This article originally appeared in Roadracing World in February of 1996.

The Story of the 1995 Army Of Darkness Sprint Campaign

After last year's frolicking adventures on the national endurance circuit the time came to plan out the 1995 season. Army Of Darkness committee leaders were called into meeting and were asked to report on their various departments.

Chairperson - "Finance, how much money do we have?"

CFO- "Are the numbers in red really negative?"

Chairperson - "I guess that rules out endurance racing. Engineering, what else can we do with a garage full of obsolete FZR parts besides be a rolling chicane for Marten and Frankenfield?"

Engineering - "Build a lightweight superbike which exploits the CCS 585cc limit so we have twenty more horsepower than any other FZR 400 on the track."

(stunned silence)

Chairperson - "Wouldn't it be easier to just buy trophies?"

Engineering - "Don't be so goal oriented. It is the process of racing we enjoy. The people we meet, the long van drives, the cognitive exercise involved in trying to improve on Japanese R & D. We need the contrived adventure that is motorcycle racing to alleviate the ennui of life in a post industrial society. The trophies are simply the physical manifestation of the ethereal concept of striving and success."

Chairperson - "Oh yeah, that's right."

The meeting was adjourned and the design team was authorized to proceed, Lightweight Superbike it was.

The spiritual emancipation of superbike racing is freedom of mechanical expression. This gives one infinite possibility to say "That's so trick" which you just don't get to do in supersport racing (unless you're cheating). The disadvantage to racing superbike is that a top notch 600 or 750 superbike is going to run $20,000 to bankruptcy to build and you may have to deal with Andrew Wright or his ilk. The theory this year was to bolt all our favorite parts together into one motorcycle without having to spend much more money. This would result in a long stroke FZR 400 which would ultimately displace 560cc and have a total of about $4,000 in it.
CCS changed the lightweight superbike rules from 1994 to 1995 with the express purpose of outlawing Ron Perry's bike.

His was an FZR 600 motor built into FZR 400 cases with a destroked crank taking displacement down to 583cc. To render such chicanery illegal CCS changed the rule from "Crankcases and frame must be from the same production motorcycle" to "Head, cylinders, crankcases and frame must be from the same production motorcycle." Note that they don't say anything about the crankshaft; we decided for aesthetic reasons to use a Falicon FZR 600 crank. A few calls to CCS confirmed that the "Cylinders" they were discussing were the waterjackets and we could make unlimited modifications to the liners. I probably should have gotten that in writing before committing resources to this project but, in racing, one has to take a few risks.

Tim Gooding, aforementioned engineer, is a twisted pup and his aberrations manifest in such behavior as recreationally studying calculus. That being the case I challenged him to prove to me mathematically that the proposed FZR 560 would actually work with the smaller valves and such of the FZR 400 head. This turned out to be an enlightening process.

Tim licked his pencil and spent the next hour thumbing through our motorhead reference library. Being a professional researcher, Tim started with the most recent publications and worked his way back. As per usual, Phil Irving (whose genius is equaled only by John Britten) in Tuning for Speed (1948), provided the insight we lacked. The revealing paragraph reads "The whole thing is bound up with the matter of mean gas velocity through the choke and induction tract. This velocity is only a theoretical figure as obviously the gas-speed is not constant but is varying throughout the stroke. It is, nevertheless, a handy basis for comparison.". The formula provided is: ((Cylinder Displacement / (Valve size X Lift X Pi X # of Valves)X((RPM/2)/60)))/100.

A cylinder in a four stroke motor has to fill in the amount of time the valve is open while the piston is going from approximately TDC on the exhaust stroke to a little after BDC on the intake stroke. That column of air has to move through the open intake valves which is a set volume as well (pi X lift X valve diameter). Mean gas speed is the velocity the gas must be traveling through the intact tract in order to fill the cylinder in a set amount of time. Time decreases as the rpm increases therefore the gas speed must increase. Gas speed is extremely desirable as it allows packing the cylinder full of more intake charge than the cylinder could otherwise accommodate but there is a maximum speed at which gas can be expected to accelerate up to in a limit amount of time.

I whipped out a notebook computer and set to making a spreadsheet while Tim ferreted out the necessary measurements about various motorcycles. A promethean light filled the room as our efforts came to fruition. All the Japanese firms apparently concur that the maximum gas speed that one can expect a motor to inhale is about 125 decimeters per second. This confirmed all sorts of things we had heard in the past but never quantified. High gas speed is necessary for good cylinder filling but there is an absolute limit as to how fast the gas can actually move, above that point the motor will have decreased cylinder filling. Low lift is good for mid-range (higher gas speed) but you need high lift for top end. Cams set up with lots of lift for top end speed will kill the gas speed in the mid-range and, thus, power. Notice that even with different architecture the same number appears again and again at close to redline.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
	1988	1990	1991	1985	1985	1984	1988	1988	1990	1990
INPUT:	FZR 400	FZR 600	CBR 600	FZ 750	ZX 600	FZ 600	FZR 400	FZR 400	FZR 560	FZR 560
Bore (in mm)	56	59	65	68	60	58.5	57	57	57	57
Stroke (in mm)	40.5	54.8	45.2	51.6	52.4	55.7	40.5	40.5	54.8	54.8
Lift (in mm)	7.5	7.75	8.1	7.5	8.3	8.2	8.51	7.75	7.5	7.75
Valve size (in mm)	22	24	25.5	21	21.5	31.5	22	22	22	22
# of Valves	2	2	2	3	2	1	2	2	2	2
Redline	15,500	12,000	13,300	11,000	11,500	10,500	15,500	15,500	12,000	12,000
Target Peak Power RPM	14,000	11,700	13,000	10,000	11,000	10,000	14,000	14,000	11,500	11,500
Calculated:
Displacement	399	599	600	750	593	599	413	413	559	559
Piston Speed(m/m)	1255.5	1315.2	1202.32	1135.2	1205.2	1169.7	1255.5	1255.5	1315.2	1315.2
Piston RPM limit	16,933	12,515	15,173	13,291	13,088	12,312	16,933	16,933	12,515	12,515
Gas Speed @ Redline	124	128	128	116	127	161	113	125	135	131
Gas Speed @ Target RPM	112	125	125	105	121	154	102	113	129	125
Gas Speed At RPM (Power flattens at 125dm per sec.)
RPM
1000	8	11	10	11	11	15	7	8	11	11
1500	12	16	14	16	17	23	11	12	17	16
2000	16	21	19	21	22	31	15	16	22	22
2500	20	27	24	26	28	38	18	20	28	27
3000	24	32	29	32	33	46	22	24	34	33
3500	28	37	34	37	39	54	26	28	39	38
4000	32	43	39	42	44	61	29	32	45	44
4500	36	48	43	47	50	69	33	36	51	49
5000	40	53	48	53	55	77	37	40	56	54
5500	44	59	53	58	61	85	40	44	62	60
6000	48	64	58	63	66	92	44	48	67	65
6500	52	69	63	68	72	100	48	52	73	71
7000	56	75	67	74	77	108	51	56	79	76
7500	60	80	72	79	83	115	55	60	84	82
8000	64	85	77	84	88	123	59	64	90	87
8500	68	91	82	89	94	131	62	68	96	92
9000	72	96	87	95	99	138	66	72	101	98
9500	76	101	91	100	105	146	70	76	107	103
10000	80	107	96	105	110	154	73	80	112	109
10500	84	112	101	110	116	161	77	84	118	114
11000	88	118	106	116	121	169	81	88	124	120
11500	92	123	111	121	127	177	84	92	129	125
12000	96	128	116	126	132	184	88	96	135	131
12500	100	134	120	132	138	192	92	100	141	136
13000	104	139	125	137	143	200	95	105	146	141
13500	108	144	130	142	149	208	99	109	152	147
14000	112	150	135	147	154	215	102	113	157	152
14500	116	155	140	153	160	223	106	117	163	158
15000	120	160	144	158	165	231	110	121	169	163
15500	124	166	149	163	171	238	113	125	174	169
16000	128	171	154	168	176	246	117	129	180	174
Army Of Darkness - Ministry of Research

