Day 302: More Philip Island Prep

Pete dropped his bike over today so we could load it up with mine and they'd be ready for us early next Saturday morning, we loaded his and mine into the trailer and then started working out where to tie our stands and my wet weather wheels down. I like to take the wet weather wheels when going to the track, it usually works well to keep the rain away and when it doesn't I have them there ready to use.

I like having the two Daytonas in the trailer side by side, they are essentially the same bike with only a couple of years difference in age and one having a fancy red R after the 675. The real difference comes down to the one on the right being completely as it rolled off the factory floor and the one on the left being a fully race prepared version. Pete's bike, the right, is certainly the prettier bike but for now I still prefer my one on the left.

Day 300: New Hoop

I'm going to Philip Island with Pete & Andy next weekend and part of my preparation in the lead up was to replace the rear tyre of the Daytona. The old tyre was a few few track days and one race-your-mates at Wakefield old, it had also been fairly well chewed up due to the suspension setup being less than optimal.

Laurie Smith made some adjustments to the existing setup of mismatched spring rates and valving (the front was very hard and the rear was far too soft) before my last ride but it still didn't feel right. Since then I've had both the front and rear suspension removed and re-sprung so they are better matched and next weekend will be my first go on the bike with the new setup.

It will be interesting to see how the new tyre wears now that the suspension has been sorted, going on past experience with Laurie, the bike will feel much better and the tyre will wear a lot more evenly.

Day 214: Perfectly Packaged Parts

A little parcel arrive for me today, in it was the Triumph QuickShifter I ordered to replace the one that broke while Pete was riding my bike at Wakefield a couple of months ago.

I'm pretty impressed with how these are packaged from the factory, they come in a sturdy little plastic case that is lined with the spongy foam that you can see the unit sitting on in todays photo. The case has a pair of little clips that secure it closed, pinching the Quickshifter firmly between the layers of foam. It's got me wondering what else I could use the case for after I fit the part, I'm sure I'll find something to use it for.

Day 191: Daytona's New Clothes

Being on leave is handy when the Parcel Post man shows up to deliver a box that would have required the trailer to pick up.

Inside was the new race glass I ordered online about 4 weeks ago, it'll still need some prep work before it's ready for fitting though. The surfaces are a little rough and the mounting holes will need to be drilled once it's been prepped and painted, I'll also have to source some quick release fasteners to secure the lower fairing to the upper.

Now I've just got to come up with a suitably simple design and then find the time to prep and paint it all.

Day 150: May Task - A Number

I don't have a favourite number so I've chosen a number of numbers for today's photo. Going in a clockwise direction from the top right I've chosen the following:

#69 - The number that's been on my cars for the last 3... or is it 4?
#1 - Part of the name of my road bike, the YZF-R1. The 1 also denotes the 1 litre engine capacity.
#450 - The engine capacity and model of my dirt bike. It's a TE450 which predictably has a 450cc engine
#675 - Similar to the dirt bike, this is the engine capacity and model name of my Daytona 675 race bike.

I guess there's a bit of a theme with my numbers... more so in the last 3 than the first, but they are all vehicle related.

Day 144: May Task - Technology

This is a fantastic little piece of Technology. As the label says, it's a Quickshifter which for those not in the know allows me to move up through the gears of my race bike without using the clutch or backing off the throttle. Essentially it's a pressure switch that senses when I apply pressure to the gear lever to change up to the next gear, when it senses the pressure it cuts the ignition for a little bit less than a second which unloads the gearbox long enough for the next gear to be selected.

The Quickshifter is great... when it's not broken. This one broke at my last track day which meant I had to remove it and adjust the gear lever so I could still use it, but I had to use the clutch.

I'm now in the process of trying to source a replacement, these little doohickeys are quite expensive when bought locally but substantial savings can be made by buying from the UK or US. So I'm enjoying another of my favourite pastimes: eBaying/Online Shopping.

Day 121: Good Deeds For The Garage

I stopped in at Super Cheap Auto this arvo with two things in mind: I needed some new side cutters and after not having the right tool for yesterday's work on the Daytona I wanted a set of Allen Keys with ball ends. The rest of the stuff in today's photo just kind of jumped into my arms as I was walking the aisles trying to find what I was looking for.

This is why I limit my trips to Super Cheap... but in my defence, it costs about the same to buy the pack with the pliers, side cutters and a small shifter as it would to buy the side cutters on their own. The ratchet spanners on the right were a bit of an impulse buy and the trickle charger is to replace the one that broke a couple of weeks ago. So I really only bought things that I needed, kind of.

