TT1 4 Hour Endurance racing

Perry said:
And is that RAL 9006 on the frame of that chair ?
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Yep, the inspiration for the orange and silver Jota that graces so many classic motorcycle magazine covers when they run out of Triumph twins.
This one is the fastest wheelchair in my neighbourhood. Grannies come flocking around me every time I stop.
Never out in the rain or if the roads have been salted if you're interested.

Paul
 
On ferry to France this evening, meeting up with Gareth Roberts Wednesday evening. Will be at Paul Ricard from just after lunch, in garage 7.
Running a pair of Bridgestone CR11's this year, definitely a dry tyre. Team of 5 Riders Tony Jimenez and myself, pit wall Andy Peacock, Re-fueller Paul Creasy and last but not least on Fire extinguisher Chris.

Andy
 
Good luck to the team. Great to be out on the track and competing in a class race like that. BTW what's the difference between Classic and Maxi-Classic?
 
Well not the result I planed for!
First practise went well running times equal to my quickest last year. Tony who had not been to the circuit before wobbled round, picking up speed.
Only issue petrol filters restricting flow , thus removed.
1st qualifying came , each lap was quicker than the previous, till the red flag came out having done only three laps. Times ok for qualification so didn't return to track , when pit lane reopened for 5 mins roughly, 2 laps maximum.
Tony went out but forgot to reset pit lane speed limiter!!!!!!!. Once he had realised why the bike wouldn't rev pass 5500 rpm , he started to fly.
On returning to the pits , white wispy smoke was coming out of the exhaust, quantity of such depending on how much the throttle was opened. Didn't see any smoke when bike was on track , and Tony's quickest lap was is last. So performance was still there.
In a way I was fearing the worse, considering the smoke coming out was more like a steam engine smoke when its working hard up a steep incline.
Check and cleaned carbs. Valve clearances OK ,appeared to have used a small amount of oil back not concerning amount. Checked plugs, 1 and 2 slightly black with small amount of wetness. No 3 plug was running fine. A Dutch chap by the name of Wim working with the Roadrunner team just happened to have a Snap On borescope camera. This showed some scoring marks that shouldn't have been there on No1 cylinder, but No2 cylinder appeared to have a dark blackish line, a crack?, running vertically . Considering the picture now being painted I decided to withdraw the team.I was gutted not just for my self but the rest of the team. No point thinking about the energy,
time, money that been put into this race, we need to move forward.
Once home engine will be stripped, the important thing is to try and work out why it happened and engineer out the problem.
Aim is still to be at Brands Hatch end of July. At least I have no need to buy new tyres, which felt better than the Avons, so thumbs up to Bridgestone CR11's.
A big big thanks to Paul Creasy who stuck with it , working with me to attempt to find a solution to the problem in the garage. Also a big big thanks to Andy for working the pit wall, keeping everyone fed. To Tony for being so understanding, and patience and Chris for assisting Paul on refuelling duties. Great to see Nick and Lorraine Alcock who had tour round on their Jota, who had the chance to be in the garage with us, due to the team not using their full allocation of arm bands. Also great to meet Gareth and Bart who gone down , having book tickets to ride the circuit on there own bikes.

For me great great disappointment because I truly believed we could have achieved a podium in our class and to have failed and let so many people down, but we will come back stronger.
Currently in a Hotel in Macon for the night, looking forward to a good night sleep for the first time in days, home tomorrow.
Then the investigation begins. A great experience with wonderful people, thanks to them.
 
So disappointing for you all! I can sense it myself from 10,000km away. To put so much work in for a DNS. Racing can be so demoralising but also exhilirating when it all goes right. All the best for the repair and the next round.
 
That's really a punch in the guts. Maybe not helpful but I really like the idea of road registering race bikes for quick easy fetaling without the need to access a track. Especially in endurance racing and if you're travelling mega miles to get to said track. There must be an advantage to putting a thousand ks on a motor to prove reliability or am I an idiot for thinking this way? Plus it would be a fun activity as well.
 
Not the result you planned for is quite an understatement. Travelling so far for so little reward is a bitter pill. Perhaps it would pay to have a spare engine with less effort gone into it when so much effort has gone into just getting there. The guy who won the Euro FIM classic series with a Bakker Honda rolladoor was already on his third engine in June at Anderstorp in Sweden (where he finished behind me on the podium by the way :-) ), had gone more and more standard I understand. These were sprint races but still, a long way to travel and he needed those spare motors.
 
Sorry to hear it didn't come to fruition Andy.
Chin up, keep calm and carry on, etc, etc

It'll come together one glorious sunny day 👍
 
Vince said:
I really like the idea of road registering race bikes for quick easy fetaling without the need to access a track. Especially in endurance racing and if you're travelling mega miles to get to said track. There must be an advantage to putting a thousand ks on a motor to prove reliability or am I an idiot for thinking this way? Plus it would be a fun activity as well.
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That's what I did with my RGS endurance racer. It had historic rego so didn't cost much. It was very helpful being able to sort out tuning issues on the road before getting it on the track. Lights, horn and indicators were mounted on 2 brackets, one front and one rear. Each one could easily un-bolt as an assembly, and all the wiring was via a multi-pin plug at each end. Took 10 minutes to convert from road to track mode. Sometimes took a bit longer going from track to road mode because I had to wrestle with that bloody horrible RGS side stand spring.
 
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