In the first column we looked at my venerable FZR 400. Its redline is something like 14,000 but the revlimiter doesn't kick in until 15,500 and I take that as a license. At 15,500 rpm the mean gas speed across the valves is 124 dm per sec. The second column is a stock FZR 600. The magic number of 125 pops up just before redline. Same goes for the CBR 600 and the ZX 600. The two valve FZ 600's numbers in column six illustrate why multivalve heads where introduced; the two valver has a very sharp slope in its gas speed and will run out of steam comparatively quickly

Tim's old FZ 750 is apparently set up to run to 13,000 rpm with the stock cams. Various British tuners have suggested that FZ 750 runs better on the street if the valve clearances are set a little loose. This would, in effect, reduce the lift of the cams and allow greater gas speed at lower RPMs making for better wheelies.

Another 400 racer in our region told me his bike had very extreme power delivery. Further exploration determined that the Megacycle cams he was using with his 1 mm over bore had 8.51mm of lift, which would, according to our calculations give the bike maximum power 1000 rpm past where the rev limiter kicks in (column 7). My program suggested something a little more moderate at 7.75mm (column 8). His response was confidence inspiring "That's the formula III kit cam from Yamaha." It would appear that Yamaha has a higher budget for cam design that transmission assembly.

Following our own advice we realized that we would need to run higher lift cams than the stock 400 (column 9) but, being cheap bastards, we just cut away enough of the 400 head to make 600 cams fit. These are not quite ideal (column 10) but it beats the hell out of spending another $400. We are trying to figure out how to machine cams ourselves and will probably have hosts of bent valves and shattered springs once we figure it out.

In order to make a large displacement lightweight we did an organ transplant from the Army Of Darkness endurance motor (the Falicon crank and extra heavy duty Performance Development Inc. (PDI) transmission) into a set of FZR 400 crankcases. We converted the FZR 400 cases to FZR 600 spec by removing the oil restrictors from under the main bearing (you know, the ones that back off and destroy #2 conrod bearings (see below) and added oil jets to spray 15W-50 on the bottom of the pistons. We really had no way of knowing whether this was prudent or not but we did get to say "That's so trick."

Picture shows Falicon lightened crank (installed) versus stock crank (on bench) oil jet (on bench) and machined oil jet hole are visible as is blank off fitting for starter motor clutch (Sam Fleming)

Now we functionally had an FZR 600 bottom end bolted together into black cases (FZR 400) instead of silver (FZR 600) cases. The next step was the cylinder liners. The theory was to replace the stock liners in the FZR 400 waterjacket with ones of similar dimensions, except longer to accommodate the stroke of the 600 crank. LA Sleeve were kind enough to provide the specs they use for replacement liners for the 400 and the 600. They, regrettably, were not able to actually machine the liners for us in a timely fashion being backed up for three months.

Boldly, I ordered the raw casting and committed Tim and our fearless machinist mentor, Performance Development proprietor Jeff Manuel (301) 776-2271, to machining the liners.
Having no experience whatsoever with cylinder liners did not deter them from entering into the valley of evil. Tim took the waterjackets to work, heated them up in the Smithsonian Racing oven and, 45 minutes later, the stock liners fell out of the waterjackets. We wanted to end up with a 3mm liner thickness (stock is 2.5mm) after we had fitted 1mm overbored pistons (57mm instead of 56mm). In order to do this Jeff and Tim had to machine the waterjacket holes larger to accommodate the oversized liners. LA Sleeve says .004" interference fit (the liners are bigger than the holes and must be pressed into place) and we are certainly in no place to argue with them.

It can not be overstated how convenient it is to have access to a fully equipped machine shop and a machinist who is, not only working for free, but a motorhead to boot. Granted, he would have been a lot happier if we were building an F1 motor or something weird for a Lotus race car from the 60's but he is coming to appreciate the beauty of racing motorcycles. His shop is unique in its capacity to turn out one off bits on sophisticated equipment.
Jeff hard at work doing technical CAD programming (Tim Gooding)

Machining is a tedious process akin to bonsai gardening. It is incredibly easy to botch hours of work with one misstep and measuring to .001" is enough to make your eyes ache and your nose sweat. Jeff, who last year learned more than he ever cared to know about fortifying FZR 600 transmissions for the Army Of Darkness endurance engine, has got all the large (read:expensive) toys for removing long curly strands of metal from bigger pieces of metal. My favorite is the optically mapped mill bed. This is like having a CD unwrapped into a long strand and having one strand be the X-axis, another be the Y-axis and a third be the Z-axis. The head of the mill has an optic reader which can determine, from reading the data off the various digital axis, exactly where it is currently. This makes going from one hole to another of a cylinder or a spacer plate extremely accurate. It also has a little bit of memory so one can program cuts which need to be made and let the machine toil away while the operator drinks Dr Pepper. It's actually not that trick in the world of machining but Tim and I are approaching this from a file and hacksaw frame of reference so a ruler seems pretty precise.

