Small Wheels, Big Risk - mazdeuce races mini moto

In just over a month kid#3 went from trying on leathers to dragging knee. Both knees actually. She's rad. 

I took her bike out for a couple laps and shaved a few seconds off her fast time. The reason to do that is becasue we're running the data on her bike. She's already faster than I can go in a lot of places, but she's still not sure about some fast sweeping corners. We looked at the data together and now she knows what the bike can do. 

In other news, the Grom went to go live with the third member of the endurance team. He really likes the bike and I just can't quite bond with it. I enjoy riding it, but it's not quite my jam and I'll still get to ride and race it so it seemed like a simple solution. In exchange I get a MUCH bigger dirt bike. His YZ250F that he hasn't quite bonded with. The plan right now is to get to know it, fix a few minor things and then probably put some supermoto wheels on and see if I can scare myself. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

congrats to kid#3

At the risk of sounding like a weirdo, do you wear any kind of protection under your leathers?

I’ve spent (probably) too much time reading about padded shorts, shirts, etc. and honestly don’t know what direction to go in on that topic.

In reply to paranoid_android :

the leathers have hard protection at knees, elbows, and shoulders. We also wear back protectors under the leathers. From there it's just proper armored boots and gauntlet gloves and of course a good helmet. Putting on the leathers feels like putting on a super hero suit. I just checked and my suit is 14lbs of leather and armor. 

New bike! This thing is like a purpose built race car. Four bolts and the whole rear subframe with the airbox, seat, and muffler all slide off in one piece. One bolt on the fuel tank and a couple on the radiator and the bike is down to this. 

I had to do a little reading to get the starting procedure down but it started in three kicks from cold this morning. I'll play with it daily until I get it figured out. It's a bit high strung making 35hp out of a 250cc five valve four stroke at 11,5000rpm. Maintence intervals are short. I have a service manual coming along with two new radiators. Somehow they don't leak, but they're bent enough that things dont' fit together properly. 

Lost of stuff going on in motorcycle land. I supposed the biggest news is that of the guys from out endurance team broke his leg practicing on the Grom a couple of days ago. Fairly nasty crash, some screws and stuff in his lower leg. He's at home getting better. I took the Grom out for about 40 laps yesterday and nothing is bent or otherwise out of shape. I think we've found another rider for the race on the 19th. 

In only slightly less important news, kid#3 is absolutely awesome. She's riding hard and listening well to adivce. She's been riding with the AIM Solo on her bike and we look at data after we get home and she can see where she can be faster and most importantly she applies it the next time. She went from 1:35's to 1:30's to a couple of low 1:28's over the course of two weeks. 

There is already a lot of chatter about what her next bike will be. The was the PERFECT bike for her to get her first 500 or so laps in, but it's not going to be at all competetive when the races start up and she wants to race people, not just be on the track at the same time as them. 

The down side is her XR70 is getting smokey. It was always a little smokey, but now it's really smokey. The good news is that they've made approximately 40million horizontal Honda clone motors in various parts of Asia over the past 50 years and they've figured out how to make things cheap. This entre kit, cylinder, piston, rings, and all the supporting stuff is $19 shipped. 

$19 shipped

That's not a typo?  I might need to track down a couple broken Hondas to fix up and race around the farm.

In reply to bigeyedfish :

No typo. The horizontal Hondas are cheeeeeeep to work on. 

The 70 is back together and feels good, no smoke. Kart race at the track last weekend so no laps. Rained out today, Mrs. duece is (rightfully) all weird about me riding alone in the wet after the recent broken leg incident. 

In other interesting news, I just learned that you can convert a Texas offroad title to a regular title if you have insurance and a valid inspection. Also, my insurance company will insure dirt bikes as road bikes. The world is a wonderful place. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

At that price I’m pondering what it would take to weld up 8 crankcases & cranks to get a 0.56L V8.

So I'm just going to keep posting pictures of my kid because it's more fun than posting pictures of me. She takes instruction well. We talked about looking ahead. She said she was. I showed her pictures of her helmet pointing at the ground right in front of the bike. Don't move your eyeballs, move your head. You can see in this picture that she's getting it. She came off track and said "it IS easier to corner when you look ahead" 

She thinks the bike is down on power with the cylinder change. We need to figure that out I suppose. 

In bigger, but still small, bike news, I took the Grom out for a race simulation yesterday. Lost a rider due to the leg thing, found a replacement, lost him to work, so we're still at two riders for a six hour race. Our belief was that we have two hours of fuel, so we should do hour stints on the bike and fuel every other stint. The fact was that we were guessing at fuel useage and neither of us had done more than about 35 minutes on the bike ever. Yesterday I was able to go out and scrub the kart rubber off in a 25 minute session, let a kart test for a bit, run a 55 minute session while he adjusted things, rest for 20 minutes while he ran again, and run for an hour and five minutes while he did more work on the kart. Learned that an hour on the bike is possible and not toooo bad if you back off about a second and a half per lap. Fuel range looks good and I did 8 full laps with the fuel light blinking and still didn't run out of gas. Bike is at the other team member's garage getting fresh race tires, safety wire touched up, and a general once over. Race tomorrow is going to be tough. 

