A great start for our new team.

[DredheadV2.0]

A minor update, with more to come after the weekend.

Switching to a Bitubo rear shock we scored from the WSBK team gained us four seconds a lap

!!!

It was awesome seeing Troy leading both races in Misano.  Did he get some sort of upgrade too?

[keepergale]

Not your bikes but I watched Mr Jeremy Toye rip up the Super Motards down at Qualcomm today.  VERY fast.

[miles]

And he doesn't like motards!

[keepergale]

I could tell. He rode to the front so he didn't have to look at any.

[miles]

Dyno tuned the bike today, getting ready for Laguna Seca this weekend.  218.5rwhp on U4.4.  206 on Sunoco.  (A Yosh Suzuki makes 184rwhp on Sunoco.)  When we get the cams and the kit ECU we should be able to break 220 on pump gas.

Practice is going to be interesting.  Bit by bit the bike is really coming together.

As an interesting side note, we looked at the data log, and at Infineon a couple of weeks ago Jeremy consistently hit 62.5 degrees of lean several times per lap.

[DredheadV2.0]

Dyno tuned the bike today, getting ready for Laguna Seca this weekend.  218.5rwhp on U4.4.  206 on Sunoco.  (A Yosh Suzuki makes 184rwhp on Sunoco.)  When we get the cams and the kit ECU we should be able to break 220 on pump gas.

Practice is going to be interesting.  Bit by bit the bike is really coming together.

As an interesting side note, we looked at the data log, and at Infineon a couple of weeks ago Jeremy consistently hit 62.5 degrees of lean several times per lap.

0.0

[miles]

Hopefully I'll have more info to post soon, but here are some fresh pictures:

[DogBoy]

I took a few pics at Laguna.

Race bike under the awning:


Back-up bike half nekkid in the paddock during superbike practice:


Detail of seat section on back-up bike (art NSFW for cubicle dwellers):
http://raphaelray.smugmug.com/Motorcycles/Summer-2010/13168791_CtBmG#960206646_kCiCx-A-LB


I couldn't make the AFM round of the California State Championship but I hear it was a fantastic race.

[miles]

That seat cowl sticker is a reference to the way Jeremy speaks.  Every sentence of his includes that word at least once, often many times.

[nantahala]

update after the weekend, mkay?  

[Blunder]

Whazzup with the Messerschmidt?  

[miles]

Yeah, I've been too preoccupied with work and other commitments to stay in good touch with the team, so I just haven't been posting the updates that I should here.
I am going to watch on sunday, and I'll be hanging out in the pits with the others so it should be a good time to catch up on details.

In general, though, here's what's been going on.

Jeremy's been winning most of his races on the bike.  The other day in warmup session at the Willow Springs road course he was lapping consistently under the track record, but when it came time for the race the track was too hot and greasy so he couldn't hit the same lap times.

A few weeks ago he took second at Infineon in the second round of the California Championship, increasing his overall lead in the series.  The final round is at Willow Springs, so he should win that one.

On the bike development front, we are kicking around the idea of building a monster motor for the Macau Grand Prix- a 2+2 bore and stroker that should yield 240+ rwhp with a monster fat midrange, perfect for passing on the straights.  The problem with Macau is that it is very, very hard to pass in the turns- you've seen the photos of the guys cornering with their shoulders just grazing the walls!  In fact, Jeremy has a set of leathers hanging at Lee's with the shoulder blown out from catching on the wall in a turn.  He finished third in that race, I believe.  So this means that the power to get by on the straights is important, hence the value of extra motor.

As it currently stands it puts out 219rwhp on pump gas.  This is after some engine work, but without the new cams or ignition timing.

More immediately, Galfer rotors are the newest change, so now the only parts of the stock brake system are the calipers.  Swapping out for the top-end monoblocks will be hard because the fork uses a different mount size than all the Japanese bikes...

Anyhow, I'll have photos and more info on monday.

