Rattlesnake
VCHSS Race #11 (my 8th) - Wythe Raceway, Wytheville, Virginia
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This race was highly anticipated for a bunch of reasons…
- First time I raced here (two years ago) was during the tail end of a hurricane and the course was a quagmire. It was fairly disastrous although I did manage to survive. I skipped it last year.
Read about here…
viewtopic.php?f=136&t=24661&p=212362&hi ... ke#p212362
- The weather this year was setting up to be perfect autumn race conditions
- The course had a bunch of new flowing/ripping fast single track
- The racetrack infield start is a badass GP course including one turn and straight away of the big racetrack.
- A special guest was scheduled to make an appearance!
Saturday afternoon the promoter had the infield opened up for a two hour practice. It was set up like a flat Grand Prix course and let you really get on the pipe and practice flat turns. This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up with the nice weather and the close proximity of the event to my home.
During the practice I progressively improved my braking, turning and acceleration skills. Watching ISDE videos of the guys doing this on YouTube helped me visualize what I needed to do and how it should feel. By the end of the session I was holding my own with some pretty experienced riders and had developed some confidence. I did notice that my clutch had begun slipping in the higher gears when on the pipe.
When I got home that evening I swapped in a fresh air cleaner, checked tire pressures and refueled. Didn’t even take her off the truck. When swapping out the filters I did catch that both my seat bolts had jumped ship! These were replaced.
The following morning after breakfast I checked all my gear and we headed down the road. I was excited about the race, and even more excited to meet KDXRIDER.NET’s very own, ‘doakley’ (Doug Oakley)!…
He was coming all the way up from the Carolina coast to see my race and check things out. Doug’s advice has been a huge help in bringing my bike up from a fully stock trail bike
to a lean mean racing machine
.
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Doug is one of those guys that when you finally meet you feel like you’ve been old friends for a lifetime. We immediately hit it off and I introduced him to my family and our racing buddies.
The race… (prepare for novella length run-on sentence)
The main event start was set up inside an oval dirt track with a dead engine start from the right side of the infield that dashed 50 yards towards the banked turn, but before entering the main track you checked up for a 90 degree left around a blue barrel into another full speed sprint 40 yards into another 90 degree left, over a small table and into a 180 left, 25 yard sprint into a 180 right, 75 yards into a 180 left, 25 into a right and so on with various turns on ever changing consistencies of dirt and recently watered muddy sections until finally turning right and swinging up onto the front stretch on the left side of the track and running full tilt counterclockwise around the banking and down the back stretch before getting hard on the brakes and ducking out into the woods for 8 miles per lap of woods, flow trail, steep climbs and descents, 30” tight, sidehill pine tree trails, a semi dry limestone creek bed run with a rutted muddy climb out up a steep hill, and even featuring an old pine wooded hillside motocross course that had some pretty big jumps requiring nerves of steel and appropriate speed.
Probably the highest percentage of ‘on-the-pipe’ time I’ve ever done in a hare scramble.
Best thing of all was that this year it was a dry course and not a mudrutfest like the past two years!
When the flag dropped I got a good kick and quick fire off the line from the far inside hoping to drift it to the outside to cut off anybody on the outside wanting to carry speed with a more open corner approach. Problem was in-spite of the proper noises roaring from my bike, actual speed just wasn’t being manufactured at the rear tire. The fresh Pirelli Scorpion 120/100 was biting and hooked up but the clutches weren’t getting enough pressure from the springs to convert the raw dragon power into tire spinning torques. I had to lift the throttle to get drive and that was a letdown.
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I did manage to position myself in 6th and then 4th (leader slid out in the mud) then got passed. Getting through the GP section smoothly giving her all she could take without completely smoking the clutch, I just couldn’t close on the front guys, eventually was passed by a stronger bike and lost more ground on the big track. After getting her whoaed down and diving out of the track and down into the woods on the backstretch, I slipped her into third gear and started trying to get into my groove.
The woods were super fun and I felt good on the bike. My goal was to make at least 4 laps and break into the top 5. My confidence was strong until the first gnarly hill climb where I looked up and saw bodies and bikes strewn across the two established lines. Not wanting to wait for my pursuers to catch me I aimed left and let her eat. Ascending the hill through leaves and light brush I found myself boxed out by fallen limbs and larger deadfall and was forced off my line before getting knocked over by a huge stick that pivoted as I passed it. Wrestling the machine upright was nearly impossible with this huge stick pushing me back and I lost minutes and positions before solving my problem. Once back in the saddle I set sail with a belly full of frustration. 4th or 5th to 7th just like that.
