Belgian Classic TT 2011 - Gedinne

This was our second visit to Gedinne for the Belgian Classic TT. This fantastic 5Km road circuit winds it's way through the foot hills of the Ardennes in southern Belgium.

The circuit map looks good

But doesn't do it justice, here's what it looks like from on the bike

That was the first lap of practice. Things were going well for both riders, Andy qualified fifth overall and Stu seventh making us easily first and second in an admittedly small group 1 (single cylinder class) and in with the quicker group 2 guys (mainly 2 stroke twins and the odd Honda twin).
All was looking good until Andy's 500cc practice. On his final lap on the Seeley G50, a torque arm bolt broke and locked up the rear brake causing a crash approaching the second hairpin.
The result......

another broken collarbone

So that was the end of Andy's racing for the weekend.

This meeting provides a wide variety of bikes both road and race. below are a couple that caught our eye.

Motom - that's what I call a paddock bike

Kreidler road bikes

In race 1 (Saturday) Stu made a good start and was in with the leading group, but up the hill a few of the 2 stroke twins pulled away but Stu had a race long battle with a TD3 Yamaha ridden by Fup Bakker and a T20 Suzuki ridden by Bart Kennis.

 Stu led the battle until the last lap, unaware he was second overall as some of the 2 strokes had retired but at the same corner that Andy had fallen Fup Bakker made a good block pass leaving Stu to take third overall and an easy class win.

250's in the parc ferme

The rest of the afternoon was spent sampling Belgian beer and checking out other Ducatis in the paddock

We knew that Andy's bike was the quicker of the two so a plan was formulated, change over the race numbers and Stu would take Andy's bike for race two.  Sunday morning brought rain and a wet practice so the idea was to do a few steady laps to get used to the bike but half way around the first lap the bike ground to a halt. Back in the paddock we found water had got into the plug cap and shorted the spark.

This meant starting from the back of the grid but another good start saw Stu up to fourth by the first chicane

At the first hairpin, Stu took the lead only to be re passed at hairpin 2 by the eventual winner Tom Van Waerbeke on a Yamaha. The race then was for second between Stu and Sylvain Bauwens on a Benelli 2C. Eventually the superior speed of the Benelli was too much for the better handling Ducati and Stu settled for third, slowing on the final lap having felt a vibration from the Ducati but still first in class.

Or so we thought, in fact due to not completing a lap in Sundays practice Stu was excluded from the results.


Oh well, we'll just have to go back next year with even faster bikes.

Thanks to all the organisers and marshalls at Gedinne for a fine meeting. I urge anyone to make a visit to this circuit either to race or spectate, it's a great classic racing event

Manx GP - Junior

Congratulations to Doug Snow on his 7th place finish on his 350 Sebring this morning. With a race speed of 91.9 mph and clocked at over 127 mph on Sulby straight Doug has proved the potential speed and reliability of a 350 Ducati

Doug Snow at Ballaugh Bridge in 2008

Racing motorcycle photo's

Just a quick mention for a blog I came across that has some nice racer photo's (as well as road bikes)

Below are a couple of examples that caught my eye

Ducati 125 GP with dustbin fairing

Even nicer stripped bare

Malanca Competizione 4M  (50cc)

The site features motorcycles from the 20's through to current racing machines.  Have a look for yourself at   http://www.bikeexif.com/

Lydden Hill - BHR

Our next outing was Lydden Hill in Kent with British Historic racing, one of our favourite tracks despite being only about a mile long, sometimes the best things do come in small packages.


This is what a few laps of practice look like

In the first Ducati race Andy took second place behind Scott Harris on his 350 while Stu was holding third until a wire on the coil broke and put him out

Andy and Scott

In the first 250/350 specials Andy overhauled Scott to take the win with Stu in third
.
This formed the pattern of the Saturday races, Scott taking the second Ducati race ahead of Andy and Stu but in the final race of the day (250/350 Specials) Mark Capewell (350 Aermacchi) had sorted his handling problems out and took the flag ahead of Andy, Nick Bedford on another 350 Aermacchi and then Stu

Stu with Nick Bedford (3) and Nick Kennett (359 - 350 Ducati)

On Sunday, Scott had problems and was unable to race so it a Steelcraft one two in both Ducati races, Andy winning both.



Here's the two of us fighting for the lead

 

In the specials race, this was a typical set of results for Sunday....

Generally a great weekend as usual at Lydden

Aluminium tanks - more DIY

  For the early part of the season, we had been using fibreglass fuel tanks on the Ducatis and after some problems caused by the increased amount of ethanol in modern fuels, had already re-sealed them with tank liner.
   What we really wanted was period style aluminium  tanks.
We had a look at some available for sale/to order, but in all cases they were either:

• Expensive
• not really the style we wanted
• there was a long waiting list                         
• In some cases all three of the above                                         

 The answer, have a go ourselves, Andy did a lot of research and started work.

 After deciding on the style the former or plug was made from shaped pieces of plywood

The tank would be made from five separate pieces and then welded together. The photo below shows the top and sides fitted to the former and the basic tools used. The glove is filled with sand and used to "hammer" some of the shape

A base was then cut to match

The top needed an indent and hole for the fuel cap, we decided against the usual Monza style cap and found some screw on types.

