Innocence

Working on the last post, "Rip Van Lockwire", looking through my files for the pic I had just uploaded from the camera, I came across the pic at left. It's my little TT2, of course, but a lot seems to be missing. Other than the obvious, like the bodywork and fuel tank, let's see. . . no cam belt tensioners (the bearings were crunchy), no rear brake reservoir, no rear shock (although the stock rear shock on many Ducatis bears a lot of resemblance to the custom job seen here). There's still street-bike switchgear on the left handlebar. What you can't see is that there's no rear brake setup at all, no caliper, hanger, or brake stay. No race tires. No catch bottles for fluids. No lockwiring. The reason this photo caught my eye, however, was the date stamp: 2008_05_10. Saturday, May 10th, 2008. My first race ever was Saturday, May 17th, 2008, seven days later. The evening before, I had been over at Bruce's, and he had helped me adapt a modern 4.5" Ducati wheel to replace the 5.5" Buell wheel that someone had grafted on. . . it made the bike nearly impossible to turn, and besides, the bearings were bound up and the wheel was turning on the aluminum bushings that had been made to adapt it to the small Verlicchi axle. We also converted to a 520 final drive using Ed Milich's marvelous little countershaft sprocket, and put on a lovely gold chain and alloy rear sprocket. Bruce lent me a rear caliper, and on Saturday, the day this pic was taken, I found someone on ducati.ms who was parting out a 900SS/SP, and still had the full-floating rear brake setup. I got him to send it out Priority Mail, and it arrived on Wednesday.

All this fun actually started on April 15th. I had bought the TT2 back in September 2007 because, well, because I just had to have it. I'd been wanting one ever since I saw a tiny, elegant bare frame sitting on a shop floor five years before. I had no intention of racing, not me. Mary spent the winter building an RD400 racebike, but I just wasn't interested. Mary was scheduled to go to a race school on April 15th so she could qualify for a license. . . but the school was cancelled, probably because there was still snow on the track. They rescheduled for May 16th, and I thought, well, why not? So, I went out to the trailer, and threw open the ramp door to tell my little TT2 we were going racing. . . and then I noticed that the rear wheel was sitting in a pool of oil. The rear shock seal had blown. My memory refuses to inform me what it cost to ship that Works Performance shock to California, get it rebuilt, and have it get back to me in time to make that first race. . . especially since I found out a few days later that my friend Eric Colbath of Clubhouse Motorsports could have done the work for me locally, and probably even better than the factory.

Ah yes, innocence. I never would have believed how much handwork (not to mention time sitting, looking, thinking) goes into getting a bike, especially a kit bike like the TT2, ready for its first race. . . especially since it was my first race as well. There was very little sleep that week, and probably neither of us- me or the TT2- should have been out there on the track. As Gil Greenlaw told Betty Bluenose over the walkie-talkie, when I headed up over the hill to Turn 6 rather than go through 3-10 as she'd signaled me, "Let her go, she probably can't even see you!" And my TT2? Well, it's a good thing I never use the rear brake on the track. Late in the season, I traced the little chattering noise from the rear end to the brake pads. . . one of which was carefully pinned and wired in backwards, probably at 3:00AM one of those nights.

Rip Van Lockwire

What a lovely day off. . . slept in, a little time on the Nordic Track, looking out at a beautiful sunny day. . . hmmm, think I'll head down to the barn for a bit of lockwiring. . .

Lockwiring (aka "safety wiring") is one of those things that you've gotta do if you want to be a racer. Yeah, you can pay somebody to do it- if you're made of money, I guess- but you're still gonna have to redo some of the wiring at some point every race day, and, well, lockwiring is kind of a personal thing.

Lockwiring is a lot like scanning eBay for deals on obscure motorcycle parts, tools, Tony Lama cowboy boots (for which, I admit, I have a serious weakness), etc. You think you've been there a few minutes, and hours have passed. You think, "Oh, I'll just lockwire the new front end on my race bike, it'll only take a few minutes. . .", and when you're done, you discover that your family has given you up for lost, and moved away. Yep, you're Rip Van Lockwire. It's hard to see in the pic to the left, but the drilled-and-wired pieces from today include the four pinch bolts, the axle bolt, two fork drain plugs, four caliper bracket bolts, four caliper mounting bolts, and the brake line banjos, each having been torqued, marked, removed, drilled, reinstalled and torqued, and finally wired. The bike, my clothes, and I are covered with a liberal coating of anti-sieze mixed with WD-40.