Carefully looking ahead, standing on the pegs and choosing good lines, I tried to gain back my lost time and focused on being smooth and steady.
The tight pine section was as advertised and my bark busters blew the bark off with violence as I blasted and banged my way through. Once into the creek bed I pulled back on the bars and kept the front end light trying to hit the high points and gain more ground. Finally at the next bottle neck I arrived as a rider was just clearing a rutted line on a steep bank, the marshals were pointing at it and seeing three riders in front of me hesitating I dove into the rut without slowing - clicking 1st and roared up the steep bank and on up the hill above. The Pirellis dug in and I rocketed up with no problem. Not sure of my gains from this aggressive move I just focused on continuing my charge. In 1st slippage was not an issue.
Sweeping into the wide motocross section I hit all the jumps and stayed on the gas. Small groups of folks on the side were accurate indicators of where big air would be found. This was really fun and I decided I’d hit the biggest jump and hope for the best. Slipping the clutch I grabbed 4th and cranked back on the throttle on hoped for some friction. Since I was already at a pretty high speed the bike responded just enough and I sailed through the air for a good forty feet before using all my suspension on the landing just avoiding casing it.
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I made a mental note to bypass that one next time - my slipping clutch was going to get me hurt if I didn’t.
Sweeping through a few more turns I finally jumped out of the woods up a hill and into the field near the scoring trailer. Rolling through I saw I was 6th and ripped on out ultimately completing two more laps.
During one of my trips through the tight pine sections I tightened up while trying to deal with a fast approaching AA rider and washed the front and smacked my fairing violently into a small tree. This popped the fairing loose (the left side fin had snapped off) and dropped me on my left knee to the uphill side. I struggled out from under the still running motorcycle and tried to pull my rear wheel clear of the trail as the rider blasted by.
Looking down to see my fairing flopping by it’s harness I unplugged the bulb socket from the lens and laid the fairing on a bed of pine needles out of the way. This would require going back out onto the course later for retrieval. Kind of bummed to lose more time I set off once again, I think that was my third lap?
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Receiving the checkers after my third lap was disappointing. I easily had another lap in me and was really getting into a groove out there. Seeing I’d finished 6th only a minute or so back was additional salt in the wound. The 5th place guy had earned the extra lap - uggghhh!!!
After checking in with my wife and son (he’d finished 10th in 250 after a bad start), I rolled back out into the woods to find my fairing, it was waiting right where I’d left it. I even found my bulb undamaged where it had fallen out when I’d hurriedly disconnected it. Once back home I fabricated a new fin for it from another broken piece, tack welded it in place and used JB Weld Plastic to give it a stronger bond. Then I added Gorilla tape to both sides of both fins in case I blast it off again in the future so I at least have a chance of keeping all the pieces together.
I had managed to break the ground wire and the positive wires off the bulb socket which caused me to shop for a new harness… $55 !!! Ughh nope! I decided to buy a decent 100 watt solder iron instead from Amazon for $25 and attempt to repair it myself. This all worked out and I added bullet connectors to the wires to make future fairing removal easier because lining up the bulb connectors on the socket is such a pain in the butt. Now I don’t have to worry about dropping the bulb either.
The bigger repair was addressing my clutch slippage. After attempting to get the KG (build Kawi OEMs) clutch kit through my shop (one set was available but over a week and a half away), I decide to take a chance with the EBC kit that I could get in three days. After ordering, I remembered that the reported issue with EBC clutch kits was overly stiff springs that made lever pull very difficult and fatiguing.
Later in the week I called Jeff Fredette and he said that he would change out clutch springs more frequently than friction plates and that he bet that if my steels weren’t blued my frictions were good, but he bet my springs were the problem. Sure enough, upon examination my friction plates looked fine and my steels were not discolored. Comparing the springs side by side the differences were obvious: taller and heavier.
Since doing a clutch is such a hassle I decided to save my old plates and swap in the complete EBC kit. It took awhile fiddling to finally get all the slots and teeth to align perfectly with the basket teeth so the pressure plate could settle fully into place. Eventually everything went together and I was able to torque her down and button it up. The lever squeeze seemed really good, so I strapped on my gear and fired her up. Wow!!! I had no idea this bike had so much power! How long have my weak clutch springs been letting me down?
Yesterday I joined some buddies for a trip to Doe Mountain Recreation Area and we spent the whole day ripping on some world class East Tennessee mountain single track. I just couldn’t get over how much easier my bike would climb hills. Even with my race setup 13/46 gearing it just ate.
Our last race of the season for the VCHSS is at Lake Sugar Tree next weekend and I’m really looking forward to riding the course and especially the motocross section. Hopefully we get another beautiful weekend.