Indents were added for the fuel taps and the inner piece formed to fit over the spine of the frame

Finally bosses were added for the fuel taps and all the components welded together, ground flush and polished. Now fitted to the bikes we think they they are a great improvement

We learned a lot, not least why ali tanks are either expensive or there is a long waiting list.
I make this sound easy, it isn't, and all credit to Andy for his efforts

Ducati Club Races - Assen

This was our third visit to "The Cathedral of motorcycle racing" for the annual Ducati Club Races, the largest club race meeting in Europe.
   We had entered the Euro singles class which caters for road based European singles, but inevitably the majority were Ducati's. There are two qualifying sessions on Saturday with the race on Sunday afternoon. The qualifying mixes all the classic classes so in our group there were Euro twins and ONK classics (GP type machines)
Q1 was a little damp. Andy was running in a new big end so was taking things steadily, Stu, however was straight on the pace and was fastest of the Euro singles

 

Q2 was completely dry and Andy was now happy to use full revs

After Q2  the results showed we were both on the front row, Andy 2nd and Stu 3rd between a 450 Ducati on pole and a 350 Ducati in 4th

We were were a little confused about the pole sitter as he was listed as a 350, he was later disqualified for using the wrong transponder.
 We both decided that we needed to alter our gearing for the race, Stu gearing lower, Andy. higher.

Sunday brought perfect weather for the race and being front row we had the unexpected luxury of brolly girls (a first for both of us)

We have both spent a lot of time practicing our starts as we believe they are critical in short races. The shots below show that it has paid off but the power of the 450 meant he still beat us to the first corner (just)

The gearing changes we made proved critical. Stu's lap times were 3 seconds quicker than practice but Andy had gone the wrong way and was 3 seconds slower.

 l

The race was going well Stu was comfortably second behind the 450 ( remember he was later disqualified), Andy was battling with a 350 and a Seeley Gold star for 3rd.
Now the really embarrassing bit..,  lap 4 and Stu's bike started to misfire, the classic novice error - not enough fuel !
In the end Andy finished 4th overall and by far the leading 250.

 And another one for the trophy cabinet

Overall another excellent weekend at Assen, despite the fuel cock up.
We would like to thank all at Ducati Club Netherland for putting on a splendid meeting and special thanks to Ad Kievit, at Wegrace ( http://www.wegraceinfo.nl/) for providing the superb photo's
See you all next year

Gas Flowing

Gas flowing, porting, cylinder head tuning, whatever you want to call it , it's a critical part of extracting power from an engine.
  After a couple of disasters letting others tune our heads Steelcraft racing http://www.steelcraft.biz/ decided the best thing to get a job done well is do it yourself. The basic theory is simple, get the most amount of gas possible to pass through the port, past the valve guide and valve and into the cylinder, and at the other end out through the exhaust port, OK its not that simple, factors like turbulence and swirl complicate matters but this is the Janet and John version. The problem is, if you are relatively inexperienced, how do you know that what you are doing  improves the flow?

  The answer is a flow bench. A device used to measure the amount of gas that can flow at any given valve lift. So we looked into buying one. We had a couple of quotes and after getting back up of the floor decided the only option was to build our own. We got hold of some plans and and spoke to a very clever friend by the name of David Holmes about some software. Thus we began the build. Again we needed some help (thanks Les) and had the wooden cabinet built

The cabinet with inlet and outlet valves made from stainless bowls from a pound shop

Then we needed some fans, so a trawl through the supermarket special offers gave us five vacuum cleaners for less than £100. They were duly stripped giving us the suckers/blowers we needed

Vacuum motors fitted

The other parts were assembled and fitted, it was painted a nasty blue colour, because we had some in the workshop and finally the vertical and inclined manometers were added.

I won't go into detail about how it works or the other details of the build, it's all out there on the interweb if you're interested, enough to say that we can now measure the inlet and exhaust flow of a head at any given valve lift.
 It soon proved it's value as improved gas flow from porting could now be measured.

Ducati head with Gardener carb being tested

Measuring the flow at 28" of pressure

In the photo above you can see the bolt used to lift the valve in 0.050" increments. Measurements are taken from 0.050" to max valve lift, we usually allow for 0.450" on Ducati heads  as most cams lift a little less than this. From this via a clever bit of software we can produce a graph showing flow in cubic feet per minute (CFM).

Typical flow graph for a 250 Ducati

The pink line shows the flow before porting and the and the blue line after. The X axis shows valve lift and the Y axis CFM The shots below show more detail of flow rates before and after average flow is shown in the bottom right corner. This example is of a head previously flowed by someone else which we have improved (we hope) and will soon be back use back in use at UK race meetings

Before porting

After porting

What it's really all about is more horse power

Ducati head part ported

The head above is part ported, the three angle seat has been cut and basic porting work is complete on the inlet

Aermacchi head  after porting

This head is ready to go, the port is polished and the guide has been flowed. Valves also need to be flowed to finish the job.

   Steelcraft racing can now offer this service to the public, porting starts at around £200 + vat depending on spec, contact details can be found by visiting http://www.steelcraft.biz/


                A famous racing saying goes "Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?"