| Anderstorp | April 15th | Swedish B Series |
| Ring Knutstorp | May 21st | Swedish B Series |
| Anderstorp | June 17th | Swedish B Series |
| Sviestad | August 5th | Swedish B Series |
| Anderstorp | September 23rd | Swedish B Series |
| RD Endurance Preparations |
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000501 000304 |
Anderstorp 15/4 |
PreparationsNoiseWe were almost expecting snow on the track because one week earlier it was snowing really heavy here! But we were lucky, no snow at Anderstorp. Anderstorp is a full-size track that has been hosting F1 races in the past and is currently also trying to arrange a World Superbike race. The problem with Anderstorp is that there are some people there that doesn't like the sound of racing engines... So the organization has been given a few "noise weekends" where a maximum of 102 dB is allowed. All other weekends has a maximum limit of 100 dB. Guess which weekend we got? :-( Me and Rickard tested our bikes on Tuesday the 11th, I got 107 dB and he got 105 dB!!! Panic!!! Rickard went directly to Fredrik Watz enormous garage and started to build new silencers (Titanium, what else :-D), and I went to a workshop at the University to prepare my new rearsets to be able to fasten my Jolly-Moto's. Then I changed to the Jolly-Moto expansion chambers, repacked them really hard and hoped for the best. (When I got to Anderstorp I haven't yet started the engine with the new chambers) TiresI was also going to put on my new Metzeler CompK's using the Marvic rims. (Why is it that I tend to do everything the day before it HAS to be done...?) It took almost a week before I got the tires and then I was charged an extra 150 SEK because they couldn't balance the front wheel manually so they had to go to another tire shop to get that done. And then when I tried to put them on my bike I realized that this will not work at all.I took a closer look at the bike I took them from and the brake calipers (correct word?) had been milled down about 3 mm towards the center of the wheel and also milled down to get further from the center. We are talking really small tolerances here! So I decided to put on the tires we bought for the endurance project instead. At this time the endurance RD was still going to be assembled so I took a front wheel from a 86' RD that Rickard had (they are lighter than the earlier models). When I finally found a firm that could help me they first mixed up the tires, front tire on rear wheel and vice versa. When they changed them the front tire was backwards, and when they changed that and I got home I realized that this wheel had modified bearings so it could not fit at all. On Friday morning I got up really early and they changed my front tire for the fourth time in two days. I got home, put it on the bike and packed really fast. So fast that I forgot almost all my tools. Great. AmbulanceOf course the ambulance was also being obnoxious running only on five cylinders and sounding like a tractor with its very questionable exhaust system. I took out the injector for the bad cylinder and after trying to clean it with pressurized air for a minute or two it eventually opened. It runs a LOT better on all six cylinders!!!At the trackFridayI arrived around 11.30 to Anderstorp and immediately took the bike to the noise test. 99 dB! What a relief! Then we had some sandwiches before getting out to the first practice. Wow, what a track! A loooong straight followed by lots of 180 degrees turns that really flow is how I would like to describe Anderstorp. And of course the Carousel which is more like a 270 degrees turn, yummy!We had two practice rounds on Friday and everything went good, bike felt ok, the tires were great. Then we ate some hamburgers and I went to sleep in the ambulance. Without a heater. This is something I don't recommend to anyone, especially not when the temperature drops below 0 degrees... I think I froze myself to sleep that night! (It will turn out that something else froze that night too...) SaturdayI wasn't the only one who had been freezing this night, Rickard and assistant Sune (Susanne) also had a rough time in the tent. First practice for the day went good until I took a look at the temperature meter! It was pointing straight up in the red area so I rolled slowly the the rest of the lap and then back to our pit. The engine was indeed extremely hot but the radiator was not hot at all. The expansion container seemed to be full so we suspected that there was something wrong with the circulation. We flushed the whole system and removed the thermostat and then tried again. Same result, it went ok for one lap then the temperature started to rise. This circus went on for the rest of the day and out of four practice sessions I managed to get one