Wave Fronts

Introducing Queen Ann

This is my street bike "Queen Ann." Ann is a mostly stock 2006 Yamaha 50th anniversary YZFR6. The two significant mods (fitted by the extremely capable ladies and gents at the Triangle Cycles Durham shop) consist of a full set of sliders and an extra engine management computer. The sliders are the "protrusions" out the ends of the handlebars, out the sides where the engine is, and out the ends of the rear axle. They prevent the plastic and other expensive bits of the bike from hitting the pavement in case the bike falls over. I don't recall how expensive the sliders were, but they paid for themselves in the first few weeks, as I literally fumbled the bike onto its right side in my driveway and later had a more exciting situation that ended with the bike falling on its left side. The extra computer (tucked near the battery under the main seat) is a Dynojet Research Power Commander. As I understand it, this little box provides additional, user-programmable control over the fuel injection, allowing fine tuning tailored to the stock engine or in combination with other mods like a full race exhaust system. There is a second unit for making the ignition timing tunable, but that (and an alternative exhaust system) will have to wait for the point in time that I consider replacing my track R6 EverEvoRevolution (just "Ever" here) with Ann.

Here's how I imagine Queen Ann*. You see, this queen is powerful, yet gentle when not aroused. She purrs like a big cat and is quite happy to take me down my street at 25mph in top gear (something my Metralla of the 60s was not at all happy to do). She starts up easily, even on a cold morning. Yet when I twist this cat's wrist with mine, she changes magically from a gentle cat to barely tamed beast. The most impressive moment I've had so far, conducted on a completely empty piece of expressway when I was sure I couldn't hurt anybody if something went wrong, was dropping Ann down to 2nd gear at "expressway speed" then rolling the throttle up to full. This combination of speed and gears had Ann's engine turning in the rpm band where maximum power is generated (somewhere around 110hp). Ann and rider came to about 550 pounds for a power to weight ratio of 1:5. The latest Porsche Turbo (that I could look up cruising Wikipedia) has a 480hp engine and weights around 3500 pounds for a power to weight ratio of 1:7.2. In summary, the resulting acceleration when I twisted my wrist was astonishing, and it was time to shift into 3rd gear approximately one eyeblink later. This gave me a hint of the fun waiting for me at VIR, Barber, and CMP when I can take Ever for visits in my truck. I'm making some minor repairs to Ever and getting it prepared with it's new "colors" now and I'll share snapshots of at the point I've made real progress.

* This is a sculpture outside the museum at Barber Motorsports Park east of Birmingham, Alabama. If you have an interest in motorcycles, a visit to this museum should be on your list.

Posted at 08:12AM Oct 26, 2006 by microwaves in Motorcycle Road Racing  |  Comments[0]

Bringing back old muscle memories

Contrasting the Yamaha R6 with a Bultaco Metralla has been an interesting exercise, both mental and muscular, as the R6 has about 120 pounds on the Metralla and is taller in the saddle, if memory serves, so I can only move the R6 with the ends of my feet. My left forearm muscles aren't sore, but my right hand is positively weak from practice of resisting the throttle return spring for extended periods of time. Did they have to use recycled bear trap parts for that spring? Must be some safety feature for a Yamaha exec's slide set ("Chilren can't possibly hold throttle for long. Excellent conclusion: lesser probability of inopportune episode involving inadvisable acceleration or velocity!").

Working out the stock R6 ratios, for the factory suggested 600 mile break-in rpm limit of 10k I get 110mph in 6th gear (i.e. 109mph stays on the right side of the recommended limit). That turns out to be close to the top end of a Metralla on level ground. I wonder if I owned any goggles or a face plate for my open face helmet while running the Metralla at it's maximum speed? Oh, it had to be goggles, 'cause I wore contact lenses then and they wouldn't stay in with wind blasts, even with a snap-on shield. In fact I recall now that one lense fell out once and landed on my fuel tank (how is it possible I never lost a lens in my life?).

But the "break-in limit" for the R6 seems perfect, as based on the data it appears the R6 engine is only starting to wake up at that speed. This is good. I need lots of experience with handling to get to the "second skin" level of familiarity I achieved with the Metralla before experiencing peak power on the R6. There seems to be plenty of time, as I'm still scraping together money for body armor, gloves, boots, and well armored leathers with puck holders that match the safety level of my X11 helmet. Oh, and I know now that the leathers need to fit me like they were sprayed on. I can stand a lot of hassle with getting one piece suits on and off in return for not being beaten bodily by any loose bits flapping. I need to be able to stay almost fully relaxed and avoid distractions at all times to tame an R6. This leans me toward a visit to BTK for a final fitting. I'll have figured out where my weight and shape is going to stabilize at by then (weight oscillating between 175 and 178, but my "love handles" aren't burned off completely and I haven't started strength training yet).

I'm living each day as fully as I can.

Posted at 08:11AM Sep 10, 2006 by microwaves in Motorcycle Road Racing  |  Comments[2]

Resumed Hobby

This is "EverEvoRevolution", a heavily modified 2001 Yamaha R6 lovingly prepared and raced by Dwayne in Georgia and now in my barn:

My first steady job was delivering newspapers in Montgomery, Alabama. My Dad was helping put together a pair of SAGE computers at Gunter AFB and I needed money to build a chemistry lab in the little storage building on the back of our carport. But delivering newspapers while walking is only fun if you have an apartment route and I wouldn't have that until years later in Huntsville (while my Dad was helping SCI deliver S band transponders into the Saturn V Instrument Unit). I threw my first route on the fat-wheeled bicycle my folks bought me but in addition to finely powdered zinc and sulfur and the gas fittings for a Bunsen burner, my first route underwrote a three speed bike. I was the only person in my part of Montgomery with one of these, as far as I could tell ("Is that one of them Furrin bikes, Leroy?"). I still remember being unable to resist testing the front brake while going down the driveway and doing a reverse wheelie and having to swing off the handlebars as the bike was momentarily describing a 70 degree angle. OK: brakes powerful enough! With generator-driven lights that bike took me all over town, singing under the streetlights with generator whine. And I could go up steep hills without much effort, passing the other kids pushing their single speed, fat-tired bikes.

