In reply to 1SlowVW :
Soon a wild VW will appear, too!
In reply to 1SlowVW :
Soon a wild VW will appear, too!
Burrito dude, are you on ADV Rider ? I've seen some great flat track builds over the years in the Old School section over there.
In reply to Ethnic Food-Wrap Aficionado :
Wow, I sold my caddy 8 years ago to pay for my wedding. It was worth it because I married up, but sometimes I still miss the caddy.
Sweet bike and fun thread. I'm hoping to get down to Salem for the races after the 1 Moto show this year. I've hit the show for the last two years but haven't made it to the races yet.
In reply to thatsnowinnebago :
I'll be racing both Friday and Saturday for The 1 Pro. You should come find me and say hi. I'm always up to meet another GRMer.
OK, so Sunday.
I slept like utter crap on Saturday night as there was still a noticeable amount of adrenaline pumping through my veins deep into the wee hours of the morning. I managed to get a few hours of shuteye and made it back to the track before 10:00 AM. I was expecting it to be total E36 M3show since they planned to run the carts and bikes in the same session, but the place was ghost town. Saturday had 170+ bike entries and about 70 cart entries. I'm betting Sunday had less than 75 total.
Only 5 bikes showed up for the Vintage 250 class, so we got lumped in with the Open Vintage and V-Twin classes, which both had two riders each. In our heat they started the Open Vintage guys and the V-Twins on the front row, and the full compliment of 250s on the second row. The entire heat was spent trying to get past the V-Twins and left a sour taste in all of our mouths. The V-Twins are fast on the straight, because all that power, but slow in the corners because they're 500lb bikes. Furthermore, they were super inconsistent on line choice. I had no intention of getting tangled up with 500lbs of Harley piloted by another 300lbs of man, so I was pretty meek about my passes. I was able to get up to second place after a lousy start, but Chris was way out in front having gotten past the pair of twins no problem. I am pretty good on the inside line, but lack the confidence to carry enough speed to make the outside line work.
Heat:
After the race we all went and whined to the race officials about how the heat went. There were plenty of classes running just two or three bikes, hell there was one heat race with just a single rider, so why were we getting lumped it? They begrudgingly agreed to let the Open Vintage bikes get first pick for starting position and then let the 250s pick their spot on the front row with the twins on the second row. It wasn't an ideal solution, but it was better than wasting our main fighting with bikes in a different class. It probably would have worked, too, but as we were staging for our main the Open Vintage and V-Twin guys got wind of what was happening and wanted no part of it. So, with everyone thoroughly disgruntled, they allowed the V-Twins and the Open bikes to have their own main and held us back in the staging area.
We had successfully whinged our way into our own main, and boy was it a good one. I had another kinda lousy start, but was able to slip inside of Cory and push him wide after a few laps and finished my pass down the straight. After that, it was a full wheel-to-wheel barrage of pass attempts for almost the rest of the main. Korry was able to hold off a full attack from Chris on the outside and me on the inside. Turns out this was his first win in the Vintage 250 class and he worked his ass off for it.
If you're only going to watch one race of mine, make it this one:
Oh yeah!! That looks like it would be a lot of fun!
You guys got pretty cozy in a couple of those corners! Looks like lots of scary fun.
I should probably give you all an update. I have been working on the bike pretty solidly for the last three weeks trying to get into a more respectable cosmetic condition.
A much as I like the more modern fiberglass cowl/rear fender with integrated seat that all the cool kids run, it's never really been my style. I am more a fan of a small and low seat and an aluminum rear fender. Probably because I was raised on Montesa Cotas and OSSA MARs. I opted to ditch the stock fiberglass rear fender and build mounts for an alloy trials fender I sourced off the internet.
I also grabbed some larger 9x11 number plates at the same time.
While definitely a step in the right direction, the huge stock seat wasn't really jiving with the image I had in my head. I called up Roxan at Range Needlework and we bounced some ideas around and I dropped the seat pan off with her the next day.
Just a few days later and she said I could come pick up my new seat.
New foam custom shaped as per our discussion, and a beautiful diamond stitch pattern in some lovely black leather. By far the most expensive part on the bike now, but man is it a handsome piece.
Of course there is no way I could sully Roxan's beautiful work by placing it next to my grotty and gross tank.
After stripping off all of the factory top coat and fixing the worst of the chips and blemishes, I hit the tank with some SEM Primer for Flexible Surfaces.
After several coats, a few more spot fixes, and some wet sanding, the tank was ready for it's first layer of real paint. I have been eyeballing the Roth Rattle Bombs for AGES and finally pulled the trigger on it for this tank after much deliberation.
I chose the Greasy Black Basecoat to go down first.
And I quickly followed that up with the Freekin Fuchsia metal flake.
The flake is neat. This was my first time working with anything like it. The flake is in a clear mixture, and it's just the flake itself that is colored. This gives you a lot of control with the level of flake you want. After 3/4 coats I had a level of flake that I was happy with and it looked nice and even without any light or patchy areas.
I followed the flake up with some SprayMax 2k clear. Another new thing to me. Catalyzed clear in a can. Cool stuff!
Oh Baby!
This thing is going to be looking FINE!
Love it! Me and Purple metalflake go back a ways.
The paint on the tank came out great, but it needed a little more pizzazz. I set about tracing the factory stripes into some vector software and made a trip down to Eugene to see some buddies and borrow some time on a vinyl cutter.
Gold flake look vinyl. 
I wetsanded all of the junk and runs out of the clear coat and set about installing my new race livery.
For just one level of greatness, I added an 1/8th inch white pinstripe as a border to further emulate the stock stripes.
And then I slapped on another 4 coats of clear on top of the whole thing.