Tim and Jeff machined the waterjacket holes to accommodate the larger liners. This also cleaned all the icky burned on coolant and oil which had been cooking between the liners and the waterjackets for however many miles. The ungainly piece of corroded sewer pipe which passes for liner raw material was chucked into a lathe and turned down, cut to length, tapered at the skirt and sized at the flange. The inside diameter was left small and would not be bored until the liners were in the waterjackets.

Raw liner material, partially finished liner, stock liner in front of lathe at PDI (Tim Gooding)

Timmy, thinking that installing the new liners would be as facile as removing the old liners, cheerfully placed the waterjackets in the oven and the liners in the freezer and waited. After 60 minutes he pulled out the waterjackets and attempted to drop the liners in only to find that Yamaha thinks that a .001" to .002" interference fit is fine and .004" is bloody well tight. This called for ugly measures such as 20 ton presses and finally liquid nitrogen. Kids, don't try this at home.

Jeff bored the liners to match each piston and set to work building a spacer plate to move the head far enough away from the case so as not to force a piston through Tim's careful port work. The spacer plate is designed to go between the cases and the cylinder block. The liners extend through it and into the cases. It is located by the roll pins which originally lined up the cylinders with the cases and the head although Jeff tightened up the clearances so the locating pins fit tighter.

The plate is made of 6061-T6 alloy. Jeff clamped a chunk of it into his mill and went to town. All the holes for the case bolts, the roll pins and the liners had to be within .001" spec of where they should be. Using the optic mapped bed Jeff could pick three reference points and use the digital read out to figure where all holes were in relation to each other. This is onerous, exacting and what machinists live for. Jeff, having better things to do than shave aluminum for us all day had Tim cut out the center for the cam chain tunnel but he insisted on delicately sculpting the outside contours to match the cases and waterjackets and thus cutting down on prying eyes. We were constantly amazed throughout the season how few people noticed the spacer plate, its not like we had lowers on or anything.

A big determinant is how thick to make the spacer plate. Too thick and the compression ratio will be too low as well as exacerbating an already painfully large squish band. Too small and the compression ratio will rival a diesel. The height has to be longer than the stroke to reduce the compression ratio which would result from compressing 140cc of mixture into a compression chamber meant for 100cc. I was just going to back into it using math and the compression ratios published in the manual but Tim cautioned against it.

Roebling Road

At about this time the first race of the year rolled around. That stupid February race at Roebling Road where it rains or snows and everyone has a miserable time but CCS keeps scheduling it anyway. Grr. Obviously our project bike was nowhere near completion so I hurriedly prepped my trusty old 63bhp FZR400 and we (Amy Pickering, Tim and myself) set off south. The bike was still wearing tires from last year and I couldn't figure out which of the following was causing my slow lap times:

1. I'm a sissy and have become more of a sissy over the winter.

2. The track temperature was 45 degrees and damp in parts.

3. The tires were spent and only $300 for new slicks was going to help.

My pit crew kindly convinced me that tires were the only answer so an hour before the first race Amy absconded with my wheels and brought them back mounted with Dunlop slicks. My procrastination in accepting the inevitable and buying the tires placed me in the tenuous position of starting a race with unscrubbed tires, and radials to boot when most of my slick experience was bias ply.

The end of the third lap saw me with clean, hot sticky tires, lap times which were seven seconds faster than my previous practice times and in eighth place. I mounted a five lap charge in an attempt to salvage the weekend and slowly picked off the widely spaced riders in front of me. I was passing them at the rate of one a lap and slowly catching up to fourth place Ian Lineburger. I was 80 yards behind him at the start of the eighth lap on the front straight, held my breath and my braking and closed it to 50 into turn one. Sucked it in and threw it left into fast, ripply three and closed it to 30. Gambled that I wouldn't hit any of the Dean Middleton memorial potholes in four and closed it to 20. Chickened out in the corner where I watched Ernie Thiel break his back in '92 and it increased to 25. Set up for six and two back markers held us up but him more than me, 10 yards. It was all going to come down to turn nine, fifth gear, bump-at-the-exit turn nine. Charge too early and you'll have to back off before the exit, start your pass too late and you'll never make it before the short run to the finish line is over. For the first time in my racing career I timed it right. I think to both of our amazement I painfully crept by to steal fourth by a foot, perhaps nine inches. This proved that new tires are better than fast motors but, of course, an extra half a horsepower doesn't hurt. (Note, I sold the bike upon my return and the crank broke on its third lap of practice of its next outing. Go figure.)

Back to the Grind

Returning to the garage with renewed vigor Tim broke out his burette and a bottle of alcohol and set to measuring the combustion chamber volume with a too thick spacer plate installed. After determining the combustion chamber volume and a current compression ratio of 7:1 (due to the thick plate) he calculated how much to skim the plate to make the compression ratio 12:1. At first we had talked big about 13.5:1 but decided to leave a little room for decking surfaces if we warped the head. At this point we knew that our squish band is larger than optimum but we weren't going to do anything about it.

Liners installed in waterjackets & spacer plate (Amy Pickering)

Everything then went according to plan until it came time to test fit the pistons onto the con-rods. The piston to wrist pin clearance was fine but the small end bushing to wrist pin clearance was .5mm, a couple of orders of magnitude off. Seems that the 600 uses 16mm wrist pins and the 400 uses 15mm. Some would suggest that we should have checked that before we started on this project, well...they'd have a good point wouldn't they?

This meant that Jeff and Tim would have to hone the wrist pin holes bigger, with no error and perfectly straight, then cut new grooves for the circlips. Another two weeks, and a few ruined stomach linings later, the pistons were finished and the engine was ready to assemble.
Bolting it up took all of 24 hours and included all our tricks like flex honing the bores and assembling the pistons dry. Tim had previously ported the head (He switched from J-B weld to Dev-con aluminum epoxy. The guy at Dev-con he talked to had been working there since the fifties and said "You want that stuff that we don't recommend be used in valve heads, but everybody does anyway?") and lapped in all the valves. In order to fit the 600 manifolds we intended to use, Tim raised the roof of the intake port to take advantage of the larger manifold opening and straighten the path from the carbs to the valves. Based on some article or another Timmy doused the cams and cam journals with a fine diamond grinding paste and lapped the cams into the head for less frictional losses.

