Chaos Racing - RD Racer #2

My RD

27 June 2000 at Sviestad Linköping

Current specifications

RD350 from 1985

Steel braided brake lines

Progressive springs

NHK Steering damper

RGV-91 front fairing

CBR 600 seat

Öhlins rear shock

Very nicely lightened frame and powder coated yellow

Modified fuel cock (leaks too much though!)

Jolly-Moto expansion chambers

Registration papers and lights and such (as if I will ever use it on the road!)

Metzeler CompK 140/70-18" rear and 110/70-18" front

Three-spoke Marvic/Akront magnesium wheels front and rear

Engine completely renovated and tuned 1994, never runned since until I bought it 1999!

Mikuni 34 mm carbs, no airfilters

Boyesen reeds

Wiseco 65 mm pistons

Racetech clip-ons

Home made rearsets in 10 mm aluminium

Home made fork stabilizer in 10 mm aluminium

AIM MyChron 2 laptimer

History

1999:
When I first saw it I said to myself: "This is a really ugly motorcycle! Go back home!" (look at the old pictures from 1999 and you will understand...). It had been tuned and completely renovated in 1994 by the Swedish firm "Ski-Tec Racing" now known as Sangberg racing and never run since! So I was taking it easy on the road where the owner lived (deep deep in the forests of Östergötland). Great brakes but the engine didn't impress me that much. And the driving position was awkward with the feet much too far forward. All in all I decided that this motorcycle is nothing for me! Thank you and goodbye!

A couple of weeks later I decided to buy it anyway, I couldn't wait until I had repaired the blue one and this engine was like new so it wasn't such a difficult decision. I even managed to get 500 SEK rebate due to a broken windshield, halleluja!

The owner before me had plans to build a serious B400-racer but once it was done he found out that there was no time left to ride it. It's also spelled K-I-D-S... Good for me! When I was at Gelleråsen summer 1999 the owner before him recognised the bike from the rearsets and the expansion chambers. He confirmed that the tires were actually bought by him 1990 (oops!), he even won a race at Gelleråsen at the time so it must have been competitive. At that time he ran it without a fairing.

Pictures

2000 Model

First time on the track

The first time I tried it was at Mantorp in June-99. It took a while to get used to the riding position but it went a lot better than the first racebike. But I still thought that my ordinary street RD felt faster, something must be wrong. The rear was jumping up and down in the long fast corners so I decided that this bike needs a rear shock from Öhlins too. Anyway I managed not to crash for a whole day, so it wasn't such a bad day after all!

The next week I took it to our local track Sviestad and was really humiliated by Rickard who also runs an RD. It felt as if I was standing still at the straight, something was wrong, that's for sure!

I've learned that the YPVS is always the first thing to look at for an RD and there it was: the right YPVS was lagging about 2 mm when compared to the left master YPVS. I did a quick fix to get them even and the next time I tried it at Gelleråsen I ran almost as fast as Rickard! Don't ever underestimate the importance of correctly adjusted YPVS! The funny part is that Rickard benched his bike to 75 bhp at the rear wheel and since we have pretty much the same speed mine isn't too far below that. Thank you SkiTec!

Rickard and I decided to participate in a competition at Gelleråsen that summer (99) so we went there a few Wednesdays to practice. We will never forget one of those Wednesdays...:-(

A brief summary of my first race weekend is available here.

Future plans

I have pretty much done the things I wanted to to do the bike since I bought it. Now that I have bought the Aprilia RS250-99 to race with in 2001 I will try to make this bike road legal again so I can have some fun at track days. Check back to see how that little project will turn out!!

Update 2006-03-19

I sold this bike today! The plan is that it will race in Formula 80-87 classic racing here in Sweden! Good luck Mattias!