We use to wash Hawaii Raceway Park, not the whole track just the oil spills from the Drag Racers. These are before and after photo’s of the curbs at the exit of T-6 and T-9 at Auto Club Speedway where I ride with Fastrack Riders and race with WERA. I did not want the dirt to be kicked onto the track so I cleaned the curbs.

 

I’m looking forward to three days of riding the Iceman Ninja starting tomorrow.  I’m going to use the curbs!

Charlie and Marney riding their BMW K1300S on Palomar.  Looks like a tricky down hill turn.  You don’t have to see the LE stickers to know they have good valving and the correct spring rates.

Most people over tighten nuts and bolts. Sometimes they really over tighten them. Using a torque wrench would reduce this problem. Practicing with a torque wrench builds muscle memory so you would be more likely to get close to the correct torque when you don’t use a torque wrench. Using a short wrench is another way to reduce the over tighten problem.

But over tight bolts are not all your fault. Mostly, but not all. Bolts get longer when they warm up and shorter when they cool. When your brakes warm up, so do the caliper bolts. The longer the bolt, the more their length can change. Radial mounted calipers have long bolts that are warmed by the hot calipers.

When you change your wheels at the track, you tighten the warm caliper bolts. When these bolts cool they get shorter and tighter.

I warmed one of these bolts up, it’s length increased from 71.34 mm cold to 71.53 mm warm. I installed this warm bolt into it’s caliper and torqued it to 12 foot pounds. After it cooled, I needed 24 ft/lbs of torque to remove it.

You are already aware that hot things expand and cold things contract. Put these tools and this knowledge to good use.

MG takes photo’s too.  He just posted up his stuff from WERA West @ Vegas.  You can buy them here:

http://www.motorbikeroadracing.smugmug.com/

You have to copy and paste, I don’t have links set up.

This Saturday at Douglas Motorcycles I’ll be giving free Suspension Seminars, adjusting suspension and making podcasts with MG. Details on Face Book here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1709565295952562/

Suspension Seminars at 11:30 am, 1:30 pm & 3 pm.

During the past five years, Lindemann Engineering’s Ed Sorbo has been working on a new formula to more accurately calculate the correct spring rate and pre-load for a given rider and motorcycle weight.

Sorbo first realized there could be a better way after analyzing Jim Lindemann’s notes on spring dimensions and more specifically the relationship between a spring’s spiral shape, circumference and diameter.

This led Sorbo to study potential applications for the famous formula Pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, 3.14 etc., in the context of motorcycle suspension behavior.

The results of Sorbo’s initial theoretical calculations appeared to be simply random numbers, like the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) left over from the Big Bang. CMB is so random that it is used to encrypt secure messages.

In a mind-bending eureka moment, Sorbo realized that the CMB is Pi. The reason no one noticed before is simply that we can’t yet see back to the very beginning of the Big Bang to see the three that comes before the decimal point.

Sadly, this discovery of the answer to life, the universe and everything has not led to a better spring rate calculation, or anything else useful, but pure research is like that sometimes. Surely someone will eventually find a way to utilize the knowledge that Pi surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.

We all know that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is 42. If you don’t, please read all the books you can find by the eminent British scientist, Douglas Adams.

Photo Caption: Ed Sorbo has been through the desert on a scooter with no springs.