It doesn't look like fifty hours, but it is. (Sam Fleming)

Our 560 motor is slightly taller than a stock 600 so the cam chain was too short. To get the cams into the motor involved removing the gears and then trying to gently slip them back on with the chain installed and the cams bolted down. It all just barely fit and even then both cams were advanced 8 degrees. We were 10 days away from our next race so it was deemed to be close enough. Being a cheap git I used the CV FZR 600 carbs off last year's bike.

We slapped the rest of the bike together including our GSXR-1100 radiator and an oil pressure gauge (to make sure the holes we drilled in the oil galley weren't sapping too much of its precious bodily fluids) test fired it and then registered for some time on the Battley Cycle dyno. They have a $35,000 soundproof dyno room with separate air vents and a sunken dyno. Battley cycle (301) 948-4581 (don't be alarmed if someone answers the phone "Harley-Davidson", just politely ask for Steve) has got its fair share of racers on staff and are, therefore, a joy with which to work. Steve Ward (parts) is the '94 national WERA novice Clubman champ, Devin Battley (the owner) can oft be seen in local, as well as national, events campaigning his fleet of race bikes, and Chris Sanders, (shop foreman) has been known to give the guys at Dynojet tuning hints. Given this I was a little anxious since I could imagine splattering our Falicon rods all over the sound proofed room but if this motor was going to let go I'd rather do it sitting still than at 140 mph.

Less than 24 hours after the bike was assembled and 9 days before the second race of the season, we strapped our own little grenade into the dyno, pulled the pin, counted to three and pushed the starter button.

Everything sounded okay, oil pressure was high, no leaks and the second breather in the valve cover was happily exhaling vapor. All was as it should be. Chris, the dyno dude, slipped it into gear and started to wind it up. Discretion being the better part of valor we ran it for twenty minutes to break it in a little before running the first test.

Curiosity soon got the better of us and Chris pushed the sample button and wrung the bike's little chicken neck. The first test revealed severe carburetion problems, cams advanced too far and: 80 bhp.

"What did you say you were going to be racing this against?" inquired Chris wearily.

Subsequent runs improved peak to 84bhp with fairly sloppy delivery although a big curve from 8,000 up to 12,000. The small valves in the 400 head flattened off the power at 11,000. Our slides were opening too slowly and the emulsion tubes we were using, modified for our 620, were way too rich for this little puppy. The dyno runs suggested there were major improvements to be made through carb work; unfortunately not before Talladega. We over-retarded the cams by a bit and headed south.

Talladega

We drove the 900 miles from D.C. to Talladega where the attendance was very light. I commented to Bob Applegate that Alabama was by no stretch of the imagination a Mid-Atlantic state to which he responded "What's your point?". I think I smell Edmonson somewhere.

We didn't have alot of experience with Dunlop slicks so we were at a bit of a loss for what tire pressures would be proper to run in the drizzle. Practice espionage revealed one rider who was making us particularly nervous by dragging his knee on DOT tires through puddles on what appeared to be a stock Hawk.

I started the GTU in the rain with the slicks and ended up pulling off after 18 laps, although finishing fourth through attrition. As some sort of irony the skies cleared at the end of the solo endurance events and a late afternoon practice was begun on a dry hot track.

This was our first chance to use the pooch in anger. The carburetion wasn't quite right but the handling was good and the motor was, uh, real strong. A couple of angry F2 riders came over to stare at the bike later and there was a slightly miffed ZX-7 rider trying to figure out why he couldn't catch a 400 on the short straights. We clocked a couple of low 1:04s and figured that would put us in the hunt for Sunday since the supersport 400 had been turning 1:08.

It was pouring down rain on Sunday as we joylessly made our way through the paddock. There was not a set of rains to be had for our TZ sized rims but Walt Schaefer gamely hand cut us a set of Michelin intermediates. My confidence was real low as I tenuously made my way around the puddled track in practice. I slowly lowered my lap times but not enough to prevent being lapped about every three seconds by Chris Steele on that stock, white Hawk. My blotchy carburetion made the rain that much more treacherous.

As luck would have it, the thunderstorms stopped and a black squall line passed overhead revealing clear blue sky. A desperate pulling of rims saw us ready to start the superbike race with slicks back on the bike, gridded right next to: THE HAWK.

Flag drops, I bog, everyone is gone. Three laps later I'm in second place, the Hawk about an hour ahead and third place pretty far back. I figure that is how the race is going to go when the red flag comes out. A novice has tossed it and the race will be restarted.

This time I am determined to stay with the Hawk right out of the gate. The flag twitches and the front row wheelies towards turn one. I'm first into the turn but another 400 comes by me on the right and the Hawk rides around the both of us on the outside. Has this man no fear? I know from the first half of the event that there is no time to spare dicing for second and I quickly move back past the 400 and start to run down the Hawk. I don't think he was looking for me as I went by on the brakes two laps later. I think he took it personally and from that point on it was hammer and tongs. He was trying to pass on the outside of most turns so I started exiting wide. In long right hand turn one Chris pressed his front wheel against my left leg and broke the choke lever off the side of my bike. My crew spoke later of the lurid slides being consistently saved by this determined competitor. The white flag warned me that THE MOVE was coming soon. It came up the inside of the third to last turn, a long cambered right hander. I looked down helplessly to my right as the white fender turned into a white gas tank and finally a rear wheel. Fortunately the inside pass cost him drive on the next straight and I was able to twist my grip further than he could twist his and took the win. We were about 20 seconds up on third place.
More angry people came over to stare at the bike.

Summit Point

The owner of Summit Point has a novel way of maintaining the race track. After replacing a few sections of raingrooved and rippled pavement with smooth sticky asphalt, he had it coated with sealer to keep the cars from tearing it up. The black sealer would get soft in the sun so, in a moment of particularly clouded thinking, he decided to paint it all white. The painted, sealed sections have the frictional coefficient of ice; the corner workers come out between practice sessions with a Zamboni to resurface it. The line, previously 3 feet wide, is now 18 inches wide. Some glassy-eyed Dianetics disciples would tell you 18 inches is all you need but it makes passing a little complicated as two bikes try to occupy the same space at the same time.
The local 400 hero at Summit is Brian Kcraget. Brian wears out the letters on the sides of tires. Brian does not spin the rear at the exit because he doesn't slow down at the entrance. I was fairly confident that Brian was going to kick my butt.

