dorset

i've driven a truck for a living for almost 10 years now, in a bunch of different configurations: van, reefer, and flatbed OTR, dump, brine transports, water bottles, rolloffs, and currently sand boxes:

i took roehl transport's contract system. they pay you to drive up to wisconsin, spend three weeks in training, take your test, and then put you in a semi over the road with a trainer. two or three weeks later, you're on your own. if you stay with the company a year, the school is free. quit early, and you pay back a prorated amount. their training is excellent, the pay is entry-level. most drivers move on to something better after two years.

OTR is not for everybody. i'm mostly home every night doing the sandboxes, but atm i'm in eastern pennsylvania parked in a flying j, home tomorrow after two weeks living in the sleeper.

if i cut out food carbs and tequila, i can lose two pounds a week. went from 210 to 186 in about 90 days, in time for ECTA in 2016.

giving up the tequila is lots harder than cutting the carbs.

speaking of slow stuff and how to avoid it, a friend of mine worked bonneville as the two-mile-mark spotter this year. he told me they had to shut down the event because a bunch of tourists had wandered out into tbe race track midway and had to shooed away.

the course is so long he never saw any of it and followed the comedy over the radio.

well, yes, but if safety was what it was all about we wouldn't be riding a motorcycle in the first place.

gotta start somewhere.

i'm looking more into track days than vintage racing. vintage racing seems to be for people that are into serious history, and so there are various requirements for period authenticity in terms of what changes you can make. plus there will be serious ex-professional machinery there. i'm not really interested in authenticity as much as function, or in competition as much as just learning to ride better. that sounds much more like the track day system.

i do have a 97 buell that is way faster than any of the old stuff i ride, but it shifts on the wrong side and handles poorly. it would be lots better if i made a project about dialing in the suspension, but it would be more interesting for me to just gather up some stuff lying around my shop and build something simpler.

if there's room for a machine that tops out around 115 or 120 on the same track as the newer stuff, then that's what i'm looking for.

On 11/11/2017 at 12:22 PM, Rich B said:

If you get interested in dirt track.......got a couple of Bultaco Astro's that are begging for attention. And I likely could get a 750 Triumph out of retirement from someone local. 

boy, that's a temptation. never thought about that one

On 11/6/2017 at 2:57 PM, TimTheAzn said:

Road Atlanta and Summit Point have some pretty long straights, Mid Ohio also has a decently long straight.

I know a guy that runs the 1/4 almost every week and does Mid Ohio track days all the time, hes actually on here and he is @Trackbikez.

To address the frequency of how often do I get to take my track bike out and open it up? Whenever I get to a track day. How often do you get your standing mile bike out (so long as it isnt also your street bike)? Probably every time you go to a straight line event lol. To address the rest of your question, I already did the whole open it up, and keep it there thing back in high school. I was young and dumb with a liter bike and I did those wide open throttle highway runs occasionally.....

If you are hooked on a straight line, a lot of the other stuff is relatable to track days. I'm sure you've met a bunch of awesome people at those 1/4, 1/2, full mile events. Same thing with track days, I've met some of the most genuine awesome people in my life period because of track days. I'm sure you have a lot of fun in the pits while off-bike. I'm sure we have more! . Main difference here being (obviously) what we are doing on the bike, and I'll tell you what, you roll out of hot pit for that first time and run through your first session, you'll be hooked!

nah, the mile bike isn't even barely streetable without a steel jock strap.

. i have a 2500-foot airport runway to tune it on, though, and it can be doing close to 100 there before i have to shut off. but that's just tuning. competitive LSR is spread pretty thin. there are only about three to six times a year i can take it out, and it's expensive to get there. loring is 1100 miles. arkansas is 663. both are investments of about a week. that's a major reason i'm listening to you road race people.

what are the classes at the ohio tracks? all my stuff is slow, by modern standards, and shifts on the right.

maybe this is interesting?

