Took the blue bike back to Denny who found that a valve shim had fallen off during assembly – that was causing the misfire. There were a few leaks around the thermostat again and a couple of other minor things but he got it rebuilt ready for me to pick up Wednesday evening. I spent the evening loading the trailer so didn’t have time to work on the bike – just loaded everything up and figured I’d put it back together on Thursday evening. It’s a good job we decided to do the Friday practice because the KSR track day on Thursday was canceled due to heavy rain forecast.
Got the blue bike ready but left the rear-sets, slicks and steering damper on the red bike as I didn’t have time to swap them over. Took both bikes to tech and got through no problem, then it was wet in the morning but started drying at about 10:30am so they ran open track. It was a bit sketchy going out on old DOTs but I managed to get a few practice sessions in during the morning before swapping the slicks over at lunch. Got quite a few laps in and the highest temp I saw on track was 98C and the coolant level in the reservoir didn’t move at all – I had started dragging the pegs and the bike shook its head a couple of times over the bumps on the way out of turn 3 so that night the steering damper and rear-sets got put on.
Saturday qualifying went ok, in Lost Era Lightweight I was chasing Mel when Andrew came past me on the way into the first 90 right – turn 4, Andrew went deep because of the pass so I tried to cut tight and get back past him but he didn’t see me and we bumped shoulders knocking us both wide and losing a few places on the grid.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxCWwZHqMxXVris1P6c5R4E8flj1Fa08rp?si=O1FmEKuzT5_WQAid
I seem to struggle with the Alien layout, in Am Old Folks Jay got past me on the brakes and when I moved up alongside him on the brakes into the Carousel, I felt for sure that I had the pass in the bag but he held his line around the outside and kept his position!! After that Mike past me as well putting me back to 6th.
I wasn’t feeling very happy about how I had been performing but I bought a set of Michelins off Mike and went out to see if I could do any better. Jay sold his GSXR on Saturday so he was on an older CBR F4i but he was struggling on it. Mike was flying again and once he past me I just couldn’t cling on to him and then Glen caught up to me and I battled with him for a few laps until Mike – who was in 3rd and catching 2nd place gave it a little too much going on to the straight and high sided!
On board with Mike Black 728 – some good footage of me here! LOL
