Last year a friend of Team ESE had been trying his hand at land speed record breaking in Aus. For this year over the Xmas break we are helping Jim out with a bit of dyno time and hopefully Jim and his daughter Kath will get in some more good runs at lake Gardner. I am not entirely sure of the rules for his class but they look like they may be very similar to our Bucket rules and he is using an ex David Diprose bike.
This is Jim's wright-up from last year.
Hi All
Thought I'd pop you a note on the trip to the DLRA Speedweek at Lake Gardner, SA.
I was going to go with a mate from Scott Machinery who is a bit of a petrolhead and also knows how to speak Australian, however he got quite unwell and couldn't come. So daughter No2 -Katherine said "I'll come Daddio". So that was that!
Sent bikes to Adelaide in Box/Trailer I made.
Met up with Don Short-an expat Kiwi and we jointly rented a camper through Shareacamper and also split accommodation and travel costs.
Traveled up to Augusta and stayed overnight.Katherine had expressed an interest in riding the 50 in one of the two classes it was entered in so as she had NEVER ridden a bike before it occurred to me she may benefit from a wee riding lesson before we got to the salt. So we stopped at a little outback town called Kimba, unloaded the 50 and within about half an hour she was cruising through the gears and settling into it amazingly well. Got to the lake later that day and checked out the salt.
Tech inspection next morning and both bikes went through with nil issues.
Did my rookie run and the 50 started missing -pulled carb apart and cleaned out-fixed.
Kath did her rookie run after lunch and recorded 68mph. Crikey!! This turned out to be the best we could get from the 50-wasn't entirely surprised as it was built as a 1 hr endurance bike and my best at home was 72 mph on Hakarimata Rd (in front of our house)
I did my run on the 50 with fairings on and then turned my attention to the 100. First run was 71mph with a slipping clutch. Pulled the engine out 3 times and substituted front and back plates, added spacers etc etc and by the last run had raised the speed to 86.915 mph at 11500 revs-still with a clutch slip problem. Bike was accelerating strongly up to 11500 revs but was slipping freely after that but engine will pull strongly through to14500.
Ran out of time on the last day to have one more run by which time I had locked up the clutch. Four records set but we did not achieve our target speeds which was the primary goal of course
Target speeds were-80mph+ for the 50 and 100mph+ for the 100.
So -unfinished business of course.
Plan going forward-Improves to the 50:
Upcarb from 18 to 26mm with external mixture adjustment.
Better Ignition
Better Chamber
EGT, O2 and ambient airtemp sensors,
all linked into a CPU that has WiFi to my phone and makes tuning quite friendly.-(theoretically anyway)
Keep Katherine on it as number 1 rider!!
She told me the other day she had to throttle off a bit on her rookie run because of the cross wind!
100
Better clutch plates and stronger springs.
Had a wonderful/busy time-met a raft of interesting neat people who treated us almost like family.
And the Lake: A stark,serene and somewhat surreal geological wonder that I can't really do justice to with adjectives alone. The sunsets are really something else!!
Kath is going to do a write up of her own of the little trip complete with pics etc of course.
Jim & Katherine Goulter
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