Race Bike Build

Here's my build article. The objective was to set up my 2012 ZX6R as a race legal bike with as little done to it as possible and as little permanent modification as possible. I didn't bother throwing a lot of performance parts at it rather I focused on meeting the OMRRA requirements as simply as possible.

After my Ninja getting stolen and dropped on both sides, then crashed at RMP when someone did a bad pass and dropped anchor in front of me, it was looking kinda rough.

Starting condition, more or less complete but banged up fairings. As I started taking them off I found that they were held together more or less by friction and a lot of the connectors were broken, I guess I won't be putting them back on.

Front End all Naked

Test Fitting the front/top fairing. I went with MotoAndes due to price and construction. For $400ish shipped you get fairly tough fiberglass fairings that allow use of the kickstand.

I watched a ton of the videos from Sportbike Track Gear that show how to drill and fit race bodywork. I would have sucked at this part much worse if I hadn't. More or less the drill dots on the fairings were right on. The places where they weren't it was due to bits and pieces of additional equipment like the case savers that added extra bulk. The main thing I learned here is measure three times drill once, and use a unibit. Also don't work on a bike with low blood sugar (something I struggle with).

I was pretty sloppy getting the belly pan holes and the corresponding holes drilled right. Something to make better over the winter. Because of this my Dzus fasteners like to vibrate loose....

Quick rattle can job. I was interrupted by the rain and ran out of paint. The upper looks bad.

I relocated the regulator rectifier to where the headlight used to be.

Half done fairings. I took it to New Racer School like this.

Lever guard installed. It would later vibrate loose and I'd loose half of it.

Little things like this lock have to be removed. I don't want to permanently modify anything so it took some work.

Test fitting the tail. Actually installing the tail was easier than the rest of the fairings.

Installing the case protectors was mostly pretty easy. Pull out half the bolts, install the cover, reinstall new bolts with LocTite.

I ordered an aluminum bolt for the coolant drain by mistake, then broke it and had to remove my water pump to extract it. Dumb dumb. Bought a titanium one and installed that. This was one of those frustration moments where I really really wanted to quit.

Out with the green, in with the pink (water wetter). This took a long time to flush all the green out. It was messy and frustrating as well.

I used stencils to put my novice race number on the tail. When I go back in the winter to do the paint properly I'll paint it like a number plate or whatever.

Safety wiring. I used as many pre-drilled Pro-Bolt bolts as possible because I am awful at using power tools.

Then there was this thing. As soon as I opened it I realized that they want you to drill into the underside of the swingarm and tap the holes. Um, no. I ended up getting one from a racer that works with sheet metal that goes on with the spool.

More Safety wire.

Had to drill this one. :( Broke a drill bit on it.

After my multi piece guard failed on the Friday trackday I bought this one piece Bonamici guard which is sexy.

Nobody likes to admit how much they spent on this silly hobby, so lets do that.

Fairings - 450ish (purchased MotoAndes)

windscreen - $22 (ebay) + $10 bolts

oil drain bolt, oil fill bolt (moto-d) $46

pinch bolts, radiator drain bolt (pro bolt) $38+15

safety wire washers (pit posse) $10

safety wire/pliers - 25

drill bits - $7

unibit - $35

lever guard (gratis from DW15)

lever guard to replace the one that fell apart because I didn't loctite it (Bonamici ) $139

case protectors 105 (purchased yana Shiki)

water wetter $10

Oil filter with safety wire hole (k&n) $5

oil $30

dzus fasteners $32

Fork Seals: $26 + $195 service cost (I'm going to have to re-do this because the shop screwed it up!)

toe deflector - 60 (required drilling, didnt use)

no drill toe deflector from Jason Iverson- $40 

vinyl numbers - $20

Total so far: $1320

Things to note. This took me about 40 hours mostly working in the evenings after work. I'm not a great mechanic so these things took me a lot of time, effort, and frustration. A good mechanic that had done a race bike build before could have done this in, maybe 8 hours? This also could have been done cheaper if I was good at drilling things and drilled OEM bolts instead of buying ProBolt. I could have used one of the beat up OEM windscreens I have to save a few bucks. Its tough to find a serviceable used fairing kit for the price of the MotoAndes kits, so that'd be a hard place to cut cost corners effectively. For my first race round I used the DOT tires instead of using slicks. I'll probably stick with DOTS for the next round as well to keep the learning curve down.

