The Intentional Destruction of Laboriously Engineered Artifacts

Part 2

Army Of Darkness-Ministry of Information

Talledega.

Talledega Race track is the punchline to the 800 mile drive joke. Summit Point is the follow up line. The track was drying as we assembled the canopy and went through all the pre-race tedium of paperwork, registration, tech inspection and sucking up to the officials. The last item seemed especially relevant since the weekend's race director, Ed Bargy, is also the track's designer.

The first race of the year is also a bit of a gossipy time as teams (well, at least me) try to figure out who the competition is, who has switched teams and who bought updated equipment. The Middleweight Superbike class has, for many years, been the Special Olympics of WERA endurance. Often the top Middleweight Superbike would have finished in fourth or fifth in the supersport ranks. This year Arclight decided to switch classes from Heavyweight supersport to Middleweight Superbike and beat up on the special ed kids for a while. With apparently ample funding, the riding talents of Joe Prussiano and Chris Hughes and the organizational abilities of Chuck Warren, the championship seemed like a forgone conclusion before the first race. To make matters worse, rumor has it that Team Suzuki Endurance's pit boss Keith Perry breathes the same air as the Arclight engine builder.

Defending champions of the class Ten-40 showed up with the similar bike from last year with a few improvements. They run a big Honda motor (640cc?) and a bigger gas tank. We know from last year that they will be hard to beat. Sharkskinz had increased their chances of racing success by recruiting Patrick Ludwig and purchasing a ’97 YZF 600. Two darkhorse teams, Young Guns Racing and Wing Squared were entered as well.

We knew from past experience that Talledega would take a toll on tires. John was a bit faster than I in practice and he craftily suggested I start the race knowing full well that I would end up riding the last stint when the tires would be well and truly knackered.

I got a wheelie mediocre start and swapped places with Mark Iannuzzelli of Ten-40 until he tired of the game and started to pull away. Arclight's Joe Prussiano, in a novel tactical move, comprehensively destroyed his bike on the third lap. This was a new strategy for them and it took us all by surprise. Patrick Ludwig was in form and set about lapping everyone else.

I got into a few dices with various other racers but none of them lasted very long as my dancing partners kept running off the track. Eventually one came back on the track leaking oil and the first and only red flag of the event came out.

WERA has changed the rules and it is now verboten to fuel or work on the bike during a red flag. However, you do not have to take the restart and it takes significantly less time to pit without having to slow down so there is a distinct advantage to not take the restart but to simply refuel after the green flag and reengage from the pits. Not many other folks had figured this out and we found ourselves almost alone on pit road. I noticed Ten-40 had taken the restart.

John was a bit faster than I, and Brian Cincera (Ten-40) was a bit slower than Mark so their lead slowly dwindled. I was anxiously anticipating their first pit stop and the resulting lead that would grant us but they refused to pit. I realized they were going to try to run the four hour race with a single pit stop.

They almost made it. With only a four second lead and three laps 'til the halfway flag they exhausted their fuel supply and came to an anti-climatic halt in turn one. Six laps passed before they could get it refueled and back on the track. Meanwhile the multi lap lead that Patrick Ludwig had built up had evaporated along with their Dunlops. Patrick came over and asked if he could borrow our extra rear wheel for an anticipated tire swap. I stupidly said yes.

Their wheel swap ate up three laps and we were in the lead when John brought the bike in for me.

The tires were spent. Completely trashed. With over an hour of race left. A prepared team would have done a quick thirty second tire change and been back at them. Would that we were that team. I fought a rear guard battle going sideways through turns until the misery was finally ended by the checkered flag. Patrick Ludwig, with my wheel and fresh rubber finished 43 seconds ahead. Grrr.

After the finish of the Talledega jaunt we assessed what had worked and what had performed less than expected. Talledega is pretty hard on the little things and we figured the tires had done their little best but we had just asked too much from a set of Michelins. Surely the French could never have envisioned running around a go-cart track in a cornfield for four hours.

The Ferodo pads were about down to their backing pads. Although it was refreshing to have some control over the entrance speed of turns the imminent failure of our brakes had me a little worried. We sent our equipment specialist, Steve Ward of Battley Cycles, in search of a better brake solution. This is the freedom of the unsponsored.

Steve tried to get Carbone Lorraine pads but the importer had gone to France and they didn't seem to have anything for the new style Yamaha calipers. I had recently purchased a YZF 750 to replace my stolen FZR 1000 (a man has to get to work somehow) and it came with a set of sintered Dunlopads installed. Although I couldn't differentiated between the six pistons calipers and the pad material I did know that the brakes as a whole could easily throw the bike up onto the front wheel (a man has to stop for lights somehow). We decided to try them for Road Atlanta with the theory that Dunlop is very experienced with things that break.

I also was given a learning opportunity when our $325 Lindemann modified forks blew a seal after 6 hours of use. I was pretty sure that the blown seal was due to the extra 90 cc of fork oil we had added to the forks (to alleviate bottoming) after receiving them back from LE. When I stripped the forks to replace the seal I found that the oil level I had arrived at was actually only 5mm off from stock. LE had underfilled them by 90cc and they handled very poorly because of it. Its not that LE is alone in poor fork preparation. A compatriot of mine had his TL1000 forks done by RaceTech and they not only had two different oil levels between the legs but had installed two different spring rates. I don't think it balanced out 'cause the bike handled worst than most TLs.

