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After all the coolant-spraying adventures at the last race, I had some real motivation to get the head gasket replaced. I have checked the valves on other bikes, but never removed the whole head.
On the FZR, you have to remove the radiator and several coolant hoses and pipes, the carburetors, the exhaust system, and an external oil line to get the head off. And, of course, you have to remove the cam-shafts and keep that pesky cam chain from falling into the cases. (Note for other FZR guys: the shop manual says you also have to remove the right frame member -- you don't have to.)
Of course, if all I did was change the gasket, the work would have gone a little quicker, but while I had the head off I might as well spend an hour scraping carbon build-up off of it, and fill the intake and exhaust manifolds with solvent to make sure none of the valves were leaking. Whew, that solvent smelled good! And who could pass up the chance to spend 2 hours tediously straightening the little fins in the radiator to try to get better air flow through it? You'd think I was racing on gravel roads from the dents in that radiator.
The only bad news was that I couldn't see anything that clearly indicated that the old head gasket was leaking. I always hate feeling like I've spent a lot of time fixing the wrong problem! Of course, the symptoms I had would have indicated a very small head gasket leak, so maybe I just didn't know quite what to look for.
The shop manual seemed a little vague regarding whether you should use any gasket sealant or other chemicals on the new head gasket, so I made a panic call to Les Green. He explained it all to me using small words, and I was on my way to re-assembly!
Anyway, with the new gasket on and the head replaced (with the cams hopefully correctly installed) it was time to check the valves. Good thing I was checking, as 4 of the intake valves were tight. One of them was really tight! By this time, it was the Monday before the race weekend. Valve shims from a Honda CBR600F2 will fit in the FZR, so I tried the Honda shop in Tillamook. They were helpful, but most of their business is with dirt bikes, and they didn't have any shims in stock for CBR's. It was a nice day, so I rode my SV into Portland, heading first for Beaverton Honda Yamaha thinking, "They do a lot of street bike business with both Hondas and Yamahas, so of course they will have shims." That is probably the last time I will go there -- the parts dept. doesn't stock any shims, but the service dept. has quite a collection. I know this because I talked to a guy in the service dept. He explained that they have a large collection of valve shims, but "only enough for their needs," so "they can't part with any of them." Right. I don't see how it's really any different than if I had brought my bike in to have them do the valve job -- they would have had to use the same shims anyway.
A quick call on the cell phone to Eric Dorn at EDR Performance gave me some hope. I showed up at EDR shortly afterwards, and Eric handed me some valve stems for wheels (where the air goes in). "Sorry Eric, must have had some cell phone static there, I wanted valve shims!" Luckily he had some. And, even though his stock of shims is limited because they're surprisingly expensive for tiny little metal disks, he sold them to me along with some useful advice about putting them in. Thanks, Eric!
Finally the motor was all back together, along with a new 16PSI radiator cap, on Thursday night. It was too late to wake the neighbors, so I waited until Friday morning to try to start it. It started on the first try, and ran fine! I packed up the bike Friday afternoon and headed into Hillsboro. I spent the night at Gustavo & Lizbeth's house after a nice Indian dinner at Ganga with them and my friend Tony.
It was another half-day practice, so we only got two 20-minute practice sessions. The first medium speed session felt like a mad-house. I got bunched up in traffic, and there were a couple people out there practically parking their bikes in the corners. I think one of them was black-flagged because they went so slowly.
The second session went a little better. The bike seemed to be running well, and didn't seem to push much coolant out of the radiator into the overflow tank. It was cloudy and somewhat cool.
Saturday afternoon was a 4-hour endurance team race. I had been invited by Bill Laupp to ride his SV 650 along with Les Green and Martin Buehler. For those of you not familiar with endurance racing, the objective is for a team of riders to complete as many laps on one bike as possible within the time limit (4 hours, in our case).
It may not look like a lot of work, but racing a motorcycle is a strenuous activity. Since our team consists of middle-aged slackers, our plan was to take turns running half-hour stints. Many of our more serious competitors would send one rider out for 45 minutes or even an hour (if their bike held enough gas to run that long) to minimize the time spent in the pits during rider changes. Our objective was to have fun and finish the race.
We succeeded! We had no accidents and no mechanical issues. Bill's SV ran great, probably because it's well maintained and has never been crashed. We finished 7th in the Lightweight class.
After the race I headed up to Martin & Carol Golding's house in Vancouver, WA. They hosted their annual WetLeather "Fish Fry" party. I had some wonderful hush puppies and beans-and-rice (but no fish, 'cause I don't like 'em!). Thanks, Martin & Carol! The endurance race must have sapped my endurance, or maybe it was just that I'm not used to getting up at 6AM, because I got tired pretty early and headed back to Gustavo's house.
Lizbeth made me a nice breakfast (that Gustavo didn't get because he got up too early and made his own!), then it was off to the track. The morning started off cool and cloudy, but slowly got warmer in the afternoon.
The 450 Superbike qualifier was my first race. I got a good start, and things went OK. Nothing particularly memorable.
