.

A quick patch up and she starts up perfectly.

Lucky it happened in the dyno room cos if that had've broken at the track on a race day I probably would've missed an entire days racing. I'm totally over missing races because of mechanical issues. The Triumph was a great first bike and I learnt lots but I missed a hell of a lot of races because of issues with it (jammed throttle, dead batteries, no spare wheels with wets etc).

A warm up run, followed by a base line run and the graphs are looking very peculiar. They're very much like a two stroke graph - nothing, nothing, everything. It was literally jumping 25 horse power in a 500rpm range. The Triumph was like that as well and I was starting to think it must be something to do with running a four cylinder on three. We plowed ahead though but I was worried cos the Triumph had tried to spit me off a few times when I hit 10,500rpm while leant right over and the CBR was looking like it was going to be even worse in that regard as it came on song at 9,500rpm with a bigger jump.

Eventually we figured out that when plugging the Power Commander back in something was plugged in incorrectly and until it got a few revs up it wasn't firing on all of the required cylinders.

Once we corrected that it sounded sweet and the graph looked much more normal. The bike hadn't sounded badly before but once things were in the right place it actually sounded "right".

The Wellington Motorcycles dyno calculates crank horsepower so it always reads higher than other dynos. The graph for my bike was showing just a touch under 100hp. But, because of the amount of rain over the last few days and that morning the moisture in the air Paul estimated it was probably robbing us of around 5hp. Also, we didn't oil the chain which, according to Google, can be worth almost 5hp!!

We hadn't done anything special to the engine, just a K&N filter, colder plugs, new valve seals and the HRC head gasket. But if you talk to an engine builder like Ray Clee they'll tell you it's as much about how you put an engine together as it is about what goes into it. A stock engine that's been put together by someone who knows what they're doing can get a substantial increase out of the motor, even though it's still exactly the same engine and parts.

The difference between crank horsepower and rear wheel horsepower is different for each bike so figuring out how much to adjust the numbers by is quite difficult. Google comes up with lots of crap about driveline losses, mainly the 15% myth (which is actually for cars). But it gives a vague idea of how much to adjust the crank horsepower figure by, although I don't believe it. According to Google the upper limit should be about 20% horsepower lost in the drive train which would give me a 450cc triple engine making low 80's rear wheel horse power. Like I said, I don't believe that. It is still a totally stock motor and no matter how you put it together I don't believe you can get that much horsepower without some modification. If it was possible then more people would be getting those sort of figures.

After a full day in the dyno room I wasn't feeling too bad so I climbed in and headed north, aiming to stay the night at my parents in Taranaki then drop the bike off at Kiwi Suspension Solutions the next day. I probably should've bothered Pete to stay in his spare room again as within 30 minutes I was needing a break.

I thought it was probably a good idea to have some dinner as I had only had lunch. At Wendy's I ordered my meal but the dude mis-heard. I didn't really give a toss and just wanted food so I didn't bother correcting him. Turns out that going with the flow is a good thing some times. The burger he thought I'd ordered would take 11 minutes so they said I could have any burger I wanted. A free upgrade. However, seeing as that burger wasn't instantly available the dude gave me a free sunday as well.

Good score, but half of it went in the bin as it was a ridiculously large meal.

Feeling somewhat refreshed I hit the road again. However, a minute or two outside of Otaki the fuel warning light came on - I'd forgotten to gas up.

I was confident I wasn't going to run out of gas, but I wasn't exactly sure how far away the next gas station was and as the k's ticked by I began to worry. I knew Levin was somewhere nearby but I was starting to look at my phone to see if I had a signal in case I needed to ring the AA.

Levin was further than I thought it was but I made it. After grabbing some gas I got back on the road again but was really starting to feel tired. At Bulls I stopped at the McD's to grab a coffee and also closed my eyes for a few minutes.

After a short bit of shut eye I got going again. Most days at about 5:30pm I can be found with my eyes closed for a wee while. Doesn't matter if I've sat on the couch and done nothing all day, at 5:30pm my body shuts down for a bit. Delaying that down time, as I had done by hitting the road straight away, catches up with me eventually and that's why I was feeling the strain until I was north of Bulls. By then I was literally high on coffee and V. At most I'll have 2 coffees a week but I'd had about 8 in 2 days. On top of that was a bottle and a half of V a day so it was no wonder I was high.

I got to my parents 1.5 hours later than I said I'd be, mainly due to stopping for dinner, gas and repeated coffee/loo breaks.

Next morning mum woke me up and told me to go meet the guy who was staying for a couple of days. He was doing the same course for work as she was and it turns out he'd just started racing bikes a few months earlier. Doug Banks in Clubmans on a YZF750SP (like my old bike that got stolen) with R1 bodywork. We had quite a good chat and he said he wasn't too happy in Clubmans because there were guys going 3 seconds faster than the cut off time for the class. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff and I think I've found a convert to F3 450 triples heh.

After some breakfast and buggering around a bit I dropped the bike off to Dennis at KSS. Robert had taken off overseas for a month so Dennis was, understandably, very busy.

I got back to Hamilton about 2:30pm. After a huge feed of fish and chips I climbed into bed as I was still feeling totally strung out from all the caffeine I'd consumed. It took 2 days to get over it.

The list of stuff done so far

* Sigma lightweight racing slipper clutch (required different steels and fibres but the originals were knackered so they'd have to be replaced anyway)
* engine pulled down and rebuilt with new valve seals, an HRC head gasket and 10 series racing spark plugs
* Brembo RCS19 master cylinder (the variable fulcrum one)
* Venhill braided brake lines at the front
* Shorai light weight lithium racing battery (bought that for my old bike)
* dyno tune by someone who knows what he's doing
* brand new set of fairings (the entire 5 piece set for a ridiculously low price from Billy) currently being painted
* Power Commander Quick Shifter (still sitting here waiting to go on the bike)
* Woodcraft crash covers on both sides
* bits from Sato Racing to easily change between normal and race pattern gear shift
* spare wheels for front (came with discs thankfully so much cheaper than normal) and rear
* new springs, seals and freshen up for the suspension
* a mid-valve and rebound kit and modified pistons for the forks

Things I've got to do

* fit American ECU (it turned up too late to be done before going on the dyno. It's a no HISS model so I can do away with the transponder key)
* get and fit an ignition module (no use doing it until I get the bike to a dyno again)
* get some sticker designs to MSTRS so he can cut them
* track down somemore Dzus fasteners (not cheap and nasty immitations that take more time to do up than a nut and bolt)
* hook up the mems gyro and servo to the camera mount so I can do the gyro cam thing
* get some tyres
* ride the arse off it
* design a brake lever guard and sharks tooth guard and have them 3D printed

Things I'd hoped to do but can't fit into the budget

* new set of leathers from Sam at Celtic
* new boots
* new gloves
* steering damper

Thanks must go to

* Steve Dundon and Garry Gill from Wellington Motorcycles
* Pete McDonald for putting me up for the night and helping me out
* Paul Grant for going into work on a day off and spending hours in the noisey and cold dyno room
* Paul Garrett for the excellent deal and for such a good baseline bike to start this project with
* the chick who makes coffee in the trailer at Bulls

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