March 2010 Zero Dollars Racing Race Report

ZDR spent the off season doing little bike prep until the brilliant idea of racing an almost 40 year old motorcycle blossomed colorfully in our snowbound brain like the aforementioned flowers of spring. OK, this will be a snap. Fly to Atlanta, rent a minivan, find the willing buyer, load up the many various bits and pieces and drive 12 hours home in the rain. In one long day.

With the CB/CL/SL 350 Frankenbike in the garage I took stock. Made out of spindly pot metal and has no brakes – check. It is assembled out of components whose provenance is a deep mystery – check. I disassembled the rolling chassis, braced the frame per some grainy photos I saw on the internet (thus they must be correct), painted the frame and began to reassemble. I installed new bearings everywhere I could find a bearing, though I am still trying to imagineer the right voodoo of shims and incantations to make the steering stem and the steering head make peace with the tapered bearings.

On the Thursday I was heading to VIR I was ready to fire the beast for the first time. With Robin operating the car I rolled the mighty CB onto the rollers. She fired quickly and raucously, and immediately revved to 6,000 RPM. Holy crap! I imagined 40 year old reciprocating metal bits disassociating themselves and in my rush forgot that the cheesy little rubber covered button on the right bar was a kill switch. I tried clamping the feeble front brake and easing the clutch out to stall it. That got me off the rollers and onto the sloped and sandy driveway, where the CB promptly threw me on the ground. It lay there running on it side at 6,000 RPM. I yanked off the right side plug wire. It, being a Honda, kept running. Now primarily interested in not blowing it up before it ever turned a wheel in anger I flipped the bike urgently onto its other side and pulled the other plug wire, then lay on my driveway with both of my knees scuffed and bleeding while my lovely wife gave me that pitying look that stupid husbands the world over know so well. The look that says “and you seemed once to have such promise”.

I decided that further effort would have to wait for VIR, as it was time to load and depart. As I shoved the CB onto the trailer it became obvious that the steering bearings still had lots of play. Crap. So I put the bike back on the work stand, disassembled the front end and changed shims, only to still have play. At that point it was late so I loaded everything up and set out to Fredricksburg, picked up my crew for the event, my good friend and sorta brother in law Charlie, and headed south.

The next day dawned bright and early. Off we went and unloaded for the practice day. We futzed around with the CB throttle situation and as other CB peeps filtered in we got enough guidance and counsel to determine that the carb slides were not seating – thus the high idle. I turned my attention to the steering stem. I tore it apart yet again, got the shim stack a bit closer and turned my attention to trying to get some practice time on my Hawk.

It was now late morning, and when I went to register the kind WERA folks suggested I pay for half at day at a nice savings. Undeterred I popped for the full day and rolled the Hawk into tech, where they helpfully observed I was leaking gas from my carbs like a politician leaks words. I rolled back to the pits and set about trying to fix what I thought was a long standing struggle to get my float bowl heights set properly. After adjustment I re-teched (without turning the petcock on – I was beginning to feel the need for some insurance) and got out for a couple of laps to discover the bike would not run for nothin’. Back to the pits, off come the carbs again and a lot of headscratching ensues. Then I spy in the bottom of the float bowl the small washer that should sit under the new float needle seat I had installed – ahh, I think I have found the problem. Install that washer et voila – it acts like a Honda again, firing right up and idling sweetly. I get out for one practice at the end of the day (six laps, $150, deal of the week!) to find the bike runs fine until start finish, where due to my float bowl fiddling it runs out of gas. At this point I am in a philosophical mood. I have wrenched all day (which I hate to do at the track). I am sunburned. One bike does not run at all. One bike runs – to a point. So I opt for the traditional “F it” response and decide I will race the Hawk as it is. When I get back to the pits the day is crowned with one final insult – the top mount on my new radiator has come loose and the radiator has kissed the tire, but it seems OK. In the interest of ease (always a poor interest) I zip tie it up and head out to a much needed drink/dinner/rest.

