British Mayhem Weekend

Mr.7/11's British Mayhem Weekend

It started like this...
I sold my PC so I could buy the CBR600F2 wheels, fork and brakes. The result of all the modifications I had done to my bike was I had allmost a complete GSX-R750G scattered around in my garage and I got a bit tired of tripping over them so I decided to sell them. With the money that came out of it I bought all the bits I needed to complete my PC again. At about the same time I regained contact with Sandro Serafini, and while chatting over ICQ we came onto the subject of carbs. I told Sam about my experiments with the bored out GSX-R750 flatslides and he mentioned that a mate of his was selling some Mikuni RS 36mm flatslides. I instantly got a huge hard-on because I always wanted 36mm carbs for my GSX1100F engine and already had a taste of flatslides which I obviously liked a lot. One thing lead to another and before I knew it my PC was gone again, just had managed to spend one evening behind it playing Microprose's GP500 ;-(

Dave, the guy who was selling the carbs turned out to be a professional dyno operator at HM Racing in Kent. So Sam told me that if I came over with the bike then we could set the carbs up on HM Racing's dyno. This made it even more attractive because I needed to tune my carbs anyway, I had a bank of 36mm CV's and a bank of 33mm flatslides at that moment.

I couldn't ride my bike at the monet as I had just finished it in time for the KicXstart streetfightershow, so Sam kindly offered to come and pick me up with his car... yes, we were going to fit the bike into the back of his car, a Peugeot station wagon.
I took some measurements and concluded it should be possible. Luckily I have a very short subframe so when I took off the front wheel, tank, seat unit and rear wheel incl. swingarm it was small enough to probably fit.

When the day arrived Sam took the Eurotunnel in the middle of the night, and arrived at my house at about 10:00am. We had to rush to make it back to Calais in time so we immediately went to the garage to get the bike into the car. We were pleasantly surprised to see the bike fitted perfectly because Sam had taken the rear seats out of the car. We put the rest of the parts and the computer in and headed back to the Eurotunnel. Sam was riding 100mph all the way trough Holland, Belgium and France and we arrived at the tunnel just in time. But before we could board the train we were stopped by French customs, who probably don't see a bike stuffed into a car every day. Luckily they didn't give us too much hassle and after they had checked the car for explosives(!) we were on our way again.

After 35 minutes in the train we were in England. When we got at Sam's house in Swanley we unloaded the bike and put the wheels back in so it was mobile again.

The next two days were spent working on the bike. We went trough Sam's private bikeyard and found a pair of nice R6 calipers which will fit my bike very nicely if I make some small mounting plates, after which the brake performance certainly will improve a lot as R6/R1 calipers are known to be the best in the business. Sam took a piece of carbon plate and his Dremel tool to make a carbon replacement for my aluminum dashboard.

We fitted the Mikuni RS's which fitted the standard intake rubbers and took the bike out for a test run. I was quite nervous becaus it was the first time after Robby had flipped it and I was constantly listening for strange noises which would indicate a problem or parts vibrating loose. After a while I became more relaxed and it became clear that the carbs jetting w\asn't far off because it was pulling cleanly everywhere and Sam told me he couldn't keep up with the Ducati 916 he was riding at that moment.

On Monday we went to HM Racing to meet Dave. We had the dyno room completely to ourselves for the whole day because they are normally closed on Mondays. Sounds like heaven eh? :-)
HM Racing has got a very nice, neat and clean dynoroom with all the right equipment in the right places. Two big tubes blowing fresh air onto the engine/oil cooler and some properly fixed tubes to vent the exhaust fumes out, which don't get blown away when the exhaust pops and bangs. In fact the whole of HM Racing oozes with professionalism, it looks like a big GP500 pit garage, everything clean and tidy with special equipment everywhere.

As soon as Dave started doing his job I could tell he has been around the block for a while, knowing exactly what to look for and what could go wrong... operating more like a surgeon doing a brain transplant than a greasy mechanic which makes you feel confident ones he has your bike screaming across the redline because you feel it's in good hands.

It became clear very soon we wouldn't be needing the whole day because the carbs were allmost spot-on at the first run, the tire spinning on the dyno by the unleashed power created by the Mikuni RS's.
There was just a slight dip in the midrange and Dave tried to correct that by lifting the needles by one notch, but it didn't help so it was pinpointed to be caused by the exhaust system I'm using. He put the needles back to where they were because it'd only give me worse fuel economy, so the only thing that needed to be changed was the pilot screws.
So after two complete runs we got to a perfect setting which may not be fun when you got free time on a dyno but very important when you have to pay for it. And for that you need a dyno operator who can make a perfect analysis of the first run and knows what to do to solve it. Dave is such a man. Hats off.

To top the day off Dave had another surprise for me.
Becaus he was selling his 884cc GSX-R to a bloke who wanted it back to standard spec as far as possible (????) Dave offered me his TMC Highpower Nitrous system if I promised him to use it. Well, I like to scare myself once in a while so it seemed a pretty good alternative to jumping off a bridge with a bungee cord strapped around your dick ;-)

On the trail run I was worried about a whining noise that came from the engine, and the link of my chain came loose on the dyno. When checking the chain slack on the day I went home we discovered that my custom made chainwheel was out of center which had caused the chain to tighten and loosen at every revolution of the rear wheel. This was a very bad situation as it puts lots of stress on the bearing of the gearbox. Sam called his son Tony who works at Bat Motorcycles, Britain's biggest name in grey imports who brought back a new chainwheel.

We fitted it in record time and I went for home, 2lbs. Nitrous bottle in my back pack. When I arrived at the tunnel I noticed the rear tyre was allmost flat and it was chewing itself up. So when I got out in France I stopped at the first gas station and put it back to pressure. The 3hr trip back home was a lot of fun, especially when it got dark. My headlamps were useless as they were pointed too much downwards so I just aimed at the rearlights far ahead, cracked the throttle open and really warped ahead, having to brake hard to avoid smashing into the back of the car.

In fact the whole weekend warped past, but it was great!

Thanks to Sam, Dave, HM Racing and Tony!

Some people have their dog in the back of the car, we...