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Firebird East: April 14, 2002
By Dale Whelan
All Images ©2002 by Mike Lachance

I can hardly believe how hard I worked to accomplish so little. The week of the CCS Races at Firebird raceway, I couldn't pass up a great deal on a race-ready trailer for the TZ. Thursday morning before work, I am off to pick up the trailer.

Complications
First the seller was late, then no keys were available to unlock the theft deterrents. No Go. The whole point of picking up the trailer during the day was to avoid the trouble of wiring the up the van in the dark. Since my current work schedule keeps me at work until around 1am, I would now have to use the van to load the trailer late Thursday night (Friday morning) after work. So much for advance preparations. Midnight Thursday (Friday morning) I head back to the trailer with 3 possible (hand made) wire adapters. I don't get home till 3:00 am.

Friday Morning
I wake up at 8:00 am to get everything ready for weekend. As I am turning my new rig around, driving down the road, the van decides to stop dead in the middle of the road about 100 yards from my house, blocking traffic both ways, of course. I pop the bonnet off the motor (a van, remember) and find a weak/intermittent spark. I unhook the trailer, push it aside, get my pickup truck, hook it to the van and tow it the short distance home. After fetching the trailer my plans have now changed. Figuring ignition coils seldom go bad on motorcycles and cars work the same way (except for leaning the wrong way in turns), I head of to get a distributor cap, rotor and plug wires. I figure these are basically consumables anyway. Problem fixed?

Now I have no spark at all. My philosophy when troubleshooting is to ask what happened just prior to the failure: I changed the rotor and cap. Conclusion: you touched it you broke it. Dammit! As much as I double check my work I can find nothing wrong except the van is now more dead than before I fixed it. I check voltage to the coil, on the ground side of the coil and current through the coil primary. All seems good. By this time it's time to go to work.

At work I ask a "car guy" about the van problem. He says "GMC? Ignition module. I always carry a spare." Fair enough. I hit the all night auto parts store after work, get home, module in hand, at 1:30am and commence to install the new module. Cranking the motor with great hopes results in nothing. Like a Rock huh? I give up at 2:00 am. I still have tires to change, tranny to change, a trailer to clean and load, and a van to fix. I am beyond tired. For some reason, being outsmarted by an inanimate object does that to me.

Saturday
New Plans. Raceday will be spent trying to go ride Sunday. I head off to an auto parts store looking for a resource on HEI ignition systems. (Can't fix what I don't understand.) The parts kid asks alot of simple questions and doesn't seem to understand my answers. He asks if I did an ohm test. I say: "No I did an amp test" He gets puzzled: "How do you do that?" I tell him "Look, I just need an information resource for the Ignition System". He directs me to the library.

So, there I am on Raceday with my nose in books at the Public Library, reading about cars. I pinch myself. Dammit! I didn't wake up! Check my pulse. Good I am not dead.

I go home to check the pickup coil ac voltage: it's good. It's starting to look like the coil: the crudest part. Ironically, I've found these to be about the most reliable part in most ignition systems (my old MotoGuzzi not withstanding). I can't get it to spark so I think of where I can find a condenser and some wires to test it. I hook it up to my CB400F and it won't throw a spark past 3mm. Allright, it passed all the ohm tests (I hate ohm tests) but seems defective. Trip to auto parts store to get a coil. Install coil. I begin to wonder what I'll check next when it fails to start this time… turn key… … … … the motor lights. Is karma starting to pay off?

Back to work on the bike and trailer!
I go to the shop and put a new Bridgestone on front wheel, get to cleaning the trailer and decide to wire the trailer even though its just beginning to get dark outside. Regardless, all is going well until the lights quit working and start doing some very stupid things. To me that means a lost ground. Sure enough, quick fix. Back on track.

By the time I get the trailer cleaned out it is dark out. Since the van has lights in it it's ok. I set to work prepping the bike. Not really a lot to do, just swap wheels, change first, maybe second gear and charge the battery: estimate 2 hours max and I should be in bed by 9pm. I set up a new mainshaft with gears and start to wonder about the gap it will cause between first and second. Regardless I determine I have them as close can be with a low first, so I go ahead and install the tranny. It won't turn! Pull it back out and look for a backward slider. (It's acting like it is in 2 gears at once.) Nothing. Reinstall: won't turn. Great! Now I'm being outsmarted by glorified Legos! Need I say it again? I remove it once more, thinking it-too worked before I "fixed" it. I take a look at the gear stripes with everything on the bench: 1 across from 1, 1 across from 1, 2 across from 2, 1 across from 2. Dammit again! I did 1/2 of first because I started thinking about second before completing first.

