Tony and I have finished building the new race engine. He fits it into the outfit and we arrange to take it to M&P in London to get it set up on my birthday. There is a big rugby match going on at the nearby Twickenham stadium and it takes ages to get through the traffic. We spend all day trying to overcome problems with the carburettors only to find out it is a leak in the gauges. We do finally get it set up sufficiently well to feel confident that it is OK for the race meeting the following weekend. I had three gigs that week but things have conspired to make me miss all of them. My road bike fried the battery when the regulator failed and Tony had to take me and the bike home in his van. The vacuum fuel tap had blocked and was flooding the engine. I bought a new regulator and fitted it. Then I set about fixing the fuel tap. Take it apart, clean it, check the diaphragm for leaks. All seems ok, the plunger moves, the O ring seal is OK so I refitted it. It leaks again. I repeated this a number of times but by this time I had to remove the spark plugs to pump out the fuel in the cylinders. The rear one is not too bad to get to but the front one requires the removal of the radiator and is really fiddly to get to. Oh well, it has to be done. It didn't feel good as I started to unscrew the plug then it went slack and I knew I had a problem. The thread had sheared away from the hex part of the plug and it came out minus the thread. Damn it! Now I had to remove the cylinder head. It was obvious that the plug had never been out in all its years. I removed the carbs and they were filthy. I unbolted everything except the front exhaust header pipe. I knew that I would have problems here as the nuts had all but corroded away. I managed to chop through them with a disc cutter and eventually coaxed the retaining collar free. I loosened the clamps around the other end of the header pipe but couldn't move it. By this time Allie had turned up and found me looking very morosely at a pile of filthy and corroded bike parts. We both tried to free the header pipe and decided that we would have to remove the collector section underneath the engine. It too was jammed solid. Eventually we freed the header from that by destroying the slotted section on the collector pipe. Now I needed a new collector section but at least I was able to remove the cylinder head complete with header pipe still in place. Dickie, the engineer I would normally run to to deal with such things was away on holiday so I asked Tricia about another guy she knew of and got his contact details. A phone call later and I was no better off. He was up to his eyeballs in work and couldn't help me for a couple of weeks at least.
I needed my bike for transport to and from Tony's. Theseus needs the car for gigs and rehearsals as it is Brighton Fringe time and he is really busy. I need to be able to get to Tony's in order to do last minute prep for the racing. I manage to get the car one day in order to pick up some aluminium sheet so I can fabricate a duct for the fairing to guide air through the new bigger oil cooler. On the Thursday Tony drives down in the van and picks me up so we can spend the day working on the outfit. We load up all my gear and the ally sheets. I spend all day repositioning the oil cooler and fabricating the ducting. A few days before Tony had picked up some oxygen so we could fabricate new hand holds and braze them into position. At Darley Moor I had raced it with the handholds that were there. This consisted of a rail running at low level from the back to the front of the platform alongside Tony's left leg. This offered me no real bracing against acceleration and braking forces. It was also so low that the angle of my arm when trying to pull myself back in after a left hander was awful. I had studied photos of other passengers and outfits to see what they had and came up with an idea of how I could modify the rail. I decided that if I left it attached at the front mounting point and cut it somewhere near the back I could bend it slightly up and past the oil tank before taking it vertical and then at right angles to attach to the frame rail that runs over the engine. That would give me a really good bracing point and a higher level hand hold to pull myself in and back for rapid changes from left to right. The vertical section would be my handhold for left handers and the horizontal section running to the frame rail would be my handhold for right handers. I tried it out in the garage and it immediately felt ten times better than the old set up. I could pull myself back in with ease and get myself really over to the right behind Tony. It looked a bit rough and ready but it felt great and I can modify it later to pretty it up. It also freed up some room on the platform so that my movement wasn't so constricted.
This was a huge relief to me. I had been studying videos of the Anglesey circuit as well as the circuit map. There are four left handers on the coastal circuit, two of them require very fast changes. There is a long sweeping right hander that comes into a very sharp left at Rocket and is followed by a right hand hairpin. Then there is the Corkscrew. This starts with a left followed by a right and another left. I know there is no way I could cope with that the way the outfit was set up.
