Saturday, April 28 – Sunday, April 29
NZCMRR Championship Round 3 & NZPCRA Paul Dobbs Memorial Series Round 2. 2.2km track (track 2)
We Finally managed to get the bike to a meeting and compete after a long two years of messing about. Blayes and I packed the van up on Friday and left at mid day having booked our selves in to the Anchorage Resort Motel Apartments close to town and the track.
We rocked up at the track at 8 am on Saturday morning and was offered to share a space in the pit garage with Chris Hyland and a mixed bunch of Triumph and Norton machines, with their very friendly and helpful owners.
The weather was not too bad, although the track temperature was pretty cold and there were a lot of damp patches from the rain earlier. I was not too bothered as I would be taking it cautiously as I had to run the bike in, was on brand new tyres and I had to learn how to ride the bike as this was my first time ever on a right hand gear change, save the short run down pit lane at Pukekohe earlier in the year.
After dry sumping and heat soaking the bike as advised by Bob Nesbit, I rolled it out ready for the first practice. What tremendous fun if not a little challenging getting my brain to jump out of auto pilot and tell my right foot to do the gear changing and my left foot to leave the rear brake lever alone. I had taken the the trouble to slacken the rear brake off just in case. Three sessions later I was feeling pretty comfortable and had qualified eighth place on the grid. On Sunday The first race was brilliant fun, but I kept doing all sorts of things wrong, poor lines, selecting neutral going into bends, selecting the wrong gear, trying to change with the left foot etc. Blayes helped me out with my racing line and in the second race this improved matters hugely, although I was now continually scraping my feet and the foot pegs. Furthermore I was aware of the bike feeling as though the clutch was slipping but was not convinced as I had no bench mark to compare the feeling to. Of course I should have spoken to someone with more experience about this but alas did not. 
In race three feeling much more comfortable I set off to ride the nuts off the bike, but could not get it to pull and now I was convinced that I had clutch trouble which I found to be so as when I pulled into the pits I looked down to see billowing smoke coming from the clutch, Blayes said he could smell the bike approaching. We quickly dowsed the bike with water to cool things down, after some discussion and with the help of Neville Bull we pulled the clutch apart. Unfortunately the central locking nut had previously been tightened up cross threaded and was useless. I decided to call it a day not wanting to create any further problems by bodging it. We packed up, said our good byes and headed for Auckland.
Things to do before the next meeting: belt drive conversion with the commando clutch installed, rear sets, a more comfortable tank and a new more practical oil tank, adjustable clip-ons and a race fairing.
teamamadora 