In any case they'll all be put to good use in my garage just as they deserve to be. No tool should remain shelf bound, I'm really doing these tools a favour by rescuing them from a life of inaction on the shelves of the Fyshwick Super Cheap Auto.

Day 120: Slow Quick Action

I didn't quite finish the work I started on the Daytona yesterday so this afternoon I went back out to the garage to complete the job. I'd only planned on being out there for about half an hour as I only needed to oil the filter and reinstall it along with the fuel tank. The thing with oiling the air filter is that you have to wait 20 minutes for the oil to soak into the filter element and then check for an even coating, if there are patches that aren't evenly covered you need to spray those areas with more oil and wait another 20 minutes before repeating the process until an even coating has been achieved.

While I was waiting the first 20 minutes I thought I'd take the opportunity to replace my throttle & cables with the fancy new Accossato quick action throttle that came with the bike. I didn't think it would take too long as I already had half the required disassembly done for the air filter maintenance. What I didn't realise was that you're supposed to remove the whole throttle body assembly when you replace the throttle cables. I tried, and it shouldn't have been too hard but the three small clamps that hold the assembly onto the intake manifold are very hard to get to. After only being able to loosen two of the three and finding that the 3rd was impossible to loosen without a tool I don't have.

Not being one to give up so easily I decided to try swapping the cables over in situ. It took a lot of patience, some bent coat hanger wire, my pointy nose pliers and a magnet on a stick to finally get the two cables attached as they should be. After that it was simply routing the cables back up to the throttle tube and making the correct adjustments so the throttle opened and closed freely and easily.

The end result has me with a throttle will move from the idle position to fully open in about on eighth of a turn of the twist grip. This is a bit less than half the action required to open the throttle fully on the standard setup. So around 3 hours after I started, the bike was all back together with the cleaned air filter and the fancy quick action throttle installed. All in all a successful albeit slow install of some go fast bits... All that's left is to re-fit the hand grip.

Day 119: Triumph Triple Trumpets

I've been doing more work on the Daytona to get it ready for my next outing on the 11th and while I had the air filter out for a cleaning I saw these for the first time. I love discovering beauty in unexpected places and when removing the filter disclosed these I had to take a few photos. The gold butterflies in each throttle body were what really caught my attention and they came as a bit of a surprise, I think without them the photo would be too monotone.

As well as the air filter maintenance I also changed the gearing to be more suitable for the short and twisty Wakefield track, last time I rode there the gearing was too tall and I'm hoping this change will help me drop my lap times a little further. I guess time will tell.

Day 110: Suspension Setup

Yep, it's bike stuff again and some of the following may not make any sense to you if you don't 'get' bikes.

Today I'd booked the Daytona in for a suspension tuning with Laurie 'Suspension' Smith. He's a bit of a local legend in Motorcycling circles, not only because he's incredibly good at sorting out motorcycle suspension issues, or because he was invited to the Le Man 24 hour Motorcycle race off the back of his reputation nationally, but also because he's built some amazing things in his workshop. His creations range from shoehorning an 1100cc Honda engine into a 600c Yamaha frame to building a dirt bike out of a Kawasaki ZX10R to grafting a Girder front suspension setup that he designed and fabricated in his workshop onto the front of a Yamaha R1 with impressive improvements over the standard telescopic fork design.

Needless to say I have the utmost respect for Laurie's capabilities with suspension and on top of all that, he's a good bloke.

Today, I spent some time with Laurie while he spent some time tuning the Daytona's suspension to my weight. He made quite a few changes to the rear shock and gave the forks a bit of tweaking as well, I don't really understand all the things Laurie did today but I'm sure they'll make a difference to how the bike feels on the track. It's great having such ready and local access to a resource like of international note like Laurie, I feel pretty lucky to have been able to use his talents on all my bikes... except for the R1, but I'll be dropping that one in to him in the near future too.

Day 108: Bodgy Brake Bracket

At some point during my first race on Saturday (possibly when I had my little off track excursion) the little metal bracket that holds my front brake master cylinder snapped. I zip tied it up for the remaining 3 races and that worked fine for the day but it was hardly a permanent solution.

I also noticed that my front brake pads were getting pretty close to needing replacing, so this afternoon I changed the pads over for new ones and then started to make up a new bracket for the master cylinder using what I could find in the garage.

It took a fair bit of grinding and shaping with the Dremel as well as a number of trial fittings to finish with the weird, almost Ying Yang shaped thing you see in today's photo. It's not exactly pretty, but it seems to be functional. I guess I'll know how successful my fabrication has been after next Tuesday's ride day at Eastern Creek.