Vanport Days: The Ballad of Lazyeye

 During World War Two a temporary housing complex for workers was built along Portland's north side. After the war some left, some stayed, and some new folks moved in. In 1948 the Columbia river flooded Vanport and it was never rebuilt. Intrepid automobile racers petitioned the city and started using the former roads of Vanport as a race track. Portland International Raceway was officially formed in 1960 and has been reconfigured several times since. In 1972 the Oregon Motorcycle Road Racing Association was formed and has used PIR ever since.

I've been interested in trying formalized Motorsports for a while now. Various things have held me back, injury, money, mental shape, and generally being slow as heck. In June of this year I got cut off at at trackday and crashed. For a while some of my racer friends had been insisting that the level of professionalism is better in an actual race as opposed to the GoPro Hero who decided the first session of the day on a cold/damp track in B group was an excellent time to put down some hot laps, cut me off, then drop anchor. While my shoulder was recovering I had a thought, what if the next crash is a career-ending crash and I never get to try the stuff I've been putting off? My health generally gets worse every year (I have pretty bad asthma), what if I put it off so long I can't physically hope to ever do it?

I made the decision to do it and signed up for New Racer School in July just before leaving for Laguna Seca. I had to be sure my shoulder had recovered enough to do it, and I was crippled by indecision. To say I had many sleepless nights along this path is an understatement.

 The first part of NRS is classroom held at MotoCorsa in Portland. They go through the rules and the expectations for how to race safely. Part two is held during a Friday trackday at PIR and is combined classroom and on track drills/evaluation, culminating in a race simulation. If your bike is ready and you pass, you can race that weekend.

My bike wasn't ready, so I was just in it for the class.

Thursday night I couldn't sleep. It was noisy and brightly lit at PIR that night and my mind wouldn't calm down from work stress, Portland stress, and worry. Friday seemed to drag on and on in only the fashion that a challenging day after little sleep can.

The drills include how to keep your line while in close quarters with another rider, passing safely, race starts, red flag procedure, and other things I've already forgotten. The race starts were probably the most fun. At the end we had a race simulation that was cut short when one of the students went dirt biking out of turn four and went down.

In the end I demonstrated that I can be on track safely, and I earned my novice race license and the number "793". I can't pick a number until I graduate from the novice program, which by my track lap times is probably a statistical unlikelihood.

After a month of further prep my bike was ready for the August OMRRA round (see my build article). I Signed up for the Friday track day, Novice 600 race and 600 Sportsman race on Saturday. The last little bits of bike prep like numbers and kickstand removal I did at the track Friday evening before wheeling my bike over to tech. One thing I had been agonizing over and literally losing sleep over was whether my bike would pass. The Motorcycle gods smiled on me and it passed. With nearly the last thing to worry about done, I left PIR, checked into a motel, cleaned up, ate a hot meal, and passed the heck out.

I knew that I was not competitive, this first weekend was all about just showing up and not crashing. In that regard race day was all easy mode because all I had to do was show up, ride two practice sessions, and ride two races. All the prep work was done.

While collecting my transponder I had one of those WTF moments. A kid was riding his scooter around the paddock getting all the racers to autograph his helmet.

I was more or less right, although I made plenty of mistakes. Here they are in non-order:

-In my first race I went to the wrong row on the track and then...

-Stalled my motorcycle

-Forgot my fire extinguisher (kind of a required item)

-Didn't bring enough water (ran out mid afternoon)

-Didn't loctite my brake lever guard and it fell apart

There's a few other mistakes I made which I've already forgotten about. But I didn't crash or cause anyone else to. During the Sportsman race someone ran off during the warm up lap, and there were several other minor crashes, but I didn't crash.

There was one major problem with the bike that cost me time and confidence. I had the forks rebuilt by a local shop and they did something wrong. I was only getting half my suspension travel and horrible stiction. Oh well, something else to fix. At the end what I set out to do I accomplished.

While cleaning up my pit I saw these ladies posing for a third who was taking pictures of them. I snapped a few and sent them to my trackday buddies, to which one responded "That's it, I need to start racing". I wonder if this is what OMRRA president Chris Page wanted when he asked us to use social media to get more new racers...

Laguna Seca MotoAmerica/WSBK 2019

OK I admit, we slabbed it. Dad's riding plans and mine got scrubbed, and I invited my special lady friend, so we slabbed. But on the bright side we took my Twin-Turbo V6 AWD sport sedan and I spanked the corners on the Interstate in Northern California pretty hard. I also might have drag raced a Tesla near San Jose and spanked that too (street racing is bad, mmmkay?).