Although I knew I was letting myself in for the "never heard of it you must have installed it wrong" routine I gave Lindemann Enginering a call to see if they had a sensible explanation for why they had underfilled the forks. The first man I talked to quickly handed me off to Jim Lindemann himself. I explained that the fork legs had been hitting the trees and I had to add oil accordingly etc. He said that they hadn't done many of the YZF forks (nice of them to work out the bugs with mine) but he was pretty dubious that the fork legs would hit the trees under braking. I suppose they don't have a shop manual since the specs in the book and a ruler will show the potential to bounce the seal wipers off the lower tree. He suggested that perhaps they needed to revise their specifications. He seems like a nice enough guy but I still think $325 is a bit much to pay for something that isn't right when it shows up. Of course, I'm sure the tab for my friend's Race Tech forks is higher than that now and they are even worse. Don't misunderstand me, good forks are critical to a race bike but, in our experience, you are, once again, going to be better off doing this stuff yourself since you will end up doing it anyway.

While I busied myself with fork seals and fork oil levels Tim was busy machining and welding together a quick change system for the rear wheel. Tim lifted the concept from Vic Fasola, who, much to his credit, admitted he lifted it from Yamaha. With the revised rear wheel set up Tim, Amy and chain girl Cici were able to consistently change the rear wheel in under thirty seconds,with a best of nineteen.

Tim labors hours to save seconds p-Amy Pickering

So with sintered brake pads, sealed forks and soft rubber mounted on a quick-change wheel set up we drove the 600 miles to Atlanta.

Jim Williams had missed the first race of the year due to a neck injury sustained in a parking lot racing incident with, uh, me. John and I had missed his input at Talledega and we were anticipating his feedback on the bike and track.

Besides sending John out on a bike bereft of fuel, practice was uneventful. I should have recognized that as a harbinger of doom. Once again we had our team massage practitioner with us at the track and that seemed to satisfactorily kill lots of the free time. Tim busied himself with measuring the wear on the brake pads to ensure that we would be able to go the whole six hours on one set.

Being an even slower learner than a racer, it took more than a few laps to acclimatize myself to the Dunlopads. They are highly progressive. Squeeze a little, get a little, squeeze harder, come to a complete stop. My lap times were suffering as I kept stopping 100 yards before the turns.

As is our custom I started the race to be followed by John and Jim, repeat until failure. We figured there was no way to beat Arclight so we were focusing on Sharkskinz and Ten-40. Patrick Ludwig was initiating the Sharkskinz effort and Mark Ianuzzelli was leading off for Ten-40.

I got my usual poor start but was able to hold Ten-40 to a stable 10 second lead, I upped my pace to the low 1:30s and started to gain. I was surprised to see that I was gaining on Mark at a couple of seconds a lap until I saw him pull off the track and head down pit road. I then shifted my focus to Ludwig on the Sharkskinz bike who was five seconds ahead when the first of five red flags came out.

The sense of dread that permeates the pits during a red flag is as close as many of us will ever come to reading the list of the dead posted after battles in war. Anxious eyes scan the pit road trying to determine if your bike, or your friends, were involved. The crews wonder if they should be packing an overnight bag for the hospital, pull out the spare brake lever, or just get the dump tank ready.

Oblivious to the concerns in the pits I chatted with the reentered Ten-40 rider Brian Cincerra about their awol shift lever, the track conditions and the merits of the DEC Alpha 600mhz processor while we toured slowly from turn two to the pit road. Only later did I realize how inconsiderate such dawdling is.

The new 1997 red flag rule stipulates that no work is to be preformed on bikes during the red flag. The interpretation of that rule varied dramatically from Talladega to Road Atlanta which caused a reasonable amount of consternation in the pits.

Eventually we got the bike fueled and sent John out to play. It turns out that I had pitted the bike in the lowly spot of sixth place but John quickly set about remedying the situation by passing a number of our competitors and moving us up to fourth or so. And then disaster struck...

The modified crank broke. Again.

John limped the bike home and after hearing the piston hitting the head a few times Tim reached over and, with a degree of finality, snapped the ignition switch to "off".

Although it would not really improve our result much we decided to quickly prep our B bike so that Jim could get a little track time. I think we finished dead last or so. With an hour left in the race Ten-40 sheared a connecting rod and ripped an inspection port through their cases. Arclight won, Tapeworks III got second and Sharkskinz took third.

Wiping out another motor gave us a little pause about what we were doing. Although we have always raced Yamaha's, our love is obviously unrequited. Trying to make a Yamaha competitive with the new Suzuki also converts it into a hand grenade and, when the team riders are as slow as John, Jim and myself, competitive machinery is not enough. Ours needs to be better.

On the drive home we considered our options including quitting, rebuilding or wandering around the countryside collecting fourths and fifths.

A third option materialized in the form of an email from a mysterious stranger named Johann Gastruder.