Day 105: First Ride

On Australia Day I took delivery of my new race bike, some 80 days later I finally got to ride my new toy. I had intended to try and do a couple of track days before entering a race, somehow I just never got around to it so a couple of weeks ago I bit the bullet and signed up for today's race meet at Wakefield.

I was a little nervous initially and my first qualifying session was really hard work. It seemed to take a long time to get comfortable on the bike but I still managed to qualify 7th outright which had me on the second row of the grid.

As the day progressed my times improved along with my comfort levels on the new bike. I even improved my previous best lap time for Wakefield by 2 seconds, not bad for my first outing on the 675.

So the somewhat delayed verdict: I like my new bike.

Day 101: Post Dinner Snack

Belinda cooked some delicious pork chops for dinner tonight with fried sage leaves and an abundance of her home made apple chutney. Normally two decent sized pork chops would be enough for dinner, but today Belinda had put me to work in the front garden and I'd worked up a bit of an appetite.

The gardening involved shoveling 3 cubic meters of pine chip onto the front garden where Belinda had carefully laid layers of newspaper to keep the weeds at bay. It took most of the day but left enough time for me to load the new Daytona into the freshly swept out trailer and start getting things organised for the racing this Saturday at Wakefield. It will be my first ride of the bike and I'm feeling a little nervous about jumping straight into a race situation on a bike I've never ridden before, but I digress.

Back to the explanation of today's photo: After dinner I was still feeling peckish so I opted for my favourite old snack of curried chicken 2-minute noodles. It's pretty simple really, I just cook up the 2 minute noodles without adding the flavour sachet then drain all the water. I add half of the sachet, about half a teaspoon of Keen's Curry powder and enough milk to mix it all in and make a bit of a curry/chicken sauce. For the photo today I tried to dress it up a little with some parsley... after the photo I removed the parsley and scoffed the noodles.

My little recipe is certainly not going to get me on to Master Chef... and it would probably have me kicked off My Kitchen Rules faster than you can say "Manu's accent is as bad as George's technique with cutlery". Still, despite the lack of culinary skill and knowledge required to put this little dish together, it remains one of my favourite quick & easy snacks.

Day 91: Race Bike Maintenance

I was in a bit of a maintenance mood today. One of the guys I'm riding dirt bikes with tomorrow needed to borrow my 1/2 inch drive torque wrench to get his bike ready for our outing so I figured I'd get the race bike out for a coolant flush and general check over while I was waiting for him to come over to borrow the tool.

The system hadn't been flushed after the previous owner's last couple of races, and as the bike had been sitting for a few months it was about time to give it a clean out... when I drained the water it wasn't entirely manky, but it was looking a little grubby.

I did an unusual thing before taking this maintenance on, it involved reading the service manual... or at least the part that pertained to the coolant system. So when I began I knew which hoses to disconnect and which to leave intact for a full system flush, this was refreshing as I usually just plow in ill-prepared hoping for the best.

Coolant flushes are normally an annual event for street bikes but they need to be performed far more frequently for race/track bikes because your average street bike uses a commercial coolant that contains rust inhibitors and race bikes only use water.

So why would that make a difference? Allow me to explain: Commercial coolant is extremely slippery when spilled on a race track (or any bitumen really) which becomes a legitimate hazard for other racers if you happen to stack it mid corner and spit coolant all over the apex of that corner.

The benefit of using water instead of commercial coolant is that it's readily available from the tap for free (unless you ride a race prepped Ducati that will only accept Evian in its coolant system). The only downfall is that you need to change the water frequently to ensure the engine doesn't corrode internally before its time.

In summary: The job was done, the water is now fresh and the bike which needed to get undressed for the maintenance is now fully clothed again and awaiting its first track day with me at the helm. Just another successful Saturday in the garage.

Day 26: A Very Happy Australia Day - Moron Continued Part 1

A couple of days ago I mentioned that I'd been making room in the garage for my most recent racing procurement with a promise of 'more on that later'.

Today, it arrived. So here's the more:

My new racing steed is another Triumph Daytona, this time it's a 'real' Triumph as it's a 3 cylinder, 675cc engine as against my old one that was a Japanese inspired 4 cylinder 600cc engine. Like my previous Daytona this one has been built for racing with many upgrades to improve the handling and performance. I spent a few hours today removing the old fairing and dented fuel tank to replace them with the new tank and undamaged race glass. My first outing on the new 675 is next weekend at Eastern Creek and I'm looking forward to posting up a comparison between the two Daytonas... so there'll be 'more on this later' again.