To at least make it sporting for him, I dead revved the bike to 10,000 rpm at the start and got the hole shot. Brian was four feet behind me going through turn 10. I would stretch that into yards on the straights and he would convert it to inches when I reached what I think of as brake markers and he thinks of as upshift points. The leads I could pull on the fast bits prevented him from getting by at the entrances of turns, until the fourth lap. A backmarker forced me to brake a shade earlier for the tight turn five and Brian used us both as a turn in point. Once we started working our way through traffic our lap times changed a second, he sped up, I slowed down. Settled for second.

Roebling Road

We had switched to Michelins for the Summit race and had noticed no wear on them. That is to be expected at Slummit but Roebling is a different case altogether. Forget Daytona, Roebling is the place for destruction testing tires. We shredded the Dunlops we had with us on Saturday during practice and put the Michelins on for the races on Sunday. Tim looked a little bored on Saturday so I asked him to change the jetting about five times. We ended up back where we started. Also, we thought our GSXR-1100 radiator was proving to be no match for the ninety degree weather and the bike could only run for about eight laps before puking all its water into the series of catch bottles we had arranged for it. We suspected something mechanical but just kept putting the water back in the bike after every track outing. My previous best at Roebling was something like 1:24.50 and I ran a few 1:23's in practice although the #2 Lightweight Supersport bike was turning comparable times. As a precaution I stripped the clutch and oiled each plate to try to get a good start.

It worked.

Holeshot, 1:22.12, no one around at all. Started to slow down so as not to throw away the lead and then got even more lazy around back markers and dropped to 1:25. Lazy enough so that I let a novice pull the same move on me which I pulled on Ian in February. Sloppy, sloppy racing and even though I won the expert field, Tim and Amy were not amused. As penance I had to run fast laps for the entire Grand Prix race and promise to never back off again. Even though they were the softest compounds the Michelins held up very well compared to the Dunlops.

Summit Point

Prepping for Summit was much more involved than I prefer; I prefer none and we had copious amounts. In addition to the tedium of charging batteries and such we decided to finally fix the cam timing as well as design, construct and install a transmission and clutch saving cush drive in the Performance Machine rear rim. We ripped off Team Suzuki Endurance a fair amount for our cush drive ideas and used TZ250 sprocket bumpers and we recycled the aluminum casing for an old radio as raw material. Our cush drive has an electronic schematic on it with a big "10 amp" label.

A review of the literature determined that the previous retarding of the cam timing was probably botching everything completely. We measured the exact amount the cams were off (8 degrees, ouch) and pulled the cam gears to remachine them accordingly. Unfortunately the cutting tools available at our favorite machinist's were not up to the hardened steel cam gears and Tim decided to hand cut them with port grinding tools. This was surprisingly successful and we happily bolted the cams back into place, until that sick feeling crept up in my throat which can only be caused by stripped fasteners as two cam cap bolts declined to tighten. Two days before the race and the motor has to come out for helicoils. This exercise proved to be good practice in field stripping the motor although technically we should have done it in a dark garage.
This at least took some sort of intellectual exercise whereas replacing the pitted, rusting and corroded Frank's fork tubes to try to get fork seals to last more than a weekend was tedium incarnate.

All of which was a harbinger of the fun filled weekend in store for us. To our delight Brian Kcraget had gone off to dominate a WERA race this weekend leaving us with only ourselves and our bike with which to contend. Practice started well enough with a few laps in the 1:26 range but the GTU was a disaster when the engine lost the capacity to exchange heat efficiently with the atmosphere as the radiator disgorged its contents unceremoniously through the catch bottle and onto the rear wheel. I didn't crash but I had to retire on the fifteenth lap. Obviously the overheating problem from Roebling Road had not fixed itself.

Tim and I exchanged nervous glances and tried to soothe each other's shattered nerves while coming up with one hare brained scheme after another trying to figure out the why, how and what we could do in one night and a few hours to remedy the situation. When no intelligent course of action manifested we good naturedly filled the radiator with water and went to sleep.
Sunday's practice saw that the nights rest had not done anything for our overheating motorcycle which, as near as we could tell, was pumping out all the water and then overheating. It was now at the point where it could only run eight laps but, of course, the race is only eight laps. With an hour to the start of the race we still had no idea why the bike was doing this. Brian Woods, a British doctoral student living with us at the time, observed that we had apparently not owned imperial motor vehicles because what we were obviously suffering from was a blown head gasket.

Oh.

Brian and Tim discuss the finer points of British engineering. (Amy Pickering)

With no time for head pulling we decided to use thermal mass and iced the entire motor down and use the cases as a heat sink. We opted to skip the warm up lap to buy us a little more time of running the motor and rolled the bike out to the starting grid. The grid marshall gave me an odd look as I pulled an errant ice cube from behind the motor and threw it into the grass but desperate times call for desperate measures.

This doesn't really work. (Amy Pickering)

In a bid to defeat the Yamaha's impossibly grabby clutch I had taken the precaution of manually oiling it before the start. This worked very well and I was busy congratulating myself on my hole shot in turn one when the red flags came out at turn two. My heart sunk as I thought of all of our precooling going to waste and my radiator water being forced out into the series of catch bottles we had arranged for its inevitable arrival.

The red flag was caused by one expert wheeling into another on the starting grid and it was a little odd to wend my way through all the patiently waiting novices to take my position for the restart.

The second start went as well as the first and after three laps my pit board read "+6" so I started short shifting and such to try to conserve my ailing motor. I took the checkered and pulled into the pits just as the temperature gauge maxed out into the red.

Road Atlanta

The best aspect of the engine tear down and rebuild was that Amy and I had to go rock climbing in Utah for the two weeks between Summit Point and Road Atlanta which meant that Tim....heh heh...actually had to do it all.

While Tim rebuilds Amy and Sam play.

And rebuild he did. It turns out that one of our lovingly crafted cylinder liners had moved just enough to take some pressure off the gasket which obligingly blew. Tim decked the cylinder block and head, replaced the head gasket and was torquing the bolts on the cams when I arrived back from Salt Lake City.

