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...