This will be pretty picture heavy because if you read my last Laguna Seca blog, this was a pretty similar experience just without the ride down there part. I'll focus on the human element of this trip, and as so my story really starts at a Black Bear Diner in Salinas, California...

As we walked in to the Diner I saw off to our right at an extended table the unmistakable uniforms of a privateer race team. After a quick check of the MotoAmerica website I elbowed my dad and said "That's Max Flinders and the Thrashed Bike Racing team." Dad said something like "Think they'd have a problem with me talking to them?" I said, probably not since they're privateers, and off he went. Dad bent their ears for a while and then I got to explain the differences between Superbikes and Stock 1000 to him later. This kind of exchange was pretty common all weekend long at the track as well. We visited Thrashed Bike the next day in the Paddock for pictures and more chit chat.

MotoAmerica  is the pinnacle of American Motorcycle Road Racing, but in a lot of ways its still just the pinnacle of club racing. In that regard, besides the top 10 factory backed riders in MA, you can go up to almost every other rider and or pit and say hi, and bend their ear about their adventure.

A few years ago a Junior Cup rider made a post on a Facebook group for Trackday riders about selling shirts to pay for a trip to Europe to race RC390 cup. I said what the heck and bought a shirt, then again in 2018. Meanwhile that rider has gotten past the Jr Cup and is now in the middleweight Twins Cup on an FZ-07r. I knew that Draik Beauchamp was going to be there, so I wore his 2018 shirt, walked up to his pit and said...

"Hi, I'm one of your sponsors!". They laughed, I laughed, and we talked racing with him and his family.

Of course we spent some time with our friends from Southern Oregon and New Zealand.

The food selection is pretty good at Laguna. They bring in a bunch of chain places like California Pizza Kitchen, and a bunch of food trucks for the fans of Mexican, Thai, and Indian. The beer is spendy, and one of these years I'll remember to bring my own (because they don't bother you about that).

Among others in the Vendor row we bothered the Shoei dealer about my Dad's dissatisfaction with their helmet (which they sorted out and now he's happy) and my Dad bugged the CHP motorcycle officers about how impressed with their riding he was. They have a parade lap session led by CHP guys on Harleys and they were hauling donkeys through the corkscrew.

A visit to Laguna isn't complete without going to Ducati Island and eyeballing the bikes parked there and on display. I sat on some Ducatis and further thought about getting one.

Of course we watched racing. Laguna doesn't have great placement of Jumbotrons, so you're mostly stuck watching the complex of corners you sit at. The grandstands like to reflect the sun in a way that will burn your legs. Seriously. Unfortunately the placement of the podium celebration this year precludes grandstand viewers from seeing it.

Photographing from the grandstands with a kit lens is tough.

Its easier to get a good photo during the victory lap.

This year Honda put on a lounge called the Honda Hangout. For the admission price of signing up for their marketing and answering their questionnaire you get free drinks, shade, and a big screen to watch (and a free hat and bag). I also won a shirt at trivia which turned out to be a girl's shirt, so I won a shirt for my SO. While we were there I bugged the hapless employees about the poor performance by Big H in WSBK and MA, and how they need to sort things out.

My special lady trying out the Honda Monkey at the Hangout

The importer of the Ohvale mini GP bikes RiseMoto had a display tent and also had kids on the little bikes showing off how cool they are in the lot. There will be a MotoAmerica Ohvale cup for little kids soon. We are behind the rest of the world in road racing because we don't start kids racing young, this is part of rebuilding our talent pool.

We talked to Keith Debrino (father of MA racer Andy) in the pits. Its neat to see a fellow Oregonian there.

Jeremy Coffey's (Washington) bike. Dad said it looked like a girl's bike.

I'm torn on what the caption this one. Either "My what a big radiator you have" or "She's Naked!"

The crowds there are in a way a who's who of the west coast motorcycle industry. I saw people I recognized from trackday providers to west coast road racers. Ironically our last meal on the road at a Diner in Willows California (home of Thunderhill Raceway Park, the happiest place on earth) we were seated and two guys sat in the booth next to us. A moment later I realized it was none of than Washington based Fly Racing rider Sam Verderico, who was happy to talk to us about the weekend and being a professional racer.