[miles]

Oh, the huge manatee!

We had a very mixed bag of results today at Willow Springs.  In the morning practice, Jeremy was knocking out 1:18.7 laps like clockwork- and the outright official track record is 1:19.0 set (ten years ago, soon after the last time the track was paved) by Steve Rapp on a factory Ducati superbike.  Rapp can't run below 1:21 these days because of the crummy track conditions.

Cool, but non-transponded practice doesn't count for much- certainly not as far as records go.
However, Jeremy put out a string of low 1:20s during the Open Superbike race, (conditions at WS are generally better in the morning and get worse as the day progresses) setting a new superbike record- the old one was 1:20.5.  Almost every lap of the race was under the old record.

So that was the good news.  The bad news?  We lent John Ulrich our B bike and he crashed it and blew up the engine.  Also, Gary Orr, the owner of SDBMWMC blew up his engine, too- but it isn't clear exactly what happened in Gary's case.  Ulrich lowsided, and the throttle was pinned WFO while the bike was on its side.  The corner workers, in their infinite wisdom, stood there and watched as it revved to about a million RPM and then hydrolocked itself into complete and utter engine destruction.  Thanks, guys.  Good work there.

So now we have three of our four engines in some degree of unhappiness.  Oddly, the two that blew during race conditions (the other was damaged while in UPS' tender care  ) were both stock internally.  The engine we've breathed on has been running flawlessly.  In fact, Gary borrowed our A bike to race the Formula 40 later in the day and commented on how much smoother and more powerful our engine was than his unaltered engine had been (before it grenaded).  My guess is that he'll buy the A engine from us while we build another monster motor.

Where does this leave us?  That's a god question.  We have a bit less than six weeks to build a motor for Macau, and now that our spares are less than functional we need to do something quick.  Wish us luck.

[miles]

Rereading my last post, I realized I have to correct something.  It was Chris, not John Ulrich that crashed our B bike.  I guess he hit an oil spot that had been dumped on the track and had nowhere to go but down.  He feels terrible about it, but that's just part of the sport- even the top riders hit the ground sometimes.

Another minor update, Gary's engine suffered cam chain failure, and nothing got really damaged as a result.  He got off lucky in the engine destruction department.  Hopefully it can be rebuilt quickly.

[Mookie]

Well, sucks to lose so much equipment in one weekend but it sounds like your engine mods are actually the difference makers in a positive way, which in the end just verifies that what you're doing is the right thing.

[Tyrroneous]

So will Chris be paying for the repairs or does he just hand back a wadded bike, say 'sorry' and leave it at that?  

[miles]

So will Chris be paying for the repairs or does he just hand back a wadded bike, say 'sorry' and leave it at that?  

Well, some of the damage is just an "oh, well" kind of thing.  The bodywork was far from pristine beforehand, and is certainly less now.  No big deal there.  The pegs got broken, and a few other minor things like that- and he'll probably twist Attack's arms to get them to send us some new stuff.
The engine blowing up might not wind up being that big an issue, as Chris has been somewhat instrumental in getting us some help from BMWNA, so he might be able to get us an engine from them.



We are already starting to think about next year, and how we can get the resources to race a full AMA schedule.  It's exciting, and more than just a tiny bit stressful.  Sponsorship is tight right now, but we've been making some really good connections and with the right moves al this development could really pay off next year.

[miles]

So, things are moving along on the building-for-next-year front.  We've lined up a bunch of money sponsors, so we'll be running the entire AMA schedule with three riders.  We got our big-rig transporter (I'll post pictures when it's painted) and we've gotten verbal commitment from BMW for four bikes and some motors.
We need to sort out who our riders will be- we have a couple of likely prospects, but I can't name names until everything is finalized.

On more immediate developments, our supermotor for the Macau GP is almost done.  We're expecting 235rwhp out of it.  It'll be epic.  I can't wait to try that thing out on the track.

[nantahala]

 

[Jeff]

EPIC