Guernsey Hill climb August 2009
The day started at 7.30 with sign on and scrutineering. It was raining hard so wasn't sure if there would be any racing. Nick arrived early with the bike.

The racer was running 15/46 on an LI box and since the last sprint I had turned the flywheel down, now at 1.35kg (whatever that means) from 1.62kg, essentially reducing inertia.

Racing started at 9.45. First practice was about 52 seconds in damp/wet conditions. Not good because its difficult to tell where there will be grip. The bike was sliding everywhere and off the line it was sideways.

Peter managed to get out of bed and turn up before lunch.

Next run was absolutely pi**ing down, but I managed just under 51 seconds. The bike was spinning everywhere out of the corners and sliding into them - great fun! We changed the clutch and sprockets and went up to 17/46 but this proved too high for the conditions as I couldn't go through the esses fast enough to exit on the power. We also changed to another JL4 pipe which seemed to have more overrev.

We noticed the TT92s (yes - slicks in the wet!) Were much greater diameter than the other German tyres of the same size - something to bear in mind with gear planning. Anyhow we changed over and this other rear was much stickier, and very noticeable off the line. This was much better and my final run was completely wet (like rivers running down the road).

Final time was 49.74 which is not bad considering my fastest it 43.58 in the dry. Most competitors were down by at least 12 seconds.

Two lunatics from Jersey in the 500 class on KTM 450s were head and head for FTD (fastest time of the day). With tyre warmers and no brains they were awesome, it may as well have been a warm dry day. The fastest achieved 36 seconds and only fell off once in the day !

The next event is the sprint on 5 September. Ideas for improving the motor are to have more inlet and more exhaust timing. This will enable more over rev and also a higher peak. This will also work better with the lighter flywheel.

New motor:Under development The next motor is based around a TS. The stroke is 64mm with a 120mm Rotax rod. To achieve this the cases needed a considerable amount of welding and machining to ensure that the crank fitted but also retained stength as a very deep channel is needed in the cases for the conrod to have clearance. Additionally the cylinder needs to be 11mm longer than standard, using a Wiseco Suzuki TS250 piston. Read more here...