I'm a little torn between going to Laguna Seca next year and going to MotoAmerica at The Ridge Motorsports Park in Washington (much closer!), or both.

Bucket Listing

The problem with creating a bucket list and actively trying to notch things off of it is that you end up adding new things. Well I did Prudhoe Bay, what's next?

Just off the top of my head:
-Ride Monument Valley
-Ride to Dawson, YT and do the Sour Toe Cocktail
-Get my race license and complete a season
-Ride every track on the West Coast (OK I bet I would be so burned out by finishing that)
-Ride Tanacross raceway near Tok, AK
-Ride the Black Hills
-See Europe. Ride Europe.

If you ever read my Autobiography its called "Making Up For Lost Time". There's a chapter called "Never Enough" which describes my twisted outlook on life. In a few years if I'm still at the same company I'll have 20 vacation days a year. I suppose at that point going on a long bucket list tour might make sense, but doing it without my quite significant other would be lonely.

I'll wrap this up quickly so I can ride off into the sunset.

Coming Full Circle

Oregon Raceway Park in Grass Valley, Oregon is like someone took a paving machine then randomly drove it around the prairie for three miles. The corners don't fit into normal conventions, everything is off camber, many turns are blind, and there are deep seems in the pavement filled with tar snakes. In many ways its the closest race track in the Northwest to the flow of a road, totally random with some dangers.

In 2015 my bad throttle control while chasing an instructor lead to my life altering crash there. I broke the hell out of my collarbone and everything else in my body just never moved right afterwards. My hips, back, neck, and shoulders just don't move like they did before the wreck. Worse yet I just never have gotten back my youthful ability to push and chase. Call it PTSD or call it just bad anxiety from the crash, makes no difference.

After the crash in '15 it took me until 2017 to return to the track. 2017 at the track for me was full of anxiety, every corner and every time someone did a close pass my I lost focus and fear took over. Even though I returned to the track in '17 and '18, I still hadn't returned to where it happened, Oregon Raceway Park.

Earlier this year one of my riding buddies had a pretty bad off and broke the hell out of his leg. Afterwards he started selling off the trackdays for the year he'd purchased. Nobody in the group was biting on the June 15-16 ORP days, and it seemed like a sign that I needed to go face my demons. The difficulty of course was that it was the weekend immediately following my return from Alaska and immediately preceding my June 22 at the Ridge. No rest for the wicked.

One inconvenient aspect of ORP is really just how much in the middle of nowhere it is. Its four hours from my house, either over the mountain or through Portland traffic, there's no practical lodging near it, there's no restaurants near it, and there's no gas. You need to bring everything with you. As it turns out I'm not half bad with logistics and Friday night I arrived late, but I arrived, and set up my tent. RV people love to run their damned generators and lights all night, so I didn't get a lot of sleep in my not noise or light proof tent.

The next day The Dalles crew and two from my neck of the woods showed up, we set up pits, teched, and waited for the track to go live.

Fortunately for my demons MotoFit Group allows everyone to take a sighting lap during Green (the slowest run group) group's first session. As it turns out, everything I remember about ORP is still true.

Throughout the day I put down the slowest lap times of Blue group (intermediate) and occasioanlly worked with a coach. My gripe about control riders is when they pass you and tap their tail, or look at you, and then take off at a million times faster a pace than you can possibly follow. Like seriously dude, if you want me to follow you and get better, go my pace plus a tiny bit and ease it up slowly. By the end of the day I wasn't the slowest anymore, just the send or third slowest.

The day finished with the traditional MotoFit Group pot luck dinner. MFG puts a lot of work into the little things, like adjust the groups by skill level and putting on a pot luck BBQ. Their regulars really treat each other like family. After dinner I walked around and enjoyed a Central Oregon Sunset.

Sunday I was pretty wore out (ORP is a tiring track to ride) and ended up leaving early so I could get home at a reasonable time. I haven't conquered my demons, but at least they know I'm not going to sit around any longer. As it turns out, fear aside, I don't particularly care for ORP. Its too blind and off camber to be really fun, its too far away, and the local amenities are sparse (I'm spoiled). One thing I must point out is that the new bathrooms and showers at ORP are really great, so it has that going for it.

On the bright side my bike came home in the condition it left in, the only casualty of the weekend was my shade tent that was destroyed by a high speed wind gust Sunday afternoon.

"You're just going to keep tearing away at yourself until you realize what you are, until you come full circle." - Col. Samuel Trautman US Army