We were cautiously optimistic going into this race, until we saw Brian Kcraget had come down as well, as had Chris Steele and then our bike starting running funny (as in peculiar, not hah-hah). The first time it was a loose battery cable, the second time it was a bad plug lead. After we had exorcised the spirit of Joe Lucas (the prince of darkness after all), and for perhaps the first time all season, the bike ran well. I hit 1:35 in the GTU and the temperature gauge never read higher than a third up the scale.

Turn seven at Road A.

Sunday was dry but, as this was Georgia, threatened rain. The superbike race went off at noon and it was a run away. I led from turn six and won by 6 seconds doing 1:36s. Then the clouds rolled in and sporadic rain started to fall for the GP race. We hurriedly put on our intermediate rains and went out for a warm up lap with the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

Unfortunately the track was perfectly dry from turn 2 through the dip and soaked from the bridge through turn one. Grr. My intermediates where not happy on the dry pavement and were squirming badly through the esses and the fast uphill turn five. Braking was even worse as the tread blocks moved around. Riding on slicks all year has made me pretty soft I thought as Chris Steele and Rick Beggs happily passed me through the turns. But superbike motors do have their place when racing against supersport Hawks and FZRs on a horsepower track such as Road A so I was able to put my, uh, straight line skills to work and retake positions as they were usurped from me. I finished first diesel again.

Summit Point

Finally a race where we felt that the bike had reached a level of stability (in terms of entropy) where another variable could be introduced. With that in mind we happily removed the starter motor clutch, the starter motor gears and the starter motor. The starter motor clutch has a bushing which is fed by the crankshaft oil. The very same oil which goes into the con rod bearings and main bearings. We were a little concerned that removing the bushing, and thus uncovering the oil hole in the crank entirely, may result in a catastrophic loss of lubrication to the journals. Tim lovingly machined a hand lapped aluminum piece which we could bolt on instead of the starter clutch which, hopefully, would keep the oil pressure high through the rest of the crank.

After four weekends the tires were beginning to look a little thin in parts so we sprung for another set of Michelin slicks and replaced the rather shagged chain and front sprocket as well. We loath maintenance but it seemed prudent.

We were feeling confidant as rumor had it that Brian Kcraget was going to Indianapolis that weekend to secure his lead in the points in WERA's D superbike thus leaving an open track for us in West Virginia. It was to my dismay on Saturday morning that I realized one could travel to Indy, crash, win a race, and then drive to Summit Point in time for the CCS events on Saturday. I discovered this fact through the appearance of Mr. Kcraget in the registration line. Although he had not mounted much of a challenge at Road Atlanta we knew that Summit was Brian's alma mater.

"All bets are off for Sunday." said I to Tim.

The bike, however, was running incredibly strong. And the entire weekend we would not have to remove a single piece of bodywork for repairs. I think we adjusted the new chain once.
It would be very difficult to quantify the newly freed watts from removing the starter motor but as I adapted my lines to the ever eroding track surface that is Summit Point I dropped my lap times into uncharted territory for us. The last weekend here I was happy with 1:26s in the race, I was now turning 1:25s in practice. Brian began to act a little dejected but I was not able to believe that after losing to him for four years the trend would be reversed this day.

We had a large turnout of friends, family and sponsors for the weekend and, fortunately, did not disappoint. By manually oiling the temperamental clutch plates just before the superbike race I was able to grab the holeshot. Remembering Brian catching me in traffic from our last contest at Summit I put my head down with determination and ran as fast as I could. My pit board lags behind one lap and so it wasn't until the third lap that I had an indication of how fast I was going but 1:25 +4 helped to soothe my nerves. The next lap was 1:25 +5 and I started thinking about all the random events which could catch up to me in the next four laps. Lap 7's board read 1:26 +7 and I caught sight of a badly smoking back marker entering turn one. Having crashed on last laps of other races I was being very cautious until I determined that the smoke was originating in the exhaust pipes of a wounded Kawasaki and not a holed motor. First place. It was a bit of a pyrrhic victory as I was cognizant of my surfeit horsepower and Brian being tired and sore but I guess history rarely qualifies results.

I spent the next half hour defensively explaining to the multitude of well wishers the difference between a superbike race and a grand prix race and that I could not win the next race and that anything that sounded like a weed wacker in front of me was uncatchable and they shouldn't think less of me for it and that racing didn't actually determine whether I was a good person or not and they should judge me more for my multi-faceted personality and not just my cornering speeds, etc etc.

A freshly oiled clutch saw me off and into turn one as the TZ 250 ridden by my friend and compatriot Joe Wootton bogged off the line. I started to think about what could be but on lap four my pit board said 1:25 +0 and I turned and gave Joe, who was right on my butt, a little wave. He took this as an invitation and walked by me into turn one.

Usually I would have just let him go but the weekend had been going so well and I was flushed with the unbearable lightness so I tempted the high side and tried to stay with him. Next lap's board read 1:24 -1. "That's pretty much it then" and I was about to back off when visions of backmarkers played through my head like so many random events just waiting to happen; the throttle stayed open. Joe slowly built up a two second lead which evaporated in an instant when he was balked by traffic in the crucial and fast turn ten. The weed wacker dropped out of the power band and Joe had a bit of a problem trying to get it to down shift. Having a clear track through the crucial turn ten I relished my good fortune as I went by him on the straight to take the white flag.

A veritable obstacle course of back markers stretched out in front of me and I briefly thought of running through a classroom throwing chairs in my wake to obstruct pursuit (not that I was a smartass in school or anything) and became less cautious in my passes. Joe, of course, was doing even less prudent moves to stay with me. I'd go by a novice on the inside, he'd go by on the outside. In turn four he was fifteen feet off my rear wheel and another backmarker was in our way for the narrow,slow and treacherous turn five. I took the inside line and he tried to take the notoriously slick outside line. He lost precious feet, but not second place, when he lost traction and had to straightened up to moto the turn. Seeing me in first place often during the race, one slightly confused friend inquired to my pit crew "When is he going to lose? He told me he was going to lose." It's not bad being wrong once in awhile.

Road Atlanta

Unfortunately sometimes paid work interferes with unpaid work. In this case Tim went to Copenhagen to research a hydrogen fusion meteorite preserver (no, really) he was being paid to build instead of going to Road Atlanta to babysit a motor he wasn't paid to build.

