At the start of the year Stevie G offered me his self labelled “Frankincane” in the VMCC series. I was after anything to keep my hand in while I continued to build my F3 bike.
Originally I thought that the CBR offer would be a great experience as the bike was of similar design to my own f3 bike, being a different engine in a smaller frame. So I could use the time on it to see if I could actually ‘tune’ the bike to perform as good as it could and hopefully lead on track and cut some good times.
I was informed that the bike was pretty much good to go but needed “finishing” it had no fairings so may need something thrown on. This was partially correct…… I received the bike and threw a tail section and a front fairing on. The bike was sitting as a CBR400 frame, CBR600 motor std running std carbs and airbox with a 600 tank and rear subframe. Steve had spent money on suspenders and placed NSR front callipers on the bike to attempt to stop it.
Steve was running GPR proddy tyres on it so the first thing I did was fit a set of Ntec slicks, get Rob T to do the sags and then take it to a test day. At the test day I found the bike was ahhhh not so ready.
I went to the test day before rnd1 of VMCC, on first ride I found a few issues. The Engine was great – heaps of torque revved nice enough, didn’t feel punchy up top. But pretty much everything else was not so good, brakes just didn’t work, clutch slipped, gear box jumped out of gear, and the geometry was well and truly wrong. It needed a steering dampener so I threw my own one on to smooth out the twitchyness.
So we replaced the front brake pads and ended up junking the master cylinder, the clutch and gearbox we just had to ride around. But the biggest issue was the turn in and seat height, the pegs were so high that it was like you were taking a dump in Vietnam whilst riding……
I spent the next few rounds improving the seat position, the subframe and tank was junked and replaced with the original 400 ones, just modified to suit, the rear seat and subframe was raised to give more leg room and we began raising the rear ride height. After 2 and a ½ turns of ride height were added the bike now turns in awesomely. The Bike started to perform well; I managed to dip into the 16’s chasing people in F2 which showed the bike could go even quicker with some more work.
I had Steve’s FCR carbs (That used to be mine) modded to fit the Honda and threw her on the dyno – tuned it up which helped the top end allot. But we had gear box and clutch issues along the way, so before I went to the USA I did a motor swap to Steve’s spare, changed the clutch over (as the new clutch was in the stuffed donk) and hoped all would be sorted.
The 2nd engine was really good, stronger than the old one, and the gear box was better. The carbs really made the thing drive out of the corners really well and the bike seemed as settled in the corners as it would ever be. I focussed on just riding the rest of the season and trying for a good PB time. My initial though at the start of year was that with good power, new tyres and full fairings the bike should be able to swing a 1:14 – as my ZXR managed a 15.9.
It was not meant to be, the bike itself rides well enough, I was using tyres from my nationals push 3 years ago….and we never managed to get a fairing back on the bike. The biggest gain at Manny would be a bit more power it was only a few HP up on my ZXR and the bike is definitely heavier – In the end I managed a 15.6 on 3 year old tyres with no fairings (my gpx recorded it as a 15.4 but the Martians must have messed up the satellites) The bike would do 15’s consistently, with the things sorted and a tad more HP’s 14’s would def be possible.
Huge thanks to my competitors in PC and F2, I had allot of fun at T1 off the standing start, you F2 riders need some coaching on the first corner on the first lap for sure – apparently I made it to 8th at the hair pin one start, from starting at the back of the grid …..The Senior PC boys were great to race with-we ran allot of turns close but hard with only Ernie’s crash really messing things up for the PC season.
Special thanks to Stevie G for supplying me the bike for a whole season, I feel I have done him proud and given him a time to aim for J
Congrates to Eamon for giving it his all and improving his lap times hugely, 16’s is good cookie lets see some 15’s soon! Eamon is 11 points behind me in the standings but I will bow out of the lead when he competes at Taupo.
Lastly our thoughts go out to Mark B’s family, this year was very tough on the biking family, I was the next bike behind mark, only a few bike lengths behind when he passed away. We will remember him.
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