Finally I get it together and the tranny works. Install the clutch and the hubs seem locked together. Come on! It's just a clutch! After many visits under the case cover and lots of tired thoughts about a simple device, I add a washer on the mainshaft and get a bit of basket freeplay. The hubs now spin free of each other. Mission accomplished. It's now 1:00am. Kind of embarrassing and I hate the thought of fessing up to it.

Sunday
Things are good to go today. I get to the track and find a spot in the pits. Not to out-do myself, I discover I left the key for the trailer's back door at home. I find a racer with an pneumatic die grinder (with cutoff wheel). The Dunlop guys have just enough air hose to reach the trailer. Master Lock cut like butter. Through all this I miss the first practice. I next discover I had charged the battery, but left the bike "on" and drained the charge dead. I look on the bright side and chalk it up to "conditioning" the battery.

After riding the bike to tech and passing, I am riding back to the pits and run into Tom Dahl, the CCS Race Director. While we are talking somebody notices a leak. Is that gear oil? Although I assume it is water, it is, infact, gear oil. I find myself recalling the "water retention fairings" that the AMA mandated for 2-Strokes. If I were using one of those I would likely have destroyed my tranny and quite possibly hurt someone. Tom suggests I might want to look at it before I go out. I actually felt a bit stronger about this than he appeared to feel.

Looking at the clutch again, I decide to remove the washer I had installed, as the leak seemed to be behind the clutch basket. Lots of friction between the hub and basket, but no leak. Ok. Seems to work now.

Down to Business
The plan was to go faster than last time: a pitiful 1:07. My first few laps on the new tires will be the sighting lap. The grid seems pretty repulsive to me. I get to start in position 14 of 14 in lightweight GP.

Green Flag!
I commence to get a classically rotten start off the flag but the power of a TZ is impressive. Out of turn one I am roughly 8th. Still first lap! I didn't want to push it on the new tires, but I seemed to get comfortable quickly. I found myself catching up to people but was cautious passing. I find some riders hard to predict. I still had to avoid what seemed like a total change of heart and line. The race continues on and things are beginning to work.

On the way to the white flag I spot 2 bikes quite a ways ahead of me. One is a just a lapped rider but the other turns out to be a target (an expert). This guy seems way out of reach. I draft the lapped rider and pick it up a bit. As we head for the chicane I initially feel I should just follow him. No. This is a race, not practice. I can't afford to wait if I want to catch the target. I pass on the inside (which I seldom see work) and he ends up behind me. I click second shortly before I hit the curb and the front wheel lofts. I'm closing on the expert but he's way up there. This is the final lap and there isn't much lap left. It's not looking like I'll catch him 'till the last turn.

Seems to be just over 2 seconds between us. I'm closing fast. On the second to last turn he appears to be on cruise control. The poor bastard doesn't even know I'm behind him. I probably have the power to zap him at the line but I want him now.

 

Final Turn
I go inside tight and try not to park too much. He's awake and pulls up on my right, but his bike's power is no match for the TZ. I think of waving to him. Nah, that wouldn't be nice. I vaporize his hopes instead. No chance of catching whoever's next, but I don't slow down until after the white line.

Third Place
I got third. People were nice. My fastest lap seemed to be a 1:06.6. People seem to feel I did good and I thank them. Inside, however, I had mixed emotions; 1:06 is still slow. Nonetheless, did I improve with no practice. Third place might not be bad but I want to win. All that work for just 10 laps. I almost got none. On the bright side, although the van broke, it wasn't at 2 in the morning 40 miles from home.

I started racing in 1985 and I thought days like these were long gone. Although the power was very much available on the TZ, the bike ran like it had bad plug caps. The same ones I removed from my spares box last time out to give to the Jupiter Eight TZ. I really need to ride more.

Next on the list:
Get to Vegas and win.