This caused me some consternation as Amy, my other usual pit crew member, decided to go to a wedding party instead of driving the van 600 miles. I was able to recruit star 1994 Army of Darkness endurance rider John Donnelly to make the trip and quickly handed off the wheel of the van in southern Virginia at midnight on Friday and went to sleep.

Due to Tim's absence it was very convenient that nothing bad happened to the motor and it ran fast and strong. It was fast enough in the GTU race to pass some G00F2s on the back straight and clocked a few 1:33s. Finishing the GTU in eleventh I gleefully pulled into the pits and subsequently ran over an errant bolt which totalled my virtually new Michelin rear slick.
Seeing how there were no vendors at the race that weekend (something about the track soaking them for extra fees which, rumor has it, were waived for the NASB event later in the season) I had to bum a used Dunlop off my rival of last weekend Joe Wootton. I suppose the fact that he lent me a tire bespoke of his confidence in the Grand Prix race results. His confidence was not misplaced as I saw hide nor hair during the last four laps.

To commence the Superbike race I pulled a long and high wheelie up to turn one and then carefully tried out the Michelin front / Dunlop rear combination on the bike. I never got back down to the 1:33 pace of the day before but passed the two bikes which beat me into turn one by turn six and then stretched out a 15 second lead by the checkered. Not exactly a great spectator race but John didn't seem to mind.

Summit Point

Thankfully someone at CCS checked an atlas and realized that Alabama is not even remotely close to being a Mid-Atlantic state and they canceled our scheduled race at that lovely location. They wheedled their way into a vintage weekend at Summit Point which meant a shortened schedule for everyone. Not that Edmonson prorated the entrance fees to reflect the lower overhead by sharing the weekend with another organization or anything. I suppose it costs a fair amount to outfit that motorhome even at J.C. Whitney prices.

Despite the three-quarter length races the weekend was made worthwhile by the appearance of the vintage side car racers and their antics. I haven't seen anyone go into Summit's turn four three abreast and even Szarek and Atwell can't drag their helmets on the ground without it adversely affecting their results.

The revised schedule saw me running my Lightweight Superbike race and the GTU consecutively. We filled up our quick dump can and rolled up to the grid.
Fortunately the Superbike race was rather uneventful as I set a pace of 1:25 from flag to flag and no one else could match the times giving us our seventh class win of the year. The GTU was a different matter. I became involved in a five bike battle for fourth against a gaggle of 600s which dragged my pace down to 1:24. Eventually everyone got by me as I had no answer for the immediate off the corner torque but I did set a personal best of 1:23:33 on the last lap of the race.

This weekend also gave us our first sprint mechanical DNF of all time. The FZR motor has a solid (and brittle) metal oil line running from the main oil galley up the front of the motor to the head. Since our head is a little further up than most the oil line must have been a little stressed and chose the fourth lap of the Grand Prix race to let go. The oil hit the hot pipe and started smoking on the front straight and apparently looked fairly dramatic although reports of the motor blowing up were premature. I was blissfully ignorant of my errant lubrication and thought for a moment that it was an aesthetic critique when the corner workers pointed their "your bike is debris" flags at me.

Road Atlanta

This was the last weekend of the season for the Mid-Atlantic region. I had a large enough spread in the point in both Lightweight Grand Prix and Lightweight Superbike that I could have skipped the weekend. However, we are going to be rejoining the WERA National Endurance circuit next year and will have scant opportunity to lead, much less win, any races so I figured I should go to every venue I could before the season ended.

CCS had combined this weekend with NASB. You'd think that since the promoters were combining the schedule and expecting a high spectator turn out that they could at least keep the ticket price constant if not drop it a bit. No way. I guess they needed gas money for the Edmondmobile so they jacked up the ticket prices 75% to $35. I think I'm on the wrong side of this arrangement.

Road Atlanta started auspiciously enough for us by breaking the oil line I had borrowed from Joe Slocum in the first practice of the day. A frantic search through the pits yielded a decrepit Yamaha to use as a donor. This impediment scratched any more practice but Amy had the bike back together in time for the commencement of the GTU and I was able to use that to get my lap times back down into the low 1:34 range.

Race day dawned dry but threatened rain. I dialed in my lines in practice and switched to my hand cut intermediates when the rain came down for the Grand Prix race. I might as well have stayed on the slicks. The track was cold and the water was preventing my tire from warming at all so I slid around the track for six laps and let everyone beat up on me for a change.

The rain stopped soon after my race and a dry line slowly appeared. Amy hauled the wheels back over to Walt to have the slicks remounted. I was hoping for a dry track for the superbike race as my confidence was very low for another romp in the wet.

The superbike race was the last race of the day and clouds came rolling back in. I nervously suited up way too early for my race and sat at the top of the pit entrance watching the beads of "heavy mist" start to gather on my visor. My heart started to grow heavy. It grew heavier faster when the red flags came out as someone in the race before mine raked in the head angle on his ZX-6R to something like -6 degrees through turn 3. Anguish grew with every drop on my gas tank as the race regridded and I looked down forlornly at my damp slicks.

After what seemed like eternity it was our turn to go out and I pushed the bike a little on the sighting lap to see how slippery the track had become. It wasn't half bad although it seemed unwise to heavily load up the front tire down the hill past three or exiting six. I took a chance on the start and grabbed the holeshot into one. First lap was a 1:35 and I wasn't sliding much although I wasn't sure if the "mist" was getting any thicker or not. I knew that if it started raining proper that Chris Steele and/or Brian Kcraget would be pleased to elucidate on the fast wet line around Road A so I tried to keep my head down and build up a bit of a cushion. I hit a 1:34 on the third lap and felt the bike starting squirm a little more than I was comfortable with under the bridge but my board said +6 so I felt I could ease up just a touch. The rain never got worse and I finished the race with a twelve second lead.

First lap, some think it's wetter than others (Eurotech)

Apparently Tripp Nobles, to whom we had been feeding iced coffee all weekend, was trying to convince the tower announcer (Bob Applegate) to let him commentate a bit during the race. It would seem Tripp historically has a more colorful vocabulary than Dave Sadowski once given access to a public address system, so Bob felt compelled to decline. Of course, Nobles could have commentated in Italian which would cut down on the number offended.
Mr. Applegate

After the race a less than sober fan approached us as we took down the canopy and trailered the bike.

"Who's riding Poison?" he inquired referring to the festive logo adorning our bike.

When it was determined that I was the aforementioned pilot in the last race he pulled a dollar from his pocket and said "I had a bet on you and won two dollars. I'm gonna give you one of them."