lap. Last of course but that didn't bug me so much as what was the problem.I was kind of fed up with this now and since Rickard and Sune went back after his engine seizure I went out for a pizza by myself and then took a walk around the area and socialized a bit. Nobody had any idea of what was wrong with my bike which was a bit disappointing to say the least. Sunday - Race DayAhhh, I slept good this night! A heater inside the ambulance did wonders! Too bad the rain was pouring down but that's normal racing weather apparently. We had a 30 minutes warm-up and the bike managed to run 3 laps until the temperature started to rise again. Shit!Easy you say, you have a leaking radiator! You're right! :-( The problem is that when I was sure about that that was the problem we had 20 minutes to lineup... I took off in the ambulance to find some radiator leak fix stuff and bought some ridiculously expensive fluid. Good enough for 25 liters of radiators it said on the label. Should be enough for my RD I thought. With squealing tires I got back to the bike and put in about 25% of the bottle in the coolant. When I got to the pitlane some bikes were already lining up on the grid but they let me out on the track anyway. I arrived at the grid and we set off for the inspection lap. Everything felt good, the temperature looked good too so I was feeling hopeful. I got a great start, too bad the Aprilia two rows ahead of me didn't start at all. So I have to break and turn around him and lost valuable positions. I overtook about 4-5 bikes on the first two laps and was actually leading my class! (Which is a very small class by the way but that's not so important right now...) Then the temperature slowly started to rise... On the short straight before the carousel I suddenly lost all power! Nothing to do but to leave the race and prepare to go home. Now everything is wet too... SummaryA really lousy race weekend for RD racers Rickard and Torkel. One engine seized and another very close to seizure. Later when I inspected the spark plugs I saw that one plug had a spark distance of about 5 mm!!!I was trying to rescue some spark plugs this winter by cleaning them with ultrasonic sound. Apparently this in combination with the excessive heat made the isolator come loose so due to compression it gave up! I changed it to a fresh plug and then it ran just normal. Still have a leaking radiator though, it doesn't seem to matter how much radiator-leak-fix-stuff I put in it, I have to replace it (or solder it). The new rearsets (water cut aluminum,pictures soon) worked great and I also bought a new seat from a CBR600 for 200 SEK, almost done fitting it when I am writing this, looks great! Looking forward to Ring Knutstorp! |
Ring Knutstorp 21/5 |
Up and down!Ring Knutstorp is almost 400 km south of Linköping so in order to save some gas money we decided to use my Ford and Richards trailer. Unfortunately the Ford did not pass the yearly car inspection here in Sweden with regards to using a trailer, the hook was too rusty. Well, we had to use it so we welded a reinforcement plate under the hook and hoped for the best. Same goes for Richards trailer that didn't pass the inspection until the day before we set off... Anyway it was raining like nothing I have ever seen before on the way down to Knutstorp, normal racing weather in other words! “The Ring” is beautifully situated among the flowing hills in this part of Sweden. Very nice and a great track for bikes. The straight was maybe half the straight in Sviestad and then it was just turns everywhere and up and down like a rollercoaster. Difficult to say the least! I thought my bike should be in good shape but nope... Since I haven't been able to run after the radiator change I missed detecting that I still had a cooling problem. The temperature meter didn't move a millimeter all day and the engine overboiled really fast. Broken head gasket in combination with malfunctioning temperature meter was the common diagnostics, no more racing for me this time either! I wouldn't mind being able to complete at least one race this year! :-( Richard did great though and finished at 12th place if you count all 250B bikes, 1st place if you count only B400 bikes. |
Anderstorp 17/6 |
