The Intentional Destruction of Laboriously Engineered Artifacts

Part 4

Army Of Darkness - Ministry of Information.

We had exactly five days between the conclusion of the four hour race at IRP and the departure date for the eight hour race at Grattan. We were a bit burned on putting bikes together as we had rebuilt the YZF for use in a single race and then built the GSX-R for the next race. All we could bring ourselves to do was drag the Suzuki out to the Battley Cycle’s dyno in an attempt to sort out the light switch power delivery.

The dyno told us that we had a peak of 91 bhp with a big hole just beneath 11,000 rpm. The sensation on the track was of a top end rush but the revelation on the dyno suggested that we were only fooling ourselves. Once the bike dropped below 11,000 rpm (an unavoidable event when we are riding at tracks where we are less than proficient) the motor would have to claw its way out of the hole back into the power. Not conducive to fast laps.

Tim messed with the jetting which took our peak bhp down to 88 but wiped out any traces of that hole leading up to it. I felt that it was a worthy trade off.

I was looking forward to Grattan for its beautiful setting, challenging lay out and wildlife. I was dreading Grattan because it was an eight hour race and we had never been to Grattan without crashing. I don’t like crashing.

To minimize crew fatigue we arranged to have many people attend the race. Veteran AOD crew Cici Muhktar, Amy Pickering, Tim Gooding and Greg Molinares were joined by our northern annex of Steve Dobson, Corey Rusk, Tricia Hennig, Diane Stevenson and Chris Manfrin. Corey and Steve were in attendance last year when Jim, in a pathetic attempt to attract attention to himself, tumbled our bike down the front straight. I told everyone to ignore him and perhaps he would stop behaving like that and learn to differentiate between good attention and bad attention.

It was cold when we arrived. DC’s 100 degree weather makes it sometimes difficult to fathom the necessity for warmer clothing. There was a bit of a scramble on Friday morning to find enough long sleeved tops for everyone.

The Suzuki ran well with its new jetting and the tires left over from IRP. Our "C" bike (last year’s YZF) in a fit of jealous rage over the new GSXR, egged its crankcases by the clutch bearing and required retirement for the rest of the weekend. I think it was jealous rage although, since Jim was riding at the time of failure, it could have been fear of repeating its annual cartwheel down the front straight.

After a few practice sessions the brake performance on the GSX-R started to go. I had intended to mention it to Tim when I returned to the pits but it kept slipping my mind. Fortunately Tim and Amy are used to my inability to effectively communicate and they look over the bike frequently regardless of rider input. It was in this manner that Tim discovered the absence of half of the brake pad material in the front pads.

We had seized on Dunlopad sintered brake pads as the solution to our Ferodo brake problems on the YZF but obviously catastrophic pad failure was not the way to run an error free eight hour race. As I was walking up the pits to beg brake pads from Arclight’s Chuck Warren I passed the pit of Tapeworks. They were looking in consternation at the pads in the front calipers of their GSX-R 600. They too had a case of failing Dunlopads. We ended up using stock pads for the duration of the weekend with no ill effects.

The new feature to Grattan is large swaths of sealant through many of the apex. Sometime the sealers left a 12 inch line on the inside near the 6 inch protruding curbs. After the sun had been on it for a few hours the sealant provided more traction than the older pavement, however, if the track was not up to temperature (say, after a fifty-five degree night) it was a bit slick.

Friday was the Fourth of July and, taking after her brother, Natalie Ulrich arrived at the track with a cornucopia of projectiles and incendiary devices. Amy shares Natalie’s love for class c and the drive from the track to dinner in Grand Rapids was spent trying to get the lit bottle rockets out the windows of the van and aimed at the convoy behind us before the propellant fired. Windshield hits were scored slightly lower than proximity detonation. Of course the thought of the gas cans in the back of John’s truck never entered our minds.

The race commenced at 11:00am. The sealant was still cold. Nobody else seemed to notice and they stormed away from me. I turned in to one of Grattan’s many slow ninties and slid the front wheel, almost tipping the bike on its side. Next lap around I entered the turn at the same speed, realized I was going to have the same slide, and stood the bike up braking all the way to the outside. I didn’t ever leave the pavement and was able to immediately rejoin the fray loosing only a couple seconds but that technicality didn’t prevent the announcer from broadcasting "Army Of Darkness takes an off road excursion" which tempted me to wear an explanation around my neck to answer the question asked forty times over the next five hours.

In the morning, fear of the cold sealant overwhelms fear of the curb. P-Eurotech

A red flag ended my stint and I was sure that we would now be a lap down our front runners. As it was, the red flag god smiled on us and the lead of the front runners evaporated with the throwing of the flag. Despite the gift, we were in seventh place in class and seventeenth overall. Such a dismal placing that I was tempted to quit and load up right there and then. Jim went out to finish the tank and I went to sulk on the bleachers.

