Topic: franciacorta race report

[turboguzzi]

better stop hacking other people's threads......
so then, mixed fortunes for italian sohc racers in this weekend's event in Franciacorta.

For me it's a sort of home track as it is less than an hour away from milan and also Riccardo is not far, though he lives in the opposite direction. 

Upon arriving saturday morning to the track, i met Cesare/zaizer, asked him about Riccardo and it turned out that his motor suffered some major self destruction during free practice. Riccardo will tell you more details i guess, but already a first big KO for a SOHC early on... so please HiPos, cheer Riccardo up because i guess he needs some encouragement!

First timed practice at 0200 PM and another SOHC is out, Andrea who is also running a big bore cb650 based 750 racer, snapped a primary chain! long story short, two hours later motor was in bits, a primary chain found through a friend, some open heart surgery and by midnight was buttoned up and back in the bike, all courtesy of master mechanic, Marco Lenardini's father.

sunday started dry for second qualifying but forecast was for rain coming in at 0200 pm, 1 hour before the race, so some people including me scrambled for tire changes. At the end, downpour was at 0100 and by race time, track was drying up!

So all race was run on tricky not-so-wet not-so-dry conditions, just to give you an idea, an underpowered 500 morini twin beating the whole field of 500s, 750's and open classers.

In 750, Marco took yet another win, Cesare was third. In the open class i ended up third too.

final round in misano in a month.

[RAFster122s]

Carnage of the mechanical kind.
Glad no one was hurt.
Hoping the pieces get sorted out quickly without too much expense.

Congrats to the winners and the other racers for the competition to urge everyone faster.

Thanks!

David

[simon#42]

well done yossef , you know i like a story that involves a well ridden morini !

[turboguzzi]

well done yossef , you know i like a story that involves a well ridden morini !

thought youd like it
part of his speed seemed to come from the Heidenau tires he was wearing, he was almost knee on the ground when the rest where tip toeing
BTW, standing on the left of the second podium pic is oreste zaccarelli who is one of the top classic endurance riders in europe. managed to keep him in my sights for a while but on the podium he told me that he didnt want to crash an expensive and rare ex-kawasaki france works bike...

[bwaller]

So your Conti's would have been OK? What did you change to?

Third is great considering the company you kept! Well done

We can't use rain tires in our P2 classes, but in P3 they're allowed. I use Avons, but in our P3 bump up class the guy that won had a new set of rains and Tyler struggled with the Avons in those conditions. The difference in the wet is tremendous, but on a drying track it might have been different. I guess we all should have spare wheels/tires for all conditions, but like you we call ourselves amateurs. 

[turboguzzi]

we're not allowd rains, my class is 18" only and i dont think there are any in 18" anyway...
I put a used set of avons i had around.  guess if it would have kept raining the superior drainage would have made a difference. On a just wet track like it was, almost no puddles guess i could have stayed with the contis.

but after this race i would strongly recommend Heidenaus as an 18"  "rain set".

so are p3 allowed 17" slicks too? that would be a dangerous mix with threaded 18" in corner speed...and even worse with rains.  here the up to 92' SBK and 600SS are allowed slicks/rains but run their own race.

[simon#42]

in icgp races they only allow 18'' avon tyres , some riders make extra cuts alongside the existing ones with a tyre cuter . although questionable in terms of eligibility they do seem to work .

i would not like to ride in a class where some could use proper wets and some had to use a normal dry tyre , the difference is night and day .

the thing i loved about classic racing was the fact that i was not constantly looking at the sky [ this is england remember ] no matter what the weather i was riding on what was on that bike .
it saved loads of messing and a fair amount of money

[turboguzzi]

agree, didnt use to care either when everybody was on Avon AMs / Dunlops KRs (though the later suck quite a bit in rain BTW...)
Problem is those Classic racing conti attacks have not much drain in them and the compound works only when really hot.
and they dont even look classic!
Dont think they really outperform Avons in the dry by much, but they do cost a good 40% less. The prices they still ask for a AM26 or a KR164 are outrageous.

Those where the conditions just an hour before, go figure

[simon#42]

thats an english summer , oh hang on sorry there is no snow .
yes i can buy a pair of dunlop slicks now for less than the price of a rear avon or 164 , i have taken dunlop up on this but they say its because they dont make enough to get the price down
sounds like bollocks to me and i think if the Conti was better they would soon match it price wise .
i use the classic attack road tyres on the bm and they sound similar to the race tyres , great when hot but rubbish in the rain

[bwaller]

TG, our P3 are allowed 17" but no slicks. That one guy runs race rains though, it's not clear in the rulebook to me!

[turboguzzi]

ok, i see,
but honestly, road legal 17", say pirelli supercorsas are essentially slicks at the edge with some tiny grooves cut into them

[livefast_dieold]

Hi everyone,

another weekend with bad luck for me, that it actually started the weekend before the race.

I went to start the engine to check that everything was right and I had a big oil leak from the head, precisely from the coin-sized seals below the cam-towers.
So to fix the issue we had to remove the engine from the frame, discovering that the cam-towers where a bit loose, but most of all the camchain tensioner was completely disintegrated (pic attached) shattering small debris in the engine (camchain tension was properly adjusted as of manual).

We did not have time to dismantle the engine, so we try to clean the oil pan and oilpump, fix the camtowers and recreate the tensioner using some billet teflon.

I started friday practice with a huge grin on my face: bike was fast and finally with a good handling...but it only lasted 5 minutes :-(
One valve seized: a small debris had blocked the oil passage to the head (the right one). The camshaft was cooked too, but luckily the pistons and the crankshaft are ok.

[livefast_dieold]

And also: even the teflon camchain tensioner rollers broke down...

[RAFster122s]

That was terrible luck. You rolled the dice on that one and lost. An expensive loss...

Sorry to hear of that nastiness happening.

Good luck sorting it out and rebuilding the motor.

[johno]

The two great challenges, engine & riding, keep plugging away at each one cos when they both come together its all worth the pain