round 3 - Denton 6 hour

Team:
Jon
Greg
loweed - cancelled... dirt bike injury
David Nolden (aka dnwhoop02) - loweed replacement. has raced SV's in CMRA for 2 years.

Race Prep:
changed oil
relocated electrics
fixed problems with motor cutting out and shocking
got custom intake manifold
adjusted exhaust so it doesn't hit the ground

Endurance
we started off the day trying to figure out what gearing and jetting to use. we stuck with the 102.5 jet i believe for the day, and ended up running 15-43 gearing. the bike ran OK. not too bad, but not as good as it could. it'd miss in the upper rpms some. it seemed that if i was full throttle and it started missing down the straight i could let off the throttle a little and it would clear up and keep pulling. it sprinkled on and off throughout the day, but only affected the track once for a short period. temps were probably in the mid 60's.

we finished 5th out of 6th in class, and 11th overall i think. If i remember right we did 377 laps(official score was 381). i started off the race and was averaging 55 second laps after a big wheel stand off the start. david started his first session with about 53-54 second laps and greg was after him with upper 50 second laps. by the end of the day greg got down to the 54-55 second range, and david and I stayed around the 52-55 range. we did 30 minute stints, but probably could have pushed it a bit longer. although, the last stint was a bit tough. greg had one small get off... lowside in turn 3 about mid race. wasn't a big deal.

at 3 hours we filled with gas and oil. the bike cant go much more than 3 hours on a tank of gas. it was low when we filled it then, and at the end of the day it was almost empty. our oil fill went ok. the shampoo bottle did its job and put in just the right amount of oil.

Sprints
sprints went well even though i didn't have any really good finishes. i was just happy to be competitive with people. i changed the gearing even more to a 15-45. i still wasn't toped out in 5th at the end of the straight. this is the same gear ratio that dennie was running. i also knocked down the main jet to 97.5. this really woke the bike up and it ran much better, but the plug looked dangerously white. it still missed a little. i think if we had dropped the needle down a notch it would have helped. the bike stuck really well all day. we also added a couple pounds of air pressure to the rear tire bringing it up to 21 or 22 pounds. i believe i got down to 51 second laps by the end of the day.

one of the reasons i wanted to change the gearing to 15-45 was to make it easier to stay in 5th gear around turn 1, but now that i think back i'm not even sure i was really trying to do that. i was consistantly going too slow around turn 1. i was also not braking nearly as aggresivly as i use to. part of that is because of the heavy engine braking i now have with the new xr motor. that combined with the uncertainty of pulling up on the shift lever instead of stomping down on it was throwing me off. i was also having problems with the throttle. i had to re-grip to get it to wide open throttle, so when i went into turns and wanted to shut the motor down i would forget that i had re-gripped and would still be on the gas. this would in turn push me to the outside of the corner and kill my line. this also made me lowside once in turn 3 durring the lightweight expert race.

i'm going to try to get a 1/4 turn throttle on there before the next katy race and dad ordered some new tires today. he's going to give them to me at the next race and i'll have them mounted before the next round.