Racing always makes my stomach hurt. Actually we invented a test to determine if the stomach pains were caused by hunger or illness/anxiety. We call this the Greasy Egg test. If a plate of greasy eggs sounds appetizing, you are hungry. If the greasy eggs are sickening, you are anxious or ill. Endurance racing causes more anxiety than sprint racing as the apprehension only gets worse while your teammates are riding. I knew that the eight hours were going to be difficult emotionally (regulating the highs and lows of the race) as well as physically. The more emotionally bound up one gets, the quicker physical fatigue sets in. Aware of this dynamic I went to relax and quietly beat myself up about my dismal first stint. I choose the bleachers in the shade overlooking the bowl turn.

The red flag had been caused by a bike clipping the curb, crashing and oiling the track. A line of oil dry extended from a narrow clean line out to the curb. Most folks were not tempting the oil dry on sealant combination and were trying to stay low, underneath it. I sat sipping water and watching Jim battle with other 600 back markers. I amazed myself at how calm I felt watching our bike circulate the track. I felt that way right up until Jim clocked the curb with the motor hard enough to turn heads 200 feet away. The motor made a flat droning noise when Jim got back on the throttle and he threw up his hand.

I was already running back across the pits doing a Paul Revere number to warn the unsuspecting crew that Jim might be pitting. Greg had witnessed the same curbing and, being bicycle enabled, made it to the pits before me. Amy, always good in a crisis, demanded to know where our spare left motor cover was and what tools we would need to swap it. This question was easily answered with the acknowledgement that since we had only had the bike for a month, we had virtually no spares.

Fortunately the flat motor sound resulted from the bike upshifting itself after bouncing off the curb. Jim never came into the pits and our anxiety lowered with Jim’s lap times. We all made a mental note to pay more attention to him so he would not feel compelled to resort to such antics.

Meanwhile our fears were being fully realized elsewhere in the pits. Amazingly fast starting Tapeworks retired their Superbike GSX-R 600 with a mysterious reoccurring clutch problem. This promoted us one postion. Sharkskinz crashed their YZF hard and after lengthy repairs could only run laps 2-5 seconds off their previous times. Meanwhile John was keeping our bike on a steady pace that was wining the war of attrition.

In the afternoon, fear of the curb overwhelms fear of the black sealant and white oil streak. P-Eurotech.

This promoted us to fourth with Arclight winning in the distance, Ten-40 running behind them and the local wildcard team of Performance Motorsports (#20) running just ahead of us. Cycle Speed was in fifth but not far enough back to stop watching them. With three hours to go in the race Cycle Speed crashed bringing out another red flag.

The #20 bike was pitted forty feet from us and Greg could overhear them pleading with a race official to not force them to take the restart but allow them to replace their brake pads immediately. They did end up taking the restart but the combination of a brake pad change and slower fueling gave us a two lap lead. Cycle Speed were able to get their bike back on the track remarkably quickly and only lost nine laps.

Tim determines the future pace of our competition by the condition of their tires during a red flag. P-Amy Pickering

Jim ran for 80 minutes before the fuel light started flashing. That left me with about ninety minutes left in the race. I had already ridden for one and half hours by this point and was "feeling not so fresh." I wanted to make sure no one caught us from behind but I also was very concerned with wearing out or making a riding error that could cost us our third. For some reason the obsession with rider error manifested in an absolute determination to avoid washing the front on the brakes. I was certain I was going to tip in on the brakes and the worn front tire would give out leaving with much explaining to do in the pits.

As it happened it was the second place team of Ten-40 to over tax their front tire. I am certain that the disappointment that Brian felt as he picked his bike up out of the mud was an order of magnitude more intense than the excitement I felt by seeing him there. An unforeseen problem with forced air systems is that when a float sticks open, the fuel pump opportunistically fills the float bowl vent tubes, which feed into the air box, which soaks the filter and can even fill the cylinders with uncompressible liquid. Needless to say, we inherited an undeserved second place which we held to the finish.

Not counting slow riding we had completed an eight hour race with only 6 seconds worth of mistakes taking sixth overall and second in class. Our best finish to date.

People smile when they run eight hours without blowing a fuse. P-Doriano Romboni

The unforeseen consequence of finishing well at Grattan was that it brought the four middleweight superbike teams competing in the privateer cup (everyone excluding Arclight) within five points of each other. This meant that a good finish at Summit could vault us from fifth place (in class) to the coveted second place.

When I informed Tim of this situation he didn’t completely understand the ramifications until I explained that in order to secure a good finish at Summit we were going to need more bhp. The confused look on his face turned to horror when he realized that he was going to be spending many nights working on a valve head instead of sipping espresso in a downtown café.