At first glance, it's simple. You're wiring the bike's fasteners, brake banjos, oil filters, etc., to each other or to fixed parts of the bike to keep them from loosening or falling off, which could result in you falling off, or, in the case of fluid spillage, lots of other riders falling off as well. Why is this necessary, you ask? Parts don't fall off my bike. It's not like it's an old Harley, or something. Well, okay. As hard as you think you ride on the street, it's probably not necessary on a modern bike. Even when you start doing track days, it's still probably not going to be a big deal. Then you start doing more track days, and you're riding harder, feeling like you're finally getting it. . . and suddenly, one of the roving instructors rides up alongside, pats his bike's tail for you to follow, and pulls you into the pits. One of your mufflers is hanging off. Or your fairing is waving in the breeze. Congratulations, and time for an overall fastener check. At the beginning of last racing season, my first, I could give a quick turn of the fairing fasteners before each track session. At my third race, just after a couple of go-fast lessons, I lost half my fairing screws in the first practice session of the morning. Now the bolts are drilled on the inside, clipped, and the clips are attached with little wire keepers.

Today's lockwiring session was without doubt the most pleasant I've ever spent, for a number of reasons. First, a couple of weeks ago, while on vacation, I built a worktable to put the bike on. This means that I spent nearly all of today's four-hour work session either standing or sitting on the old office chair I pulled out of the dumpster at work. Not on my knees. Second, it wasn't two o'clock on race day morning. Third, at the end of last season, Mary and I made a solemn vow to never buy another pair of cheap safety wire pliers, and we each got a pair of 6" Milbars. Now, I figure that this alone is going to transform the coming racing season: not spending a couple of late-night hours, on my knees on the barn floor, swearing at a pair of cheap Chinese pliers that either won't hold onto the wire or keep breaking it, three hours before I need to load the bike in the trailer and head for the track.

If you're new at lockwiring, there are lots of things that you'll learn by trial and error. Hopefully, you won't "strike oil" too many times while learning! Here are a few things that may be helpful:

First, get good pliers. Yes, you can get a pair of 6" lockwire pliers on eBay for $9.99. That's what we started with. The 6" reversible Milbars we use now are available from lots of places, Snap-On sells them as Blue Point, Aircraft Spruce has them, natch, but I got mine from Miles at Street and Competition. Depending on the features you want, you'll pay between $80 and $100 for them. They're worth every dime.

Second, and maybe even more importantly, get good drill bits, and lots of them. You will break them. We've gotten bits from lots of places, but the 1/16" lockwiring bits from Street and Comp are the most durable, sharpest, and most forgiving I've tried. Some very expensive drill bits will crumble like peanut brittle, or go dull in seconds. You'll still break the good ones, mostly by bending them. Start out with 25 or so. Put them in a medicine bottle and spritz in some WD-40. Oh, yeah, and use WD-40 for lube when drilling.

Other things that are good to have: a nice, heavy pair of cutting pliers, round nose pliers for curling the tails over (twist, move back about 1/8", twist again), soft vise jaws for holding fasteners without marring the threads, and a small-mouthed plastic bottle, like a soda bottle, for holding wire clippings securely, even when it's knocked over (I've been told that lockwire clippings are the most common cause of race tire flats!). A small, old-school plug-in variable-speed electric drill, because a cordless drill just doesn't turn fast enough to drill metal. Oh, yeah, and an automatic center punch for marking where you want to drill.

That's enough for now, I guess. . . even though I haven't really said much about how to actually drill and wire your bike! Tell you what- if you want help and advice on lockwiring, email me.