He was a little astonished to learn that it was the most money I had won all year.

DAYTONA

This is the big one. We knew from the regional races that we had the fastest 400 in the mid-Atlantic region but we had heard rumors of built bikes converging on Florida from New England, Colorado and beyond. We were a little trepidatious as we loaded up the gear and headed south.

Once we arrived at the track we quickly realized that our Road Atlanta gearing was too short and we dropped another two teeth, roughly 600 rpms. This raised the top speed on the banks but made getting out of the horseshoes a baffling ordeal. The bike still has CV carbs off of a 600 and they do not meter on the needles. We got the times down to 2:11 by the end of the practice on Thursday but felt like there was more to be had.

Friday I decided to replaced the ruins of my rear tire with a fresh slick only to be told by Walt's assistant that there where no rear TZ slicks in the country. Trouble. I went to all the tire vendors and was told the same story. Despair. I was about to head off to the Dunlop tent when I saw Walt Schaefer at his garage. He informed me that he had saved one rear tire for me and I could come get it mounted anytime I wanted. Elation.

Lightweight superbike had become much more competitive than I remembered from two years ago. There were numerous exotica shamelessly displaying their consumption of resources, including three other built 400s. However; we were turning laps a comfortable second or so faster than everyone with whom we were practicing but we never saw one of the front row bikes in practice. Many of the lightweight specials were grenading and it seemed that every few minutes an announcement would be made for someone looking for a crank and rods for an FZR 400. A hot NS 400 broke its crank and Ron Perry's one-off motor holed a piston in practice. I spent the free time on the banks contemplating the state of our custom machined pistons.
I had entered in the GTU and was gridded on the third row out of five hundred or so. I knew it would be a rearward battle but usually racing the 600s drags my times down a bit. This race was no exception and I did a best of 2:08.43 although a fair amount of the credit goes to the ZX-6 that dragged me around the banks.

Upon returning to the paddock my feelings of accomplishment and well being were quickly quenched by the water gushing from the radiator cap. Tim and I looked at each other; Amy started wheeling the bike over to Tripp Nobles' pit and the air compressor which would reveal all. Hooking up the air line to cylinder number two clearly started to force air into the waterjackets so, with only one more day of racing for this motor...it had to come apart that night. Visions of a leisurely sushi dinner evaporated.

American Motorcycle Institute graciously allows hapless Daytona racers with blown head gaskets to utilize their facilities after the track has locked its gates. We arrived at 4:00pm and, since the garages are not available until 5:00pm, we amused ourselves and the Powermist guy by liberating the motor from the frame in the AMI parking lot with the bike still strapped to the trailer. AMI's well lit, well equipped and well staffed garages reduced the epic nature of our predicament considerably.

We had the motor out in thirty minutes, had it stripped down in another thirty and had checked the head and cylinders for warpage by 6:00. Tim carefully cleaned all the old gasket scouge from the head and cylinders while I Sharpied another line to the radiator catch bottle. It now reads "Low", "Full", and "Blown Head Gasket". The mating surface cleaning took about an hour (Tim is meticulous) and we started slapping the motor back together at around 7:30. We had a quick stop for tuna subs to fight the fatigue which was starting to show in many little ways but our spirits were high until I started to torque the cams into place.

The wrench went around but the bolt never tightened. Tim and I exchanged more glances. Back out came the cams and Tim mummied the motor with duct tape to keep all the inevitable metal shavings from getting into the valve train. He dipped the .25 inch drill bit in grease (more metal shavings control efforts) and started to drill. Another forty five minutes later the helicoil was in and assembly could continue. By 11:30 we were putting the last cable tie on and rolling the tool boxes out to the van. As we were leaving I noticed a couple guys with a Hawk motor disassembled but I was too tired to take much notice.

Nine hours later we were back at the track trying to remember what we had forgotten to tighten. We couldn't think of anything so I went out for practice. I took it a little easy in case we had left a torque wrench in one of the cylinders but the bike ran well and the temperature gauge was running cool. The bike was as good as it was going to get.

The bike was gridded on the second row and as I was sitting on the wall waiting to start the race a well intentioned gentleman approached me and pointed at a Hawk on the front row. "Yesterday he won lightweight supertwins and was protested and found legal. Apparently they switched motors last night and its a 650 today. Watch for him." I recognized the bike as the one disassembled at AMI the night before.

The board went sideways and we all launched into turn one. I made it through the first row and slotted into turn one directly behind the Hawk. I knew at the exit of the international horseshoe that this was one Hawk I was not going to catch. He could pull five or six lengths coming out of each horseshoe and on the banking he just plain ran away from me. In the GTU I had been able to draft a few ZX-6s et al but not this Hawk. A moment of hope crept insidiously into my heart the first time we braked for turn one. I was going in hotter and deeper and was able to cut his lead in half but the next time around he had already stretched it out again. My pit board was saying 2:09 and the front end was starting to complain entering the chicane. I thought about trying to pressure a mistake through traffic but I don't think he was distracted much by me hanging around five seconds or so behind him.

We were trounced.

At first the AOD crew and I were a little taken aback as this was the first defeat we had been handed since we had fixed the cam timing and we weren't sure how to take it. Fortunately the rider of the Hawk , Greg Doney came over and explained how he had done it. Apparently a drag racing engine builder had completely welded the heads shut and then recut the ports, installed larger valves, ordered custom made J & E pistons, 14:1 compression ratio, big ole' camshaft and redone crank, not to mention the carbs. He said that they had to replace the crankshaft every three weekends for reliability. We'd been beat by our own game but Greg seemed like such a swell guy it made the bitter pill a little more palatable. Apparently he had taken third at the Road Atlanta weekend preceding Daytona where we had finished something like twenty seconds ahead. Perhaps he plugged in the HT lead for the other cylinder at Daytona
On the 800 mile drive home we added up the season: eight wins, two seconds (unfortunately one was a national championship race), two regional championships, three head gaskets, three helicoils, fours sets of tires, 11,267 van miles and sixty-two t-shirts.

In South Carolina I drifted off to sleep and began to dream of endurance racing. I could picture myself so clearly being the backmarker who defeated Swine Dudes at Memphis. Suddenly, an incorporeal vision of Phil Irving appeared and began to speak in a slow and measure voice "The secret to extracting more horsepower from a YZF 600 is ...."