^^^ this is a guy from wooster who was at bonneville this last season, still working out issues, and not as fast as he wants yet. the other guy with the blue and gold streamliner has the current absolute record for these 60-year old machines at 175 mph on nitromethane.

ignore the pretentious music.

i didn't know that. i thought the track designers on a road race course would drag you down sooner. i'm learning.

the old bonneville-style salt races have a couple of miles to build speed and then a full measured mile between the lights, but bonneville doesn't have as much salt as it used to. nobody has that much space on the B52 runways at all so you generally have a mile (or 1.5) to build speed and then 132 feet between the lights for timing. if you have a hot bike that will hold together for repeated runs at a full mile WFO, then you ought to think about LSR.

maybe one difference is that you can still be going wide open at the end of the mile, because you have a half mile to a mile of straight line to slow down in after the lights.

lol, maybe it wouldn't seem like forever if i rode a faster bike.

https://bangordailynews.com/2011/07/17/sports/warner-sets-world-speed-record-at-loring/

seriously, though, tim has a point. it really is all straight-line stuff, completely. the attraction of that is that it's an entire mile, or better, of straight line-- at bonneville you have three miles. it seems to last forever. you aim at a horizon you can barely see, open it up all the way, and then hold it wide open, all the way. if you back off, you lose. if you miss a shift, you lose. if you raise your head or stick your elbows out, you lose. the focus on perfection is intense.

how often do you get to take your track bike out, open it up, and keep it there? no turns, no braking, just top end all the way? the motorcycle record at loring is 311 mph.  i'm interested in road racing, which is why i'm here listening to you guys, but i'm hooked on that straight line.

lol

you'd be surprised how much fun 650 can be when you're flat out on a chassis built 50 years ago with the motor screaming at 50 percent over its design limits.

the ECTA has arranged to use the international airport in blytheville, arkansas, for 2018.

11,600 feet.

first meet 20-22 april.

four days off. rain has just started.

this is a random thought.

that was genuinely profound.

tonya runs the show, and she'll be able to answer any general questions. if you want to just go all-out stupid fast, motocat is right, the busas will do it. but it's pretty rarified and pretty expensive to play up there. the busas do 240 or so, and the big harleys do 200. 

or just go nuts:

and another thing . . . 

lol

you don't need to build anything special to get started. the production class is just that, production-- you aren't allowed to change anything that shows. tune up whatever you like to ride and race it, and while you're there look at what everybody else is running and decide how fast you want to spend. 

life is short. race now.

you need to get hold of a rule book, because whatever you build will be judged against the rules of the class you get put in. if you build a great machine but just happen to choose a configuration that puts you in the bottom of the next higher speed class, you'll have fun but you won't be competitive.

here's what i mean. i race a 1965 triumph bonneville at the ohio mile and at loring, in maine, M/PG 650/4. that means naked bike, modified production frame, no more than 650 cc, pushrod valves, 4-stroke gasoline. i run against other 650 pushrod gasoline bikes only. it's competitive in that class.  but my machine is 649cc, bone stock. if i bore it 0.040 over, the motor is over 650cc, not much , but over. so if i bore it, even just to clean up the cylinders, i'll have to race against the 750s, and they'll clean my clock. i knew that when i built it, so i started with new cylinders to stay in the 650 class. th ekey is to build the absolutely fastest machine you can, while staying inside the rules for the slowest class you can enter it in. i can do 128 mph with mine right now, against the world record of 133.  my machine is still in development, and i'm looking for 134 this spring.

you'll have the choice of naked, partial streamlined, streamlined, gasoline, fuel, stock, modified, altered, and so on. you can get into anything-- i've seen 240+ mph hayabusas waiting in line alongside 50cc nitrous injected sidecars that topped out at 46 mph. the odd stuff is the most interesting, and you'll see it all.

get a copy of the rules from tonya turk, at ECTAmembership@hotmail.com, or let me know your address and i'll send you a copy of one of mine from last year--they don't change much from year to year, and you'll be able to see what sort of machine interests you. but you can race absolutely anything you're interested in riding.

bonneville is kind of iffy these days. not enough salt left to run every year.

don't want to be a wet blanket, but the ohio mile is currently dead. wilmington declined to renew the relationship at the airport, and the ECTA is still looking for another strip. last i heard there was a dim possibility of getting wilmington back.

people here have been going to loring, maine instead. they raced there last weekend.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/101319891@N08/sets/72157667980099782/with/26321517534/

heads off. looks like detonation on the left . . .

but on the right the carbon is chewed up nextto the plug . . .

got no idea what's going on with that

working too many hours a day these days.

no time for anything.

put the LSR up on the lift. it's got close to 30 runs on it and i need to get the motor out and see if i have any rod bearings left.

took the carbs apart on the commando to see what the mains were. i was reminded of an old norton mechanic i once knew who explained that when commandos were built, the factory hung the airbox up in the air and then assembled the rest of the motorcycle around it with zero clearance. i think he was right.