*Photos at bottom of page 2*
Post 1 is the practice day, Post 2 is race day
Glens Road Race Spectacular Report
Hey guys,
Here’s a report on this weekends ummm, what’s the word…. Umm ‘Fun’ yeah, we’ll call it that
As most of you know, this was the first race meeting on the new Honda RS125.
Saturday:
This was just a practice day, so no pressure, I just needed a little bit of time on the bike before Sunday.
Practice 1:
It started raining just as I was warming the bike up (which seems to take forever!!)
I still had the slicks on, but decided to go out still, as I didn’t have time to change them over. Never mind.
Wow, these little bikes really do have some Grunt, well for 125s they bloody do!!
I had to come back in half way through, as I didn’t have enough tape on the radiator and had dropped down to 45 degrees. Not too bad, but not desirable
Nothing really spectacular to report here, just improved each lap and took it easy.
Practice 2:
Seeing as it was still raining, I decided to swap to the wets. Good choice. I love working on these bikes as I can get from slicks to wets In less than 5 min, which is pretty darn good.
After a couple of laps to let the tires warm up I started to slowly lean more and more just finding the point where the bike would start to slide. I was amazed that I was spinning the rear wheel up quite a bit exiting the turns!! And it made a bit of a mess of the wets, even though the track was puddle wet!!
Here comes the ‘fun’ part.
On the 125 I was trail braking quite hard into the turns, so I was still changing down gears as I was tipping into the turn. On the final lap of the practice, down the front straight, I started braking and tipping into the turn, then I felt the rear start sliding out, ohm shit.. I though I had left my foot resting on the brakes, but unfortunately, not. It had seized solid, as it locked up I counter steered into the slide, but when it re-gripped, it spat me over the high side D’oh! So there go me and my new bike tumbling down the track.
Its funny when you crash, even though it happens so fast, you have so much time to think.
Like first I was thing: Shit my new bikes Seized, I wonder how much that’s going to cost.
Then I was thinking: D’oh, my nice fairings will be smashed!!!
And then as I was flipping down the track, I heard the damn thing I was trying to avoid. The harsh sound of helmet sliding along the deck as I was completely upside down. Darn. (insert bad filthy words here)
When I picked the bike up I was shocked to see levers still on the bars, and bars still on the triple clamps.
Well that’s a start. I pushed my bike off the track and into the pits. I looked at my tail faring, which was caved in really bad. A couple of whacks and she popped out. The front fairings were quite well guarded by the handle bars, so they did all right with some scratches and a few cracks. I can live with that.
Now to the engine. It wasn’t a heat seize or a cold seize as I had the bike at optimum (55 degrees) Which I had checked about 100 metres prior to the crash.
So was it me stuffing up my jetting and going to lean. First off I pulled the head. Hmm a light-brown tan.. that’s about right. Ok lets pull the barrel. Sweet. Its not a piston seize. So was it a big end? Nope
After that I figured it was either the mains or the crank had seized against the cases. But before I stripped the motor down, I thought I would get some expert advice…. Dave Trustrim (F5 Dave) came and had a poke around for me and suggested that I pulled the right hand engine case…
Man I’m glad I did.
What had happened is the bolt that screws into the end of the crank, that holds the primary gear onto the crank had rattled loose and hooked up on the cases.
Luckily the case damage was minimal, and they were still useable, but it had made a mess of the thread in the crank and bolt.
Down to super cheap auto to get me some materials. So I got a Tap set to clean up the thread, a new bolt and some Kero to flush the gearbox (full of ally filings)
It took an age to get the thread on the crank cleaned up as the cheap Tap that I got from super cheap was about the same strength as the crank (don’t buy cheap tools) So it made quite a mess of the threads, but luckily, good enough to get the bolt in, with a shit load of lock tight and a spring washer.
Bike back together, barrel on. Slicks back on as it had dried out, and off we go.
Damn missed the qualifying race for Sunday. Shit. That was the final race for 125s. So I sneakily tucked into buckets, as I wanted track time to make sure the bike wasn’t going to shit itself. Which it did.
I run total loss on the bike, and in the time I was trying to get it going again, I left the battery plugged in, so it drained the batt.
It wasn’t to bad, but I lost a whole heap of topend and half way through a turn, it would bog, the turn on and scare the crap outta me. But hey, the bike was going so hurray!!
Went back to the cabin that night and had a seriously long hot shower to try loosen the muscles up, as I was fairly sore from tumbling down the track.
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Originally Posted by scracha
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