Went to Tsukuba to the first time with my NSR and did two sessions. It is one of the most interesting, technical, challenging, exciting circuits I've been to and I had a blast.
However, in my lapse of judgement I didn't fill the radiator properly with water. I forgot to kick start the engine once to pump the remaining air out, to fill more water in, so I only had about half the amount of water necessary.
Oddly enough I didn't feel any reduction in power or feel any side effects so I just rode like normal, full throttle whenever I could. But unluckily a clamp snapped and the little water that was in the engine all evaporated out.
I'm super lucky that I pulled the clutch in when I did, because just then I heard the sound of metal exploding as my piston shattered to pieces. If I had delayed by even a second I would've probably high-sided and damaged the rest of my bike.
I should've been more careful and checked my temperature more closely after the first session and before the second session, but whats done is done.
Took the bike apart to see how bad the damage was, hoping I might be able to fix it up.
And then this fell out of the exhaust.....
Took the left cylinder off and found this lonely connecting rode with no piston.... very different from all the images I've seen online. If you look closely at the bottom of the rod you can see a chunk of my piston just chillin'.
Piston fused to the cylinder, and there is no way I'm getting that out easily. Got a quote for an engine rebuild + the cost of replacing the cylinder and it came out to a little more than I was willing to dish out, so I decided to just call it quits and part the bike out.
I'm going to miss this bike, especially since I barely got to ride it. I rode it about 4 times, and out of those 4 times crashed it once and blew the engine once. So I probably only got 4 hours or so of track time on it.
Beautiful bike, and maybe one day I'll get another one, but not now.
Race 3 is approaching and the weather looks really crappy so on Monday I took a look at my budget and cried a little inside, as I decided to buy a spare set of wheels and a set of rain tires
I want to get better at racing and getting rain experience is one step in the right direction. I know it's going to be tough but this is what I signed up for.
Found a good deal on Yahoo Auction for a set of wheels, putting me back about ¥35,000
Grabbed brake rotors from the same guy as well, costing around ¥8000 and ¥4000
And then the most painful of them all, rain tires, which cost about ¥40,000 (phew)
I say painful because I've talked to many people who have bought these only to have them sit
around for a year or two, get stale and have to be thrown out. As much
as I'd like to race in the dry, I've already bought these so it better
rain! Plus it'll give me practice.
Anyway it's also my first set of rain tires, so let's see how they handle on Saturday practice!
I know it's a little late.... seeing that I've completed race 3 already but this is my first race report! The other two will be coming shortly.
Mako and I showed up the day before so I could do a couple sessions to get to know the track. I joined the slow class of people (slower than around 43 seconds) and put out a pace of around 46 seconds.... stupid slow. I at least got to see the lay of the land and had lots of fun. Riding with the mini bikes is hard due to their high cornering speed and my advantage on power, but it was still a good experience.
The next morning we woke up nice and early, registered, and learned about the rules at the riders meeting. It was your standard "yellow flag" "red flag" talk, but it was a little hard to keep up with the Japanese.
My friends Key and Keme decided they would be my pitcrew, manager, mechanic, adviser, race queen, etc and I'm not sure how I would have managed without them! Keme is still a racer and Key used to race in the late 1990's early 2000's and I think I have become their new prodigy. They have been the best support I could dream of, on and off the track.
Mako also came to cheer me on, support me, and worry for my safety on my behalf :-D She says she'll make it to all my races, and doesn't want to eat convenience store food so has taken it upon herself to be the team chef from now on~!
In the morning we have an 8 minute practice session. My times improved by about 1 second from the day before to around mid 44 seconds. Still slow, but improvement is improvement.
Keme brought his sign board to show me my times. It's in the left side of this picture and if you look closely, it says "UP UP", meaning "take your hand and jam it on the throttle as soon as you can because you're going slow!". This is mostly because I still wasn't using full throttle, because it's just not something I was used to yet. By the end of the day however I got more comfortable with that.
I bought my bike from a shop called Sakurai Honda and they were one of the sponsors for this race. Seki here has given me great support when I visit their store, but right now he's my rival in the race~
Back from the practice with a somber face... thinking about how slow I was.... the fastest guy out there is behind me and was in the pit next to mine.
Keme is giving me some last minute pointers before the qualifiers and telling me to practice my race start when going on. There is still so much I need to improve, so he walked me through a couple of the more important things to look for. Properly get on full throttle, practice the race start, try to get behind the fast guy for at least a lap and see what he's doing, etc, etc.
Mako was testing the camera settings to try and perfect them for the race, so the brightness is still a little off here. Still one of the best pictures I have of myself so far. This is turn 1, and as the qualifiers continued this was one turn I really got better at. I finally got to the point where I properly hit the apex over the white curb, which really aided in bettering my time.
Turn 1:
Qualifiers:
The CBR may be just a plain old commuter bike, but you have to admit, it looks pretty damn dope in this picture :-D.
The race is about to start here, and I'm not feeling nervous yet. Trying to get amped up by watching the mini bikes race, seeing how they overtake each other and trying to imagine what I would do in those situations.
On the grid 3/4.....
....and here we go!... well actually the first place guy did a flying start and we had to start the race over.... but still... here we go!
Race:
Turn 1, looking good....
Home straight, with Mt Fuji looming over....
This first race was all I dreamed of and more. It may have only been 5 racers, and on a small beat up go-kart track but I couldn't image a better way to be introduced into racing. It felt safe, but was still very challenging. I had people around me who were at a similar level, who I could compete with, and I put out my best time to date during the race.
Decided to give up on the hype of the GoPro and go for something that would be more useful to the type of video recording I'm looking into doing. Luckily I had a friend willing to buy my Hero3 off of me, for enough cash for me to throw back into the action camera market.
The Garmin Virb Elite, with built in GPS, altimeter, G-sensor and the ability to connect to other ANT+ devices like temperature sensors and heart rate monitors. I plan on getting a heart rate monitor soon as well, but these were the devices I had to order to my mom in American, to be shipped to Japan. The cost of the virb was nearly twice the price in ¥!
I can't wait to make a video with a speed speedo, heart rate, temperature, g-force, gps overlay but I'm going to have to wait until March 8th when I have my next track day.
While I was at it I ordered Pirelli Supercorsa V2 SC1 for my NSR and Rossa Corsas for my Ninja. These will be the first Pirellis I've ever used, but I'm sure they won't disappoint.
I got a chance to try out my NSR for real this time.
Also got the chance to use my tire warmers and sexy fairing for the first time. The course had a bunch of water spots so I couldn't go all out, but I got a general feeling for how the bike rides and got to practice my full throttle acceleration and harder braking.
My friend Keme also met me there. He is a seasoned racer and had lots of pointers for me. Keep your head down, full throttle on the straight, etc. The sessions at Sodegaura are a little too packed together and thanks to him I was able to make it on time with all the moving of tire warmers and fumbling with the bike without using the kickstand (which is related to me taking off the kickstand sensor only partially and having to tape it up). I'm glad he was able to make it out all the way to Chiba, and to take the time to re-explain things many times in Japanese to me.
During my sessions there were these two 600cc bikes that were significantly faster than me but kept waiting for each other and going slower than me in the process. It was pretty disorientation and dangerous and glad that the last session was only me and two other guys who were always on the other side of the track.