Tim had Forrest Kerns weld up the exhaust ports so Tim could reshape them to his whim. He also necked down the intake tract a bit in an attempt to increase the velocity in the port. The shiny spots on the edges of the pistons suggested that the clearance between the piston and the head was resulting in a bit of alloy to alloy contact. Tim added an extra base gasket to move the head a smidgen further from the piston's grope.

The net result of these changes added about six bhp everywhere as measured on the Battley Cycles Dyno. I was very pleased. We are using the stock headpipes with a D & D slip on. We bought the full race pipe to try on the dyno but, although a tad lighter, it offered no more power and didn’t fit as well as the stock unit so we hung it in the rafters of the garage.

Summit Point

I was very nervous about the race at Summit. The other two times I’ve enduranced raced at Summit where eminently forgettable. Underdamped forks (1994) ruined one race and the 1996 event was a bit of a let down when, after leading, we blew a head gasket. Our local restaurant sponsor, Polly’s Café, had offered to cater the race. This provided a huge incentive for many of our friends and family to make the short trek to West Virginia. I knew that by Saturday we would have twenty or more spectators in our pit alone. The part I was least anticipating was having to act brave and satisfied at a fourth place finish. I prefer to sulk in private.

Although perhaps a futile endeavor, AOD went to Summit on Thursday to waste extra gas and tires. After the typically slippery morning the track started to come in a bit in the afternoon. John was the first one of us to figure it out and did a 1:23.33, about a second faster than I had gone and two faster than Jim.

The little horns popped out of the side of my head and I did a 1:23.10 in the next session. Jim was stuck at mid 1:24 and was getting very frustrated. After watching him try unsuccessfully to crack into the 1:23 for a few sessions Amy and Tim hooked a big bungie cord from his forks to the tail of my bike and we took the track for the last session of the day. First lap was a 1:24, second was a 1:25, I started to doubt my own abilities, the next lap was a 1:23.8 for me and a 1:24:5 for Jim, then 1:23:2/1:23.9, then 1:22:8/1:23:3 then 1:22:9/1:22:8. All three of us were pretty confident and relaxed that evening.

Jim contemplates the meaning of friendship and trust through turn eight. Sam contemplates turn nine. - Eutotech

The practice day did point out the principle difference between the Suzuki and Yamaha. We had been doing the same times on both bikes but had severely warped the brake rotors on the Yamaha and left the Suzuki asking for more. We have not actually been turning faster lap times on the Suzuki than the Yamaha, the Suzuki just hasn’t been breaking as often as our Yamaha did.

Summit is a very technical race track with many challenging pavement and traction changes. One of the more technical sections was a layer of white paint the track management had deposited in the apexes two of the fastest turns. We thought we were going to enjoy a clear advantage being on home turf but, national riders being what they are, everyone else was soon up to speed.

The race began under overcast skies and I fluffed the start and had to fight my way back through traffic to get up with the lead pack of 600s. It seemed that just after I had made the last desperate braking pass on the last 750 holding me up the red flag would come out and I would need to repeat the whole exercise again. I sort of lost track but there must have been four or five red flags caused by either crashes or rain on the paint, or sometimes both. One of the crashes removed two obstacles between us and the podium, Arclight and local hero Glenn Szarek.

Sam stuck in traffic after the 437^th restart. P-Eurotech

My thousands of laps around Summit did pay dividends in that it was the first time I actually got to run and dice with the front running middleweight superbikes. After the first three hours of the race (which maybe had 80 minutes of racing) I was seconds behind Ten-40 and Tapeworks, and well ahead of Sharkskinz and Cycle Speed. Tapeworks pitted for fuel when the last red flag came out with forty minutes left in the race.

Through unlucky timing Tapeworks lost a lap leaving just Ten-40 and us on the lead MWSB lap. We would both have to pit shortly for fuel. It seemed that the race was going to be settled with dump cans not throttles.

Jim took our Suzuki out to the line as we prepared ourselves for the fastest fuel stop we could. Three laps after restart Ten-40 pitted for fuel and retook the track 40 seconds behind Jim. We kept Jim out as long as we could thinking that another red flag which might end the race would hand us our first win without having to fight for it. This time the rain stayed in the sky and with twenty minutes left in the race Jim signaled he needed fuel.

Hours of Tim's fabrication time was amortized with an eleven second fuel stop and Jim retaking the track with a 24 second lead. 24 seconds ain't much if you get a flat tire, blow an ignition fuse or run off the track, however, 24 seconds is an eternity if you are in second place.

And so, after three years of trying, we finally won one.

It’s all down hill from here.