Racing? Me? Naah...After being sick the whole week before this weekend with fever, sore throat and lots of coughing I first thought that I could be able to compete anyway. But Saturday morning I decided that if I almost couldn't breathe through my nose and had a hard time just getting out of bed maybe today wasn't the best of days to be on a race track for me! So I decided not to race. Instead I helped Rickard a little and otherwise just strolled around the paddock area trying not to talk to much because my voice was getting weaker and weaker... When we arrived the first we could see was an enormous trailer saying "Yamaha". Beside it was a brand new Chevy Tahoe, a BMW M3 and a Yamaha quad-wheeler that looked extremely cool! Norwegians again we thought, they have too much money for their own good! It later turned out that the trailer indeed belonged to a Norwegian but not a B-class driver but to the team of Torvald Saeby who is one of the best Supersport drivers around... The Norwegian 600 Standard class was apparently a race for A-class drivers, their lap times proved that for sure! Anyway, the sun was very generous and the races went by very well. Rickard eventually got the hang of it but I won't tell you his result go here and read for yourselves! (As if he ever will update his site! ;-)) |
Sviestad 5/8 |
About time!To cut a long story short: I eventually completed a race! Actually the first time without any problems or accidents. I'm not too proud of the results though but with more practice... Engine seizure!!!On Tuesday 1st August I did about 40 laps with a personal best of 1.04.55 (my goal this year was to get below 1 minute, yeah sure!) then the bike started to behave strangely. I first thought I was out of gas so I filled her up (my bike is definitely a female! :-)) but same problems. It couldn't rev in 5th gear on the long straight. I changed plugs and tried again, same problem. You guessed it, engine seizure... Three days to fix it and I'm on vacation too, should be no problem! I was lucky because I found a 65 mm Wiseco in my garage that was barely used so I removed the bad piston and put this one in instead. I also changed rings on both pistons. The cylinders were honed and then I put it all together on Friday evening. My first attempt to start it was not a big success, I forgot to put in the plugs!:-) The MyChron2 temperature sensor was now fitted to the coolant hose and for the first time I have digital water temperature reading, very useful! I think that the reason that the engine seized in the first place was that I was revving up to 11000 rpm and had the thermostat mounted. The water couldn't flow enough to cool the engine down at those high revs. Free practice 1I used this session to run in the engine, I tried not to rev it past 7000 the first laps then 8000 and the last laps I occasionally went up to 10000. Bad lap times but still there were some people behind me. Free practice 2I need to practice more, I need to practice more, ... (If you happen to see me looking more lost in space than normally these are probably the words that I'm using as a mantra!) 1.05.27 is not so impressive. RaceI got a bad start (strangely those prillers and rgv's got way better starts than I've seen before) but overtook 3 bikes going into the first turn. The race was set for 20 laps on Sviestads 2100 m something track and when I thought to myself if the race soon should be over I saw the sign saying 11 laps to go... Yawn. I ended up in first place in my class which is good (as usual I'm forbidden to tell how many participated in this class ;-)) Well considering how little time I've actually been riding the bike this year instead of wrenching with it I guess it's ok. I had lots of margins so I should be able to shave of a few seconds on the laptimes before this year is over. The MyChron2 dataloggers are very useful, you can see exactly where you mess up on the track. I sat on an Aprilia RS250 for the first time too, it was just perfect for me. Very comfortable and I'm 191cm so bikes that are big enough for me don't exactly grow on trees! The RD is roomy too but there is also 15 years of development in between these bikes. Maybe next year.... |
Anderstorp 23/9 |
Pissed off!!One word: dB... The exhaust noise must be less than 100 dB on Anderstorp. The limit for normal streetbikes is 103 dB. Isn't it a bit odd that not even normal bikes can run on a racetrack because the noise is too loud?? Isn't this one of the reasons for having a race track in the first place? Anyway I listened to all the tricks on how to lower the noise but it wasn't enough. After five tests I realized that this will never work if I don't build new silencers. I managed to get down to 101-102 dB but not below 100 dB so I was out of the race... It is really a shame and I feel sorry for the race officials. They just shake their heads and laugh too because it's so silly! You can't belive the looks of some of the strange "bike-creatures" that shows up at Anderstorp: 15 cm rubber hoses on the exhaust, chicken net, you name it! And sometimes that stuff fells off and causes all kinds of interesting discussions afterwards! This was the last race for the season, I've heard that winter is a good season for building silencers! :-) |
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