Winter Commuting Blues

This morning was the first time all winter I was glad I'm not carpooling. I travel about 45 miles each way to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic where I'm an Orthopaedic nurse. I lost my carpool slot last April when I began another season of motorcycle commuting, and since then, everybody from my carpool seems to have gotten jobs elsewhere. Now the price of gas is down, and nobody wants to carpool anyway. This morning, I was getting ready to leave, fed the dogs, the goats, let the chickens out, and quickly ducked into the chicken house to see if their feeder was full, then headed off down the road in my trusty Corolla (shod with 4 studded Nokian Hakkapellita 5's, of course). Cruising along, iPod percolating in my head, heat slowly coming on. . . hmmm, getting a little funky in here, hey? Whew, I guess! Check the bottom of my right boot, and the lugs are packed with what looks like half a pound of nice, fresh, chicken shit. Now, let's face it, I'm a nurse. Not much in the way of excrement holds any terror for me- but I had to drive with the windows open. That would have surely been the end of any carpool right there! Just a little excitement for a commute that's usually about like watching the "Main Menu" of the Fargo DVD for an hour. There are just so many Pema Chodron meditation CDs, language programs, etc., I can listen to, and riding season is still at least a couple of months away. Whine, whine, whine. . . and the R1200GS's sit and wait patiently, the lights on their Battery Tenders glowing green in the dim light of the barn's frozen fluorescent tubes.

We both commuted on sport-tourers (and sport bikes) for years. . . musta been we got too old. Mostly it was great, we have some amazing roads, but coming home up that steep dirt road, making the 90-degree turn off the road, over the sheet of plywood- held up with 2X4's- that covers the ditch, then another fall-away 90 down to the barn. In the rain, in the dark, doing that maneuver on a Ducati SS750ie, or almost doing it and getting spit off downhill, sliding down toward the barn on your chest while your little red darling lays on her side and screams bloody murder. Ah, what fun! So, a couple of years ago, while we were house-hunting for a place on a paved road, we were at Max BMW Motorcycles in North Hampton getting my R1100S serviced, and Mary took a used GS for a test ride. She bought it on the spot. Two days later, we set out on an errand run that turned into a 250-mile hell ride (half an hour on a 10mph detour behind an oil truck?!). Mary finished fresh on her stock GS, and me, on my Corbin-saddled, Ohlins-suspended, R1100S, was completely knackered. Got to get me one o' them, I said, and traded my S away for a demo at Max's. "You bought new bikes?" asked our friends.

"Sure," we said, "but we saved ourselves a ton of money- because now we don't have to buy a new house!" The "barn move" isn't anything any more, with all that steering lock and those chunky tires. Even better, I've got about four different routes home, all with varying amounts of dirt. . . mmmm, sliding corners, can't wait!

Before and After, the caliper rebuild

One of the most eye-catching parts of my little TT2, to judge by the reactions they get, are the AP Lockheed calipers up front. Even those hard-core "that bike isn't vintage" guys stop dead at the sight of them. . . "Ooooh, Lockheeds. . ," often getting down on their knees for a closer look. They actually worked pretty well last year, even though I never did a thing except lockwire them. Since they were working so well, and the brake fluid was no worse than a medium honey color, I took one look at those rusted bleeder screws and passed them by. That's right, I never even bled them. Horrid memories of lying under my split-windshield VW bus, lo these twenty-five years, trying desperately to bleed the brakes, working on the little bleeder screws with penetrating oil and a torch for a solid week and still hearing them go "ping!" one at a time convinced me to leave well enough alone.

Last October, when I was making adapters so I could use those lovely calipers on the new/old conventional (and vintage-legal) forks, Bruce noticed that the pistons weren't retracting all that well, so it was time for a rebuild. The old chrome pistons were totally scabby of course, and rusted beyond recovery, so I went looking for replacements. Nobody seemed to have the new alloy pistons (or give me a real idea on when they'd be able to get them), and likewise nobody seemed to have a full set of stainless. . . the calipers only have two pistons, and of course, they're different. The guys at British Cycle Supply http://www.britishcycle.com/in Wolfville, Nova Scotia at least had the long ones, but I knew I'd be able to get to Bruce's and cut two down on his lathe before he headed for Italy (he seems to be Ducati's US trainer these days). Gil Greenlaw keeps threatening me with a Norton Commando, and if we ever do manage to get to northern Maine and rescue it from the chicken house, I know that the guys at British Cycle will help me keep my sanity. They ship from NS to Canada, and from NJ to the US, seemingly instantly. I'm in NH, and there's a UPS main line from there to here, but I've yet to wait more than a day for orders to arrive. The guys there are really helpful and knowledgeable, and like helping crazy people that call on the phone needing help with yet another project that probably should have been left alone.

I know that this is titled "Before and After," and there's only one pic. That's because after cleaning and flushing, and $250 worth of new pistons, seals, pins, bleeders, and pads, the calipers look exactly the same. Sigh. The carbs, which are about half done, were far more impressive. . . cont'd in our next!