I stuck the giant gold numbers down on my new number plates with a nice shadow effect courtesy of some gloss black vinyl, and stood in awe at what I had created for the first time.
She is looking proper now!
Things also done this break: new chrome bars, sparkling purple grips, lowered right side peg 2.5" to match lowered seating position, custom rear brake lever to match the lowered peg that matched the lower seating position, and +2 on the rear sprocket to keep the rpms in the power band in the corners.
Also, after a nearly 9 month battle, I finally got the title to my little rabbit pickup. Now I can roll out to the races in absolute style!
In reply to Ethnic Food-Wrap Aficionado :
You need a matching vintage race suit & helmet now!
That looks incredible- I can't believe it was done with spray cans! Now you've got me trying to come up with a project that needs metal flake...
Purple flake and two stroke are my favorite things. You're my hero.
Good Lord that looks incredible!! I need things to spraybomb now...
Thats spray bombs?!?!?! Good god, looks amazing.
You've done an amazing job on that bike. Where in the world did you find purple metalflake handgrips?...steal them off an old schwinn stingray? LOL
Missed you at The 1 Moto! Hadn't checked the thread so I didn't know you'd overhauled the bikes appearance. I was looking for the blue Ossa!
Had a lot of fun racing Friday and Saturday. Good folks and a fun track. Raced my Lazer XL350 in the Vintage Open and gave a Bultaco a try as well.
Ethnic Food-Wrap Aficionado said:
This thing is going to be looking FINE!
But...where did you put the googly eyes?
I'm going to join in with the "the whole thing is spray cans?" chant. That's awesome. I need to paint more things.
In reply to motoidiot :
I wasn't able to make it to the track Saturday night. I had some, uhh, mechanical trouble Friday night. By the time I got the bike mostly back together on Saturday I was already a few hours late and it was snowing heavily at my house. My better half made it pretty clear that there would be a marital strife if I drove my 38 year old E36 M3box VW on summer tires down to Salem and back in the snow and ice.
My time on track was pretty brief on Friday. We may have been on track with each other at some point, at the very least I know I was standing by you a few different times. You beat Joe Kopp on an Astro! That officially makes you one of the berkeleying fast guys!
I'm pretty bummed that I couldn't put in a full weekend on the bike. I'll give a full breakdown (ha!) of Friday nights events this evening.
In reply to nedc:
In reply to Mezzanine:
In reply to the rest of y'all:
Thanks for the encouragement on the tank! It's the single nicest paint project I have ever completed. It's really opened up my imagination to a lot of new options. I am really looking forward to the next paint project now!
Sorry to hear you had mechanicals. The weather did make it tough on Saturday. Totally understandable.
As for the Astro... I rode the #17 bike Friday night in the vintage 250 class. Got put on the back row for a jump (clutch was slipping, bike was creeping slightly) then made it to the front only to have the throttle cable pull out of the carb a lap later. First race on a Bultaco.
Saturday I rode the 23 bike in the Bultaco Masters class and got second behind Billie McDonald. To be clear, I was NOT in the Running of the Buls race with Joe Kopp. That was James Monaco on the 23 battling at the front with Andrew Luker. :)
I guess it's time to talk about the events that transpired Friday evening.
The bike was running great and I felt super comfortable in practice for the first timr. The new riding position and lowered peg make the bike so much more confidence inspiring. I felt like a completely different rider. All the vintage 250 guys were complaining about how greasy the track felt, but I felt like I was finally able to connect the slide coming into the turn seamlessly with a powerslide exiting the turn and felt very connected with the bike. The new gearing felt absolutely spot on and the bike was a damn rocket leaving the turns. I was able to keep up with, and even pass one of the Bultaco Astros that I went out with in my first practice session. I was totally jiving and ready for a night of racing!
I was in the second heat run group. Looks like motoidiot was in the first group. The second group was slightly smaller than the first; Korry, Myself, and 3 Astros. I had an absolutely E36 M3 start and left behind everyone else. I'm not sure if the bike bogged or if I got a bunch of wheelspin, but I was just left standing there by myself. There was some heavy contact and one of the Astros shot across the track right in front of me and absolutely hammered into Korry. It was a shockingly hard hit and I had a front row seat.
Both guys were a little slow getting up, as they should be. The Astro rider is no spring chicken; I'm pretty sure he is in his mid-60s. I'm sure he's going to be feeling it for a while.
After the crash, it was just me and two Astros. This time I left with the pack and had a good run into T1. I missed the 2-3 shift like a berkeleying idiot, found a false neutral, and got split off by both riders. I'm pretty sure I could have had the holeshot if I hadn't missed that shift, not that it matters much. I realized that my visor was up halfway down the back straight and took the time to put it down before entering T3/4. The Astros were certainly quicker than me, but they were slowing each other down and I felt like I could at least hang with them.
I ripped the Phantom out of T4 and pinned it down the straight.
BANG!
Piston, rod, and the rest of the rotating assembly all collided in a heap that used to be a very nice motor. Best guess is the connecting rod left first, which left the piston alone to go about life on it's own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyFw_Vv7n5U&feature=youtu.be
Not much survived, unfortunately. Piston, rod, crank, cases, and cylinder liner are write-offs. The head, primary drive components, clutch, ignition, and transmission are about all that will make it into the next iteration.
Absolutely berkeleying scattered.
I don't know that I have ever seen full separation on a connecting rod on a two stroke. Consider this fully sent.
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn. I'm so sorry, that sucks.
Yowza, the bike looks amazing; great job on the paint!
I missed 1 Moto due to this damn winter cold....maybe next year.
That engine failure is impressive! Hopefully the rebuild goes smoothly!
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