We finished working on the outfit at about 8pm on the Thursday and loaded everything up. By ten thirty we had picked up Carl and his solo and hit the road. We arrived after a very rainy journey at 3.30 in the morning and put some mattresses in the scrutineering bay and slept there until morning. Friday morning arrived with lots of sunshine. We set up the marquee and unloaded the bikes and gear. Practice was due to start in the afternoon. We ran the outfit up to check it was all OK but the clutch was dragging badly. We took it apart and put it back together, we adjusted it but nothing made any difference. We tried putting fewer plates in, that made it better but then it slipped. Something was wrong - but what? Tony kept suggesting that we put the standard springs back in in place of the uprated ones. I had studied the assembly drawings and explained that the springs couldn't be the cause as they merely pre-loaded the plates and were contained by two castings that connected solidly together. Tony couldn't seem to get this idea and kept coming back to the springs as we talked it through. I decided to explain how the system worked and then something clicked. As I was explaining why they couldn't I also said the only way in which they could be doing something was if they were warping the casting. Bingo! Tony said that the casting has suffered a bit of damage when a clutch broke previously. We checked the diagram and sure enough right where the damage was was in an area that would flex if the springs were strong enough. We swapped the springs for the standard ones and felt an immediate improvement. Just in time for practice/qualifying we finished reassembling the clutch.
We had walked the circuit in the morning and I had the sudden realisation that what I couldn't see from the videos and map were the elevation changes and just how tight the bends were and how quick the changes would have to be. Another passenger said that the corkscrew was so quick that we couldn't hope to get fully out on the lefts and back for the right in time so it would have to be a weight shift of our bums. I was inclined to agree from our walk round. Now I would see as we went out for our first practice lap. Tony took it easy on the out lap to check everything out and it gave me a more relaxed time to try out my moves on the various bends. Rocket was a real hairy one. The last bit of straight before it is steeply uphill and the left hander is blind until you are almost upon it. Timing and trust would be everything here. Then the hairpin right, short straight and right again was all out over behind Tony. As we hit the straight the corkscrew is out of sight and I dropped down to get ready for the first left hander of the series. Then it came into sight and I realised I had plenty of time to get ready for it. The new hand hols were coming into their own. That first left at Rocket had been relatively easy and I was right out for it and back in for the hairpin. Now as we approached the first part of the corkscrew I eased myself out on the left and round we went. The right hander came up really quick but I was able to get in and over the back in time and back down and out ready for the left onto the start/finish straight. This wasn't so bad as I feared. Tony began to ramp up the speed as we rounded the left hander at the end of the straight. I was feeling confident and enjoying the circuit. Onto the short straight and toward the right hand hairpin at Banking. This is a lovely cambered right hander, the rear wheel started to slide and Tony controlled it well on the throttle. OK I need to relax my legs and dump my weight onto the rear of the seat unit to get as much weight as possible onto the rear wheel. Down the straight to Church and another right before the long sweep to the right. I tucked in over the back hiding behind Tony to reduce drag. He was really starting to open it up now. The right kink before the hill and we flew up the hill. Whoa! He is going really fast up here and leaving the braking late. I began to start my move to the front to get ready to go out of the left at rocket but we were still flying. He's overcooked it! The outfit started to get all crossed up and was squirming under us as he struggled to shed speed and we ran onto the grass. Whoops. The rest of the lap got faster in a more controlled way but the big sweep after Church seemed slow. It was as though he was coasting it. Around the third lap I missed my timing in the corkscrew and we found ourselves in danger of tipping up and we missed the left hander at the bottom as a result and ended up on the grass. Score one to Tony and one to me. We finished the session uneventfully and came in.
We talked about the session and Tony told me he couldn't get fifth gear. That explained the pedestrian pace on the big sweeper. He also said the brakes were a bit rubbish. hence the close call at Rocket. We tried selecting fifth gear manually back in the paddock. We counted the gears out . . click, first . . . click the other way, second . . . click, third . . . click, fourth . . click, nothing. It was like there was another neutral? We pondered this for some time but we couldn't figure it out. The only thing we could do was remove the engine and split the crankcases and have a look. First thing in the morning we began ripping it out of the frame and set about splitting it. Once we had it opened up we looked at everything. It all appeared OK. Tony went off to talk to the members of other Honda 750 engined teams to see if they had any ideas. Meanwhile I sat down with the manual and studied the diagrams. There were photos of the gear clusters in each gear. I worked out that of the three selector forks the middle one only operated the fifth gear wheel. I studied this and orientated myself. The fork is offset on the journal. I looked at that and then at what our selector fork was doing. The long side was opposite to the way it was shown in the photo! OK double check it . . . yeah I am sure that is the case. The fork itself has a curve to it. Does that corroborate what I suspect? I aligned the book so the photo was the same view as I had of the clusters before me. Yes, sure enough it was confirming my suspicions as well. About then Tony returned and I told him what I had seen. I showed him and asked him to confirm it. It was a five second job to remove the shaft and flip the fork over. We had missed the first race by now. Now the pressure was on to get it back together before our next race. As they called the sidecars we were almost there but there was no way we could finish up and get out there in time. We eased off the the pressure. Then there was a delay due to a crash in the previous race. Can we do it? No there was actually more to do than we thought so we continued at the more steady pace and resigned ourselves to not racing until tomorrow. Better to get it right than risk all.