Saturday brings another beautiful day. Off to the track. The Hawk feels fine in practice, except for not pulling the second half of the track because the float bowls are off. With Eric Mercer’s generous help we kluge a throttle cable onto the CB and the slides actually close – cool! We get the bike started and it runs, though the carbs are so poorly synched we can’t quite get it to idle long enough to warm up so it will run, and we miss the vintage registration window. Ahh well – at least the Hawk is ready. Out for second practice. On the way in I spy water on the front tire – never a great thing on a dry day, and find my schmancy new radiator has dismounted again, kissed the front tire and is now leaking. My. Luck. Sucks.

We mount up the spare radiator and prepare for battle in V6 LW. For several years this has been a private battle between me and Scott McKee and his fast, fast, fast FZR 400+. To give you an idea of the depths of this man’s perfidy, he has owned and developed this bike since he was three years old (sometime in the Jurassic), and this winter popped in a new cam and got an additional 8 HP. On a fully develop motor. With just a cam. He’s killing me. So he now has about a 50% HP advantage and a 30% skill advantage (though I still edge him in rakish good looks). This did not bode well, though practice times were still relatively close.

We rolled out on third call. As the grid marshal whistled us out I grabbed the front brake to engage first gear, and the brake lever snapped off and dangled from the bar. Yikes! I looked heavenward and asked if this was perhaps some form of suggestion as to my weekend pursuits. Obviously had this occurred 12 seconds later as I barreled into turn 1 it would not have been good. I pushed the bike back to the pits, took off my gear and walked over the bathroom. I chatted with a few folks and then took a leak. As I exited the bathroom I heard the announcer call for the restart of my race. Restart! Something must have happened on the first lap. I argued with myself briefly about whether to go out or take the accumulated misfortune as a sign to just go sit the Hell down, then sprinted to the pit, installed the new brake lever, suited up and roared out onto the course, one lap down. I felt the need to banish this demon luck so I put my head down to see who I could reel in. I was turning the same times as the leader (Scott), and managed to catch and pass Mike Kelly on his fast FZR400 (though a lap down on him). I ended up 4th out of 5 – primarily because our 5th combatant had a certain handicap going into the race. Gamba Stewart is a large man – both personality and physically. He was riding a Honda VTR 250. He has a certain top speed disadvantage on the 250 that he doesn’t display on his 1000cc twin. I rolled off the track, happy to have completed a race in a star crossed weekend and we headed off to some vino and pasta.

We woke to a slightly cooler and cloudy Sunday. First practice was mostly loosening up and not going too fast. In second practice I turned it up a bit, but because I had so far accumulated little track time and perhaps with the string of misfortune from the previous two days weighing on my mind I was slow in the two most technical parts of the track – the first esses and the hogpen, which was not helping lap times. First up was D Superbike, with the LW Superstock grid ahead of us. On the launch Scott and Chad Hinton (Superbike Ducati 800) used their motors to get into the SV pack deeper than I could into turn 1, and I could never recover that gap. I spent the race passing as many SVs as I could, and fending of Ben Vest on his sweet Aprilia 250 into turn 1. Then, in the hogpen on the penultimate lap Ben rode around the outside of me – a very sweet pass that demonstrated how damn slow I was going. I chased him hard. Going into the front esses we got bunched up with a group of SVs. Ben used the agility of the Aprilia to put a couple of bikes between us. By the time I had passed those folks he had a gap on me I couldn’t recover by the checkers and I took 4th in class with Ben a second ahead.

Being passed in the hogpen like that made an impression on me, so when we gridded up for D Superstock I nailed the start and ran up into the LW Twins Superbike pack into turn 1. I put my head down and hit my marks in the esses and the hogpen much better, pulling a 14 second gap on Ben at the checkers, finishing first in class and 12th in the overall grid of 30 SVs with 1:42-1:43 laps times.

Last race of the day was Clubman, gridded with the 125s. I rolled out and it was almost comical – two 125s and two clubman bikes. That was the total grid. I got the holeshot, split the 125s and checked out, dialing the pace back a couple of seconds to finish first with Ian Tetrick two seconds adrift on his 125 and the other competitors 1 and 2 minutes back. There were so few bikes the announcer got bored and stopped announcing.

So a weekend that started inauspiciously ended well enough – and now I have a couple of weeks to try to get the CB running before Summit Point.