My half arsed F400 nc30

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CB1pod70
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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by CB1pod70 » Wed Apr 12, 2017 10:11 am

At least you didn't just resort to Pound Shop matt black like most of seemed to towards the end of last year. Race bikes only need to look good from a distance, so don't worry. See you at Silverstone, I'll be on no.17

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28hodge
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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by 28hodge » Fri Apr 21, 2017 8:44 pm

READY!

Kinda, still some jobs to do, oil change put all the exhaust springs on, drain the anti freeze and replace with water. Then sort out all the spares as its been over a year since we went racing and all my stuff that I take needs organising. Which sounds about as much fun as poking myself in the eye.



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28hodge
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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by 28hodge » Fri Apr 21, 2017 8:47 pm

CB1pod70 wrote:At least you didn't just resort to Pound Shop matt black like most of seemed to towards the end of last year. Race bikes only need to look good from a distance, so don't worry. See you at Silverstone, I'll be on no.17

Cb1 are you on the test day? As I've not ridden the bike, or any bike since this happened......



I've booked on to the full test day, so will spend 3 days riding a track that bores the tits off me.

Still, pretty excited to be going racing again though.

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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by CB1pod70 » Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:33 pm

Yes, I'm doing the test day too. Be the first race of the year for me too since fracturing my scaphoid so going to take it steady....
Did a trackday at Lydden on Saturday and there's a few things still to sort out with the suspension.

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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by dazmoto » Sun Apr 30, 2017 9:47 pm

Thanks for lending me the screen I'll pop it back to you at donnington top man

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28hodge
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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by 28hodge » Mon May 01, 2017 10:58 pm

No problem Darren I'll see you at dono

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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by 28hodge » Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:06 pm

Ok I’ve been slack, life is getting in the way of updating this.

However as I am about to head off to brands for the GP round tomorrow morning and I have not given an update since before Silverstone, I’ll do my best to give you a catch up.

Silverstone.

Ok I am shit round Silverstone anyway, so this added to the fact that I’d not ridden a bike for a year and the last time I did I went bouncing through the gravel breaking my leg, always meant laptimes and results were going to be poor. And they were.

However I did enjoy being on the bike and in the pits again, and we progressively got better, had some decent battles and made some passes, biggest thing that hurt me was the opening laps, I was getting good starts then getting beaten up and being way too cautious in those opening laps, shipping places id made up off the start left right and centre.

The best thing we did at Silverstone was to get the bike on the dyno and get a print out, it felt like turd on the testday with the low down fuelling being terrible. However the dyno wasn’t available till Saturday and as we were early in the schedule we couldn’t get it on there till after race 1.

The dyno confirmed this as it produced a shitty 54BHP and was way too rich throughout. (The Bemsee dyno is stingy but still 54 is poor) so with limited time till race 2 I decided that although the bike was not great, it was safe and not lean, was going to do no harm to itself so decided to leave it alone and sort the jetting out on Sat night after race 2.

That done I went out in warm up to make sure it was ok and it felt 100 times better, we had changed needles and dropped the mains by quite a few sizes. It made the world of difference. But I wanted to make sure it wasn’t now rich.

Back on the dyno and we were doing a lot better, 60Bhp, nice and smooth and still ever so slightly rich. Happy with that.

The races I purposefully didn’t put the cameras on the bike and wasn’t going to check the laptimes either but failed on that as curiosity got the better of me there. The only real aim was to have fun, finish 4 races and have some battles.

All the above was achieved, the results were poor as were the laptimes. I managed to get down to a 1.23.779 but that was my only lap in the 23’s, though I had quite a few low 24’s. That said I was still 1.217secs slower than my PB.

Like I said though, I don’t think I could expect too much all things taken into account.

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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by 28hodge » Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:20 pm

So with Sillystone done we had a long break as F400’s missed the next round and were back out again 6 weeks later at Donington.

In that time I had the shock out of the back of the bike and after a chat with Rick Oliver I added a bit more length to it to give some more rear ride height, then packed up and set off to Donington.

Although this is where I crashed last year I was looking forward to Dono as it’s a great track, and it wasn’t the tracks fault I came off last year or really my fault so I had no real added apprehension going back there, if it had been the first round I came back to after crashing maybe I’d of had a bit of nervousness but as it wasn’t all was fine.

No test day at Dono means we get a free practice where quali would normally be, then quali where race one normally is and then race 1 where we would normally have race 2.

I don’t agree with it, when I first started I couldn’t afford to do test days so never got to learn the tracks really before quali, but that’s the way it is.

It was baking hot, and a stunning couple of day’s weather wise, and the racing from my point of view was pretty hot too with some good battles.

I had the cameras on for this round and as we were on the national circuit rather than the international I had no PB laptime to consider which was pretty nice in a way.

Quali didn’t go great but there were so many bikes on track I was constantly getting held up.

So here’s race 1


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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by 28hodge » Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:43 pm

As at Silverstone, an Ok start ruined by being way to soft in the opening corners/lap to lap and a half, and this makes life hard as I am stuck behind a couple riders who I feel I am quicker than but im a bit to hesitant to make a move. I manage to lose the toe of the group in front a little bit. Andy Moxon comes past and seems to have better pace than me so I tag onto him and try to get hime to drag me forward.

This seems to work I catch back through but then start getting held up again. I seem to be able to take yards out of those around me into the final chicane and into turn one, which is redgate where I crashed last year. I also seem to carry good speed around the old hairpin. I manage to get past the 2 stroke as I think he misses a gear coming out of redgate and with him outta the way I seem to be able to get a clear run and move forward.

I manage to nip past another into the chicane right before the last lap, As we come over the line to get the last lap flag I can see Andy in front but honestly I think he’s got too much of a gap on me, but I decide to give it all ive got and try and get him.

We catch him over the course of the lap, but as we exit coppice I think hes got too much on me to allow me a chance of a out braking move into the chicane, however suddenly towards the end of the straight we make yards on him and pull past before the braking zone.

Job done.

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Re: My half arsed F400 nc30

Post by 28hodge » Thu Jul 13, 2017 3:00 pm

I enjoyed the race, I went forward and made some nice passes, its just nice battling and dicing. Andy is in the same garage as me and his bike was getting hot so was down on power towards the end which is why we managed to get past on the final straight.

It was so hot during the race and I was dripping after it so I went straight for a shower as we had no more racing for the day, After my shower I laid in the back of my van in a pair of shorts with the doors open, I was buggered just from the heat, let alone the riding. We had a bbq on sat night with some of the others in the F400, the best part of this was we had to nip into castle Donington to get some burgers and bits, and walking into a fully air conditioned Co-Op was utter bliss.

Race 2


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