Race day! Six hour enduro at our local track, down a man so just two of us. We had tire warmers though so suuuuuper legit. 

We did well. I had a bit of an off about 40 minutes into my first hour and lost  a minute or so getting the bike re-started. Came up on slow traffic and just grabbed a smidge too much brake and went over the front. Oops. Shoulder was a bit clicky under braking for the rest of the session. Taking the suit off was tough and things were a bit lumpy under the skin in not good ways. The most amazing thing is that my wife helped me put my suit BACK ON to do a second hour and later a half hour. My teammate picked up my slack. Good guy. 

On top of all of that it downpoured for 15 minutes of the last half hour, and us on almost complete slicks. I came in just a little early when rain hit my visor. Throwing cobras at me would have been less scary than those rain drops. I really didn't want to fall on that shoulder. 

2nd out of five in class. Stayed for the little plastic trophy before we went to the hospital. Even with my slower pace (I was 2-4 seconds a lap slower after falling) we were actually in the lead when I hopped on for the last stint. On our home track we're competetive. 

Can't get in to a orthopedist until Monday at the earliest and I'm supposed to leave for the Challenge Wednesday. That's going to be tricky.

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

I’m far from a doctor, but I’m thinking something is amiss in that pic... :(

So are we looking at a broken collarbone or?  I'm not a specialist in internal medicine.  

Duct tape and staple gun. Be fine for the challenge. 

Unless you want to do something that requires both shoulders....

Heal up man. You've got nothing without the family and health. 

In reply to Patrick :

Yea, those two bits aren't supposed to be all pointy and overlappy. What's kind of cool is I think you can see where I broke my collarbone as a kid jumping BMX bikes. I will say, this is probably the least painful bone break I've had. I took one Tylenol 3 last night to knock things back so I could sleep, but it's fairly easy to find a spot on the couch where I have essentialy zero pain, as long as I don't move. 

I did ask Mrs. Deuce what she thought about screwing bones together at home, but she said my drill probably isn't sterile. 

Oh no!  This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping wouldn't happen.

I'm hoping you have a speedy recovery from it.

In reply to paranoid_android :

Bicycles, motorcycles and horses. All things that make you fall shoulder down and the most common injury in all three hobbies. This is why I didn't do this when I had babies, I've always been aware of the risks. 

Talking to kid#1 on the phone this morning and she said it was pretty metal that I rode after breaking the bone. I told her what was metal AF was Mrs. Deuce helping me back into my leathers so I could go back out. 

More metal would be getting that B bolted back together and making it to the challenge.  Shifiting might be painful though?  

makes sense you broke it before. collar bones are like ankles that way, after you've berkeleyed it up once, it gets a lot easier to do it again. 

STOP IT WITH THE FOREBODING BUILD THREAD TITLES BEFORE THE UNIVERSE KILLS YOU.

In reply to Patrick :

And now tou know why there is a standing hard no on airplanes from Mrs. Deuce. 

For what it's worth, if it were up to me I'd already be bolted back together and recovering. 

seth:  "Mazdeuce flies to scotland, will he make it?"

universe:  "you've teased me enough i'm bitch slapping your plane out of the sky"

In reply to Patrick :

The universe has been incredibly kind to me in some unpleasant ways. Not quite sure yet how this whole bone clicking thing I've got going on this afternoon is going to end up positive, but I'm optimistic. 

some really good pictures of the Denton round were posted recently. I may have been uncomfortable and slow, but I was at least looking ahead. 

Picked up a spare set of wheels for the Grom last night. 

These are the earlier Enkei wheels which are supposed to be lighter. Weights below. 

When running in the rain at our last event lap times increased by about 45 seconds a lap in the rain and 30 seconds a lap with just standing water on track. Depending on how quickly we can get our wheel changes, it makes a lot of sense to keep a set of wets mounted. We'll do some testing to figure it out. 

My direct from China clip on handlebars for experimenting with the XR100 also came. I'm not sure whether moving my hands down that much will help body position, but it's worth the experiment. I may need to build a set of rear sets to really take advantage of it. Fun to play with. 

You're a machine!  If you want to start a 3/4 limbed racing team over the winter, I'll fly down to Texas for a weekend.  Had the first outing on my new bike a couple of (cold... holy slippery , Batman) weekends ago.  Nerve damage wasn't doing me any favors turning/braking going left but the rights were ok.  Both me and the bike home without anything broken.  Lefts will be something to work on in PT over the winter.

Tuck and roll, man!

I broke my collar bone falling in a hockey game 25 years ago. My doctor tells me to "windmill" my arms, so I do. At that point he declares it can't be broken because I'd be in considerable pain. I tell him to put his fingers on the bone while I do it again. This time he can feel the two ends rubbing on each other. At that point I got a sling thing to wear across my back and a prescription for some painkillers that I really didn't need. It was surprising how little pain there was.