[Burphel]

Project day 10 / Testing day 4: Oct 8

With the end of any race season, begins the fun of WINTER TESTING!!! I wore a special suit to commemorate it (ok, the weather looked questionable, so I wore my Aerostich). The morning was pretty misty, but no real rain. But, the track was still quite wet and didn't really dry off until afternoon. Fortunately, I had some bits to install and a mod to do. This worked out great as all the other riders kind of huddled around my bike for typical garage chat and occasional help when needed.

*Finally got the stem nut off and the aluminum one installed. If you're looking for serious weight reduction, I'd give some thoughts to getting one of these. The stock bolt is a big heavy chunk of iron for something that doesn't have much stress on it.
*Pulled the fairing and took apart the thermostat housing. The thermostat itself looked fine. I drilled 2 extra 2mm holes in the housing for extra warm-up flow and reinstalled it.
*Tried installing the clip-ons below the triple tree. They don't work. The riser doesn't sit far enough out from the fork tube to clear the upper fork clamps.
*So I dropped the forks about 20mm extra and clamped them on above. This gives basically stock ergonomics, but pretty drastically alters the bike's geometry. Generally not a good idea. I'll be looking for some better clip-ons over the winter. The bar portion is pretty standard, so at least I'll have spares for that in the event of a crash.
*Installed the preload adjusters. Leaving them full-out for now.

After getting the bike all put back together, the weather started to warm up a bit. So I threw on the warmers and got my gear ready. A couple of the riders got permission and went out and did a bunch of slow laps in their cars to help dry out the track. Followed by a few brave souls on bikes. Before we knew it, a dry line started coming out. Since I didn't know the track, I took it nice and slow on that line the first few times.

As the afternoon went on, I started feeling more and more comfortable on the bike and on the track. Near the start, I had one run-off where I overshot a corner and had to ride through the grass to the next one. Other than that, a pretty good first day for a very technical track. By the end of the day, I was catching and occasionally passing people. That said, riding on a kart track is *exercise*. I need that, but damn was I tired by the time I called it quits. They've got another one scheduled for November if the weather's nice enough. I really hope it works out.

Observations:
*No more boiling radiator noises at the end of sessions. Granted, it was a lot cooler out. We'll see what happens next summer.
*The Yosh rearset risers made a huge difference in being able to turn effectively.
*Not having the lowered bars to go with it was awkward. The bike still felt really tall at the start of the day, but I got used to it.
*I need to track days at kart tracks more often. Great exercise, and I'm convinced if I can keep the bike on the pavement here, a regular road course is going to feel like a six-lane highway.