But I naturally wanted more, and in Alabama at the time it was possible to get a motorcycle-only license at age 14, as long as the power was "governed to 5 horsepower or less." So soon after my 14th birthday (in Huntsville) I was riding an 80cc Yamaha street bike home in a very wobbly manner, stalling the engine more than once as I learned to slip the clutch from a standing start. It took me about one minute to remove the "governor", a plastic restrictor plate in the carb. The chem lab had been replaced by an electronics workshop and I recall one of my early purchases with my motorcycle-augmented newspaper career was an EICO 5' oscilloscope kit, which gave me absolute respect for high voltages when I put my elbow on the CRT plate potential. Much later I would learn to the name for this kind of episode: one trial learning!

Now luckily for me I had a riding buddy: Billy Elston. Bill was selling oil drilling tools the last time we argued politics 10 seconds after saying "hello" on the phone a few years back. But as kids we were soul mates and Bill's slightly older age kept me out of a lot of narrow places as we rode our bikes on every piece of pavement and most dirt and gravel roads in Madison county Alabama (we practically memorized where all the stones were placed). But Bill was actually the wild man. Our second bikes were identical 150cc Honda two cylinder four strokes and I once died a thousand deaths watching Bill stand up on his seat and hold his arms out as we rode side by side down a street at maybe 35mph. It seemed to take him five minutes to complete that stunt and get back onto his seat and I remember thinking "I'm going to see my friend maimed or killed." But, apart from a broken arm when a car turned left across his lane one time, Bill made it through the motorcycle experience without injury and my approach to riding settled down to developing learning strategies for minimizing risk while maximizing thrill factor and skill level.

As Billy was finishing high school I got my third bike, an Isle of Man TT replica Bultaco Metralla. It was a 5 speed, single cylinder 250cc, 35hp, 250 pound two stroke with the most powerful brakes and stickiest tires anybody in Huntsville had ever seen at the time. It was around 1966. My Dad loved to ride that bike! Here's a picture of a nearly identical Metralla:

Here's how I exercised this bike the way its makers intended. I delivered my newspapers on Sunday mornings around 4-5am (remember the apartment route I built? 145 papers delivered in just a few minutes!). Then I'd slip up to the northeast corner of Huntsville and up the "back side" of Mount Sano, which gave Werner von Braun and his fellow scientists a little relief from the Alabama heat during the years they worked in the space program there. I don't know if Werner was ever awakened by me riding nearby or not. I couldn't afford a tuned pipe and was always concerned in case a too-loud exhaust would annoy anybody. So the Metralla exhaust was stock, but still a bit loud compared to the more civilized Honda 250. In any case, I tip-toed up the mountain to a loop of the state park roads that formed a six mile "circuit" and just after dawn when the dew had evaporated I began to turn laps on that circuit. The tricky bit was that I could never be sure nobody would be coming around the next curve head on to me. So I had to have a strategy for dealing with that at every point. At the time I believed I was riding in a completely safe manner that just happened to approach triple the 35mph speed limit. As I now realize I enjoyed an element of luck, as I never once encountered oncoming traffic, so I never had the chance to discover that maybe my corner exit strategy would be trumped by a driver's momentary trespass into my lane. As a great car mechanic in this area put it, that was before I grew more brains. But I never as much as scratched the Metralla until I sold it for funds to get me through my second year at Auburn (but I transferred to U of A Huntsville after my 4th quarter there).

But I got pretty good on that patch of mountain road and earnestly wished some other motorcycle or car would be on that road going in my direction. It wouldn't have mattered much what it was, as, if the driver or rider hadn't also practiced a great deal, I would have simply run away from them as if their engine had quit, while staying in my lane when it was critical, stopping at the stop signs and signalling the turn between roads, etc. I'm sure I hold the lap record for that patch of road, at least for Sunday mornings. Alas, it was washed down the mountain by a landslide years ago and doesn't exist anymore. Here's a shot of one of the overlooks a little below my "private circuit." That's dear friend and former and eventual workmate Dave Blalock balancing a cloud on his finger to celebrate our creative adventures of the day while chatting in my hotel room.

Flashing forward to the present, I decided to resume motorcycling as a serious hobby, so I've bought a seasoned, race-ready Yamaha R6 and I intend to learn how to ride it to its limits. I've lost 30 pounds, said goodbye to blood pressure medication (danged lying Intel 80186 salesman forcing us at Network Products to redesign/reimplement around a 68k in under 6 months caused that blood pressure problem in 1982), and I've been carrying my heavy backpack around on the fingers of my left hand to prepare my forearm muscles for Evo's Barnett clutch. Between Virginia International Raceway, CMP in Kershaw, SC, and Barber Motorsports Park outside of Birmingham I've got enough decent tracks to keep me occupied. But for now this bike sits under canvas with its fuel stabilizer in the tank, waiting for skins with NESBA #616 on a yellow background and waiting for other aspects of the fullness of time.
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Posted at 06:05AM Sep 07, 2006 by microwaves in Motorcycle Road Racing  |  Comments[1]