We finished up and checked we could get fifth gear - sure enough there it was. Today had been a shit day and we hadn't raced but now we knew that tomorrow we would get out there and get two races in. We retired to the clubhouse and celebrated with a beer or two.
Sunday morning arrived with a somewhat fuzzy head. That 'beer or two' had turned into a bit of a wilder night than I was used to. It was worth it however, it served to let Tony and I bond a bit more and socialise together. Up until now it had all been about sidecars and engineering. It also allowed me to get to know some of my fellow competitors better and bond with some of the other female passengers. A couple of coffees and a good slug of squash cleared my head and rehydrated me and I felt ready to go racing. Oh yeah, racing - that was the reason we were here wasn't it? We got ready and went to the holding area. Once the previous race finished we were cleared to go out on the circuit for the sighting lap.
My feelings in the holding area? Last time at Darley I had felt that I might be sick and wanted badly to run away. Today I was saying hello to the girls I had met last night and laughing with them about wanting to go for a pee and having that tightening feeling in the stomach. So much better than at Darley. I was looking forwards to getting out there and trying out the outfit in a race. On the sighting lap Tony gave it some beans round the big sweeper. Damn, this thing pulled! Now with fifth gear we could really get a sense of what we had under us. At Rocket it was a bit clunky and the engine bogged a bit but I thought little of it. Probably just Tony getting used to it. Down the corkscrew and onto the grid. We were on row ten. Not bad considering the previous day. I looked behind and checked out who was there. It is always a concern that someone might ram into us. There were only a couple of more rows so not much to worry about there. Now concentrate on the man with the flag. He got the green from the guy at the back and dropped the red flag. All eyes are now on the starter. Down came the union flag and we were off. We passed a few others on the way to the first bend and I positioned myself out the front. Round we went, this was so much better than my fiasco at Darley. Back in and ready for the lovely cambered right hander of Banking. We tore off down the straight to Church and were going well. I was finding time to look behind and see who was there for the first time and enjoying myself. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't idly looking around and not concentrating. It was still very fast and hectic but I felt so much more confident with these new hand holds. They were working beautifully. We blasted past a Norton as we went up the hill to Rocket and then the gear change problem occurred again and they passed us round the left hander. We must have lost a good few seconds doing Rocket in too high a gear and they cleared off ahead of us. We screeched round the right hand hairpin and the right before the Corkscrew. Each time we gained on them round the lap we lost time at Rocket and just could not catch them again. They finished about six seconds ahead of us.
Afterwards, Tony said he was having trouble changing down from third to second for Rocket. We checked the clutch adjustment but it seemed OK. Perhaps it was just because it was new and needed to bed in a little. There was nothing we could do. The brakes however, were a different matter. They had been awful. I decided to drop the pads on the front and see if they were glazed. If they were we could rough them up and refit them. Tony had gone off to watch Carl in his solo race. I dropped the front right and they looked pretty awful. Tony was still gone but Carl had returned and came over to look at what they were like. The first thing he said was 'they are road pads! No wonder they are crap'. He said he had a bag of race pads we could use. I waited for Tony to return before I went ahead. We then set about replacing all the pads. As he pumped the brake pedal to settle them all in afterwards we saw that the front brakes were not operating. Eventually we removed the seat unit to get to the master cylinder. It is a dual circuit one. The rear brake and sidecar brake operate from one outlet and the two front brakes operate from a second outlet. This second one was loose! We had raced without any front brakes, no wonder they seemed rubbish. It seems that pressure from the seat unit with both our weight on it had acted upon the banjo union and caused it to loosen so we lost all pressure in that circuit. We repositioned it and tightened and bled the brakes. After lunch we formed up for the second race. The sighting lap seemed OK and we took our position on the grid. As the flag dropped the outfit ahead of us stalled and their hands went up. I signalled to the outfits behind that there was a problem ahead and we went around to the left. As we accelerated past the pit wall we lost drive and the engine revved wildly. We coasted to the end of the pit out lane and pulled in. That was us done. The clutch had gone. All this way and we managed one race. A real disappointment especially after all the work we had put in. So, now we have a list of things to do before Cadwell Park in June. Then hopefully we will get to see the real potential of this new engine.
First I have to get my road bike fixed . . . .
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