2nd March 2003 - Lydden

It wasn't a mad panic, honest! Okay, maybe it was! I have never built a race bike from a road bike before and was unprepared for how much work was required. I had the brake calipers sitting around my kitchen for a couple of weeks whilst I stripped, cleaned and rebuilt them. Most jobs should have been relatively straight forward but invariably I had forgotten something or someone had sent me the wrong part.

I ordered a chain suitable for my gearing and was assured that it would fit, except that it didn't! That had to go back and the replacement required a chain riveter which I didn't have so I spent an afternoon going down to see Jorge at Renegade to borrow one. Harris sent the wrong foot pegs with the rear sets so I had to go to Hertford to pick them up. Performance Techniques had problems with their suppliers so I had to drive to Letchworth to collect the bodywork. Even fitting tyres required a trip to my local bike shop.

After a few late nights the bike was starting to look like it should but I eventually gave up at 02:30am the night before the practice day and went to bed. I got to Lydden fairly early and blagged a space under an awning where I set about fitting the rest of the bodywork and locating the rear shock somewhere out of the way.

Needless to say I missed the first two sessions whilst I was trying to work out why the throttle assembly was fouling the bodywork. Turns out that Harris had sent me the regular clip ons rather than the high level ones. They had given me the choice but hadn't pointed out that the regular ones wouldn't actually fit! Grrrrrr!

I finally managed to get everything sorted although the throttle assembly had to be rotated somewhat which pushed the brake lever up to a very strange angle, i.e. I couldn't actually unhook my fingers from it whilst riding so could only use half throttle! That wasn't a major problem though as I was very nervous as it was my first time back at Lydden since I separated my shoulder joint, the first time on a new bike, the first time riding since getting my wrist sorted, etc.

I think I managed to wobble round for about six or seven laps before the pain in my wrist got too much and I had to pull in. I think I was riding far too slowly to get any heat in to the tyres which obviously didn't help as they were sliding around all over the place. The next session was a bit easier as I started to get used to the bike - It still felt strange and I realised I was changing gear too much instead of using the torque of the twin.

The next time out I went much better, the biggest problem was still the angle of the brake lever and the fact that the throttle assembly was a little loose and was moving a bit - Oops! Put together a few better laps and managed to hang on to the back of a few of the other MiniTwins guys that were out there until some bright spark decided he wanted my piece of track after I ran a little deep in to Pilgrims corner. Needless to stay I was lucky to stay on but his tail unit managed to make a mess of part of my front fairing!

That was my first time riding the bike. Nothing fell off, I ended up with a list of things to do before the first race and I didn't crash (just!). Hopefully I will continue to improve and get my confidence back. I've entered the SuperTwins round at Brands Hatch just to get some track time so hopefully I will do okay - We are gridded with Rookie 400s so at least I should have someone to play with as the rest of the SuperTwins grid will have 40 bhp more than me :-)