Curbs eye view of playing with bikes.
Kid#2 has announced his retirement from motorcycle racing. Great sadness. The white bike was taken down to the frame and all the good parts will be used to keep the other two XR100's alive. You were a good bike white bike.
Trailer stuff. What a saga.
So I bought the 5x8 enclosed in Virginia so that I could get all the new bikes home. Worked great. I was kind of excited about keeping it until I loaded bikes and discovered how tight it was. I figured I could make it work though.
But then my buddy who builds trailers in his spare time said he had a friend that was in desperate need of an encolsed for a job he needed to do and if I sold it he could make me the open trailer that I actually want. That was a solid plan. I went for it and the enclosed exited my life as quickly as it entered. And then I waited. And nothing happened. And I asked about timing. And nothing. And then my trailer finally got back to me and said he decided that he didn't actually have any time to build something now. Awesome. Super awesome.
This led to insomnia fueled research and some calling and finally a trip to Waco this morning to purchase an Aluma 5410-T. It's an all aluminum 4.5x10 foot trailer that weights 310lbs empty. A little longer than I thought I wanted but lighter than I would have gotten out of steel, so a solid trade off.
I retrieved it with the truck not knowing how it would tow with the Accord, having never towed anything with the Accord. Turns out it tows great. Empty at least.
Kid #3 and I pulled out the 70's and the wheel chocks and did a dry fit. These bikes are fairly close in size to the NSF100's. I think things are going to fit well.
Empty tongue weight of the trailer is 50lbs. Just eyeballing the chock position had weight right at 90lbs. Honda says max tongue weight for the Accord is 100lbs. I should be able to stay within that window by being careful.
And the part that is most exciting is this. That's the Accord spare tire. It fits the trailer. Excellent. 
One of the things I was searching for in a trailer was a 5x4.5 bolt pattern which is the same as the Accord. The offset of the factory Alloy wheels means they don't quite fit, but the spare does. The studs on the trailer are a weird thread size so I can't run Honda ball seat lug nuts though, which means running the Honda spare really is an emergency thing. In the future I can either knock some longer studs of the right thread in and run a spacer, or just run a spacer with included studs that are the right pitch. I need to do some measuring to make sure. Common spare makes me happy. Super happy.
Race weekend! Finally.
Saturday was a four hour endurance. It was 97 degrees. We ate bread and drank Pedialyte. Pedialyte was gross, but worked great. Crashed once and lost about three minutes replacing the front brake lever and straightening out the shift lever. Also had a fuel miscalculation and needed a splash to finish our last half hour stint. Ended up 15 seconds out of first. It was a good race, we're still in the lead for the championship.
Sunday was sprints. Apparently is was the day to practice cool finish moves.
Kid #3 and I both trophied. We also had two races together and she beat me in both of them. At this track she's faster than me. I'm proud, but it hurts.
And the day after the race the last chock finally got here so I was able to drill holes in my brand new trailer. Yay. The good news is that all the calculations and trial and error worked and with a full load it pulls great at all speeds up to 75mph with the Accord. Took a 30 mile trip with freeway and back roads and construction and a whole bunch of stuff. I'm happy. The truck will go away when the big kids go off to college in the fall.
Looks like great times!
In reply to Lof8 - Andy :
We're having an absurd amount of fun.
I think the most telling thing is that Mrs. Deuce was genuinely upset that she couldn't come to the races. They asked us to limit people to only riders and necessary crew to limit any extra exposure to Covid. We listened and she stayed home. Part of that was missing kid#3 racing on Sunday, but she wanted to come to the endurance race too. She just likes being at the races and watching and hanging out. This is a HUGE departure from autocross (which nobody wants to attend as a spectator) or even track stuff (where she's come, but doesn't enjoy it) and I think she may even come and hang out when it's just me doing this in a few years.
Hanging out with motorcycle friends doing motorcycle stuff.
Way rad. Would like to get involved in a scene like this here in Atlanta.
A couple week ago one of the teammates said he had a dead pocket bike. Kid#3 (being her father's daughter) jumped at the price of $0 and hit ebay for the finest Chinese pocket bike parts. Yesterday the last of them came and this morning she hit the tools hard like a little tool gnome.
I should have taken a LOT more pictures, but we were just hanging out having fun, so I didn't. New motor, gas tank and chain and it fired right up. Full leathers because you can never be too safe.
So that's her first motor swap in the books. She's looking forward to dragging it out to the track for funsies.
She wanted to look as silly as you?
More time at the track. Killed a KX65 top end. Wrist pin circlip wandered out of it's groove.
The KX guy shot some video after the bike ate itself.
The girl riding the CRF150R in the video above is one we met at the last race. That's her dad's bike. She spend most of the day on the spare XR70 and we sent it home with them along with spare boots gloves and leathers so she could ride as much as possible while she gets her own gear/bike together. Her dad had to MAKE her come off track so they could leave. She would have ridden until dark. During that day we all got to ride the YZ250F on supermoto tires (which was amazing) and the CRF150R on 12 inch wheels which was even better. That chassis so good, so much better than the XR100 or the Grom that yesterday I bought this CR85 with a bad bottom end for cheap. Super cheap. As of now it has donated the forks to an XR (more to come later) but it's almost certainly going to be the basis for a new endurance bike.
When you go to sell the truck you should bring it up here to visit and leave it with me to sell a no rust texas truck in the land of rotten junk
Patrick (Forum Supporter) said:When you go to sell the truck you should bring it up here to visit and leave it with me to sell a no rust texas truck in the land of rotten junk
And rent a trailer to tow a couple rust-free square bodies up there too.
I am happy with all of these suggestions.
We have been racing. My daughter is generally faster than me now. Plenty to write about, but I'd rather post pictures of a thing. A crate. From Japan.
They looked like they made it safer than I thought.
In reply to Professor_Brap (Forum Supporter) :
If I had a way to send a beer to the dude who built the crate, I would. Excellent job.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Some of the pumps (100k+) are shipped worse than that.
So cool looking in plain white! Maybe stay that way but also such a neat blank slate to add some awesome graphics.
mazdeuce - Seth said:In reply to Professor_Brap (Forum Supporter) :
If I had a way to send a beer to the dude who built the crate, I would. Excellent job.
I mean, it's probably not impossible to do that. the challenge is, figuring out their name(s).
In reply to John Welsh (Moderate Supporter) :
I can't believe you think I would spend my first morning with the bikes playing with livery.
What do they recommend for break in and all that? Or do they do that at the factory?
There is a "don't exceed this rpm for this long" type of thing, but let's be honest, this in an air cooled dirt bike motor that's been built exactly like this since 1984. They probably need one warm up cycle to get everything settled and then just ride them. Change the oil after an hour or two of run time and then treat them like the dirt bike they are.
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