The 450 Supersport qualifier came shortly afterwards. I got another good start, and Stuart Johnson and I kept up with Scott Soper for the whole 4 laps, although neither Stuart nor I ever passed Scott.
The Middleweight Superbike qualifier was next. I got a really good start on this one and went into turn one in about 6th position. This race has over 20 riders all in one wave (vs. the 450 races, which have wave starts of fewer bikes). There was lots of aggressive passing on the first lap, and I tried a creative pass through turn 7 that didn't work out: I ended up running up onto the curbing in turn 8, but managed to keep it on 2 wheels and get around the corner. Note to self: Remember, 400's are not competitive in Middleweight -- you're here to have fun!
Well, OK, maybe it's also a good opportunity to try different passing lines. Stuart and I both did some dicing with each other and with some SV's. Unfortunately Scott crashed in turn 3, but he and the bike both made it back for the afternoon races so it must not have been too bad.
Rick Kersey, OMRRA's newest novice FZR rider, invited all of us 450 Supersport guys over to his pit for lunch, where he was barbequeing burgers. Thanks, Rick, that was great!
The 450 Superbike race started with a little surprise: Neither Stuart nor I had been assigned grid positions. We did both finish the qualifier, but no grid positions. After giving Jim Kennedy, who's FZR is still out of action so he showed up to help out as a corner worker, a hard time, we gridded up at the back. I got a lousy start, but it didn't really matter because the folks in front of me were finding out that six wide into turn 1 just doesn't work.
Everyone stayed on the track, but some only just barely. I got past a few bikes into turn 2 and slowly worked my way past some of the slower SV's. I ended up behind some SV for 3 or 4 laps toward the end of the 10 lap race. I finally got close enough to make a draft pass on the SV going into turn 1, and suddenly Stuart was there beside me on his FZR. I had noticed someone going off the track in turn 8 on the first couple laps -- it was Stuart, and he had managed to catch back up! I got back around Stuart when we were passing a really slow rider in turn 4. Going back into turn 1 for the last lap of the race, Stuart came up inside me, out-braking me again. But this time, when he turned it in, he hit his footpeg or exhaust pipe on the ground, and his rear tire stepped out nearly a foot. I backed off for that! I followed Stuart around to the finish line for 7th place.
I got a good start (from my assigned grid position!) in the 450 Supersport race. Scott Soper, as usual, beat me to turn 1, and Stuart out-braked me going into it. That's pretty much how the rest of the race went.
Scott apparently had some sore ribs or something from his crash in the morning, because Stuart and I were staying in contact with him. I passed Stuart once or twice, but he always got me back. In the 5th or 6th lap, Scott and Stuart passed a 125 rider in turn 3. I was almost past the 125 coming out of turn 4 when I saw waving yellow flags in turn 5 -- it looked like an SV had gone straight instead of turning in turn 5. I had to slow way down to not pass the 125. Scott and Stuart disappeared around turn 6.
I put in a few laps that felt pretty fast trying to catch up, then I got a big slide coming out of turn 3. The funny thing is that while I was flying out of the seat, I noticed that the corner captain in turn 4 was starting to raise her yellow flag while she was watching me. Hah! I decided not to become "an incident" and got the bike straightened back out. I didn't push quite as hard to catch up after that, though.
I finished in 3rd, several seconds behind Stuart, who later told me he lost touch with Scott on the last couple laps.
By the time the Middleweight Superbike race rolled around in the afternoon, it was getting warm and sunny, and my bike started getting pretty warm. I checked after the 450 Supersport race, and it had pushed some coolant out of the radiator, but not enough to overflow the reservoir. I was glad that the Middleweight race did not have a wave start, because my temperature gauge was climbing close to the "red" zone by the time the race started. Once we got going, it went back down a bit.
Anyway, I got a good start and seemed to end up close to where I would finish the race by the end of the first lap. There was a group of 3 riders, two on SV's and one on an RZ350 battling ahead of me. Eventually the RZ passed both of them. I saw that the SV closest to me was Scott Avery, who I know through WetLeather. I was slowly catching him, and looking forward to a little bit of "Hey, I passed your 650 on my little 400" at the end of the race, but he pulled off into the pits. After that, I just cruised around to a 13th place finish.
Overall it was a really fun weekend. My head gasket work hopefully paid off, but overheating is still a potential problem.
Thanks to Bill Laupp and Les Green and Martin Buehler for a fun endurance race.
Thanks to Gustavo Buhacoff & Lizbeth Garcia for the nice guest room and breakfasts. Also thanks to Gustavo for helping me with a quick refueling when I almost forgot to fill up before the Middleweight race.
Thanks to all the OMRRA turn workers, registration folks, and other volunteers who made this OMRRA race weekend possible. There was a lack of scoring volunteers on Sunday, and some brave souls must have stepped forward to fill in the gap -- thanks!
Thanks to my sponsors Inside Line, Bridgestone Tires, and Lockhart-Philips USA.
My most special sponsor is my wife, Julie!
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