A Nice Seafood Dinner

[ceo012384]

Worked on the workbench. Assembled the Ikea kitchen base cabinet and cut drawer liners for all the drawers:



Worked on the countertop. Cut it to length, then used some 220 grit sandpaper to give a light sand to the top and sides. Then I cleaned up all the dust with some tack cloth:



Laid down stickers and then a really thick coat of Parks' Super Glaze. Might do another coat just to add to the durability:







The space on the right is for this bad boy:



Also picked up a set of wheels for track tires that should arrive this week:

[ceo012384]

Picking up all the painted plastics tomorrow.

Track photos showed up.

[ceo012384]

Here is everything... full set of race plastics, oem mid fairings, airbox cover, intake covers, and fender. The race plastics have number plates with silver pinstriping around them. I got only one number plate on the front because I thought that looked a lot nicer.



Race plastics:











Trimmed the black border off the red/white replica stripes, going to install them next Saturday. That will give the paint another week to cure.



I also had the dent in the old tank pulled out and primered. I'll paint this at some point and throw another set of sliders on it to have as a backup.



Picked up a spare fuel pump



Spare set of wheels showed up... cleaned them up, now they're ready for rubber:



I installed all the street parts... she looks fucking awesome!
Notice the mid fairings (long skinny ones), airbox cover and intake covers are all painted now, instead of grey bare plastic:














I Threw a couple more stickers on the workbench and then laid another coat of Super Glaze down. Covered it up with a sheet for dust prevention and left it to cure:



A couple photos I picked up arrived. I'm going to get some frames for them and hang them up. One is Valentino Rossi leading Jorge Lorenzo and Nicky Hayden from the 2008 MotoGP race in Laguna Seca CA. The other is a print of an autographed photo of the king of smooth himself, Kenny Roberts.

[ceo012384]

Bike = complete for now. Well, except for the red numbers that I'm planning to throw on there this winter...









Had her up at the track the past two days... I am less and less interested in riding on the street every day.

[ceo012384]

Little bit of a 'riding' update.

Had a couple frustrating days at the track. About 1/3 of the time was raining, about 1/3 of the time not raining but wet-ish track, and about 1/3 of the time dry track. It really fucked with my head. I like riding in the rain and practicing being smooth and doing things at a slower speed while still having to worry about traction limits, you learn a lot... but when you have a damp/drying track it's a very difficult situation to deal with I found myself lacking confidence. When the track became fully dry I found myself having trouble getting back into the right mode and wasn't able to make the progress I had hoped. A couple of the sessions things started to click though and I got in a little bit of a groove.

Still have 4 more track days this season at the least, so I'm not worried. 9/29 and 30 with Tony's... 10/2 with another organization on a sick discount deal they were doing... and 10/13 down at the new track in New Jersey.

I also want to do the penguin roadracing school to get my race license so I don't have to worry about it in the spring... that's on the 26th of september... we'll see if I can drum up the money before then.

I think next weekend my buddy and I are going to safety wire our bikes.



Oh, I also went up to watch the races on sunday before my track days to see what I am getting myself into. All I can say is HOLY FUCK. There are a couple of the fastest guys in the northeast up there... and watching the way they go into a couple of the trickier turns at NHMS I nearly shit myself. It is absolutely preposterous how hot they are coming in on the brakes, ho early they get to 55 degree lean angles, how unscathed they are by the shitty bumps and pavement at NHMS and the transitions on and off the nascar oval, and how soon and hard they get on the gas powering out. I was blown the fuck away. Some day...

[ceo012384]

Finished my workbench:

[ceo012384]

Basically been doing a little bit of street riding lately especially with the nice weather. Other than that not too much going on, just busy with work.

Street riding is so bland to me now. Can't wait until next year when I'll be getting a motard for the street and racing the R6.


I have three track days coming up as well as on 9/26 I'll be taking the Penguin Racing School at NHMS which will allow me to get my racing license and be all set to go for next year

All those trackdays plus a bunch of maintenance I'm sure I'll have some good updates fairly soon. I wish the blog contest went longer though because my most anticipated trackday is on 10/13 at the new track in NJ... can't WAIT for that shit.

[ceo012384]

I forgot to mention that I found a few photos from the last track days after the paint and decals were all done.

Unfortunately not many photos of me made it onto the website and like I discussed before a lot of the time was wet and I ended up having a frustrating couple of days.

There was one photo that I thought was pretty nice that didn't make it onto the website so I've been contacting the guy trying to buy it...



Anyways a couple from the rain:





This one the track is still wet but the rain has stopped so my rain gear is off:



And then this one from the dry, powering up the hill between turns 6 and 7:

[ceo012384]

Monday night after meeting a couple riding buddies for some IHOP goodness, I went for a little rip afterwards on the way home.

Somewhere on the ride home, this happened.... my fender bracket snapped and it was just hanging from the wires when I parked the bike.

Luckily it doesn't appear to have rubbed on anything.





The bolts/nuts are all still there and some of the broken pieces remain fastened to the undertail fairing.






Anyways, I emailed the dude yesterday (ebay seller 'creese1') and he's shipping me out a new one for free. I bought this thing over a year ago for like 20 bucks!

BIG "plusone" for this guy... very nice. Said he's never seen one just snap before. I think I can temporarily ziptie it back into place for now, we'll see.

[ceo012384]

This coming weekend is going to rock... thursday night up to Loudon, Friday take the penguin racing school. Leaving my stuff up there with a buddy... coming back down friday night, family stuff saturday, back up to Loudon sunday morning and watching the races (several buddies are in big battles for this last race weekend), stay over, track days monday and tuesday.

Prepped her for the track:



Cleaned up the bike, and took it down the street for a couple photos by the lake.







Cleaned up the street plastics (race plastics too) with some honda polish as I was doing the split:



For now I'm just jury-rigging my laptimer with some velcro in a simple spot. But I want to mount it to the left of my gauge cluster. There is a damped mounting hole in the fairing stay that is unused due to the lack of headlights and I think it could be used for this.

I have a buddy who is probably goign to machine something for me... basically a small triangular block with a threaded rod sticking out the back. Then I will mount the laptimer to the angled flat part with velcro. The threaded rod will go through the hole in the fairing stay I mentioned and tighten a nut on the back.

Here are some pictures of where I'd like to put it.

I could take out the rubber damper I think.



Side views of the mounting hole:




And here is a shitty mspaint sketch of roughly what I think will work: