Was an annoying track day, in some ways….
the good notes, the bike handled really well with the Pierobon Swingarm, noticeably less wheely on very hard pulls, and Fontana has area where you come off low speed corners and accelerate VERY hard up to 160 mph plus….the extended swingarm did not affect turn in or how the bike handled the whole turning cycle, tip in, lean, acceleration off the apex, all felt great.
the H20 radiator performed remarkably well, I had some problems on the bike that should have made it run hotter but the thing never got to 5 bars on the heat indicator.
we had a concern about the left can on the Spark WSBK exhaust, it looked like it was going to shoot 1550 degree exhaust gas directly onto the swingarm and my rear left foot!….but through some magic of engineering it shoots that exhaust gas directly BETWEEN my rear left heel and and the swingarm in such a way that neither my heel or the swingarm got hit from exhaust gas.
Spark WSBK Exhaust sounds epic btw.
another positive about the day in general was that Auto Club Speedway is both a very fast and very technical track, that’s not forgiving of mistakes in your line, or anything else lol, and I was there with my neighbor whose a great rider and patient teacher, and one of our Friends named Thomas, who, if he hadn’t decided to become a Veterinarian in life would probably be a professional racer, he’s for sure one of the fastest not professional riders in the country, and consistently sets the fastest lap times in the top group of whatever track day he goes to. We were also pitted next to Len, a 76 year old track dog who was a wealth of information and very helpful, between my friends Jeff, Thomas, and Len I learned Soo much yesterday, and despite some technical difficulties with the bike I knocked off about 8 seconds on my lap times from 1st session to last, I’m still slow, but I learned and improved ALOT yesterday.
Funny side story, Jeff has a cool little mini supermoto bike, he had my suite up in leathers abs showed me how to get my knee down on that little mini bike in the parking lot, videos are hilarious, several low sides but finally got my knees down….on a mini bike….in the parking lot hahaha
The negatives, the guys at the shop didn’t have time to tune the Woolich though it is installed, so they told me to just run it on the Akra map, which should be fine….but because the Woolich wasn’t fully set up I ran all day with the engine light on, annoying lol, but my shop said the bike was good and that the engine light was due to the O2 sensors but would run fine for the day…the engine did in fact run well all day.
But, halfway through the 1st session of the day my blip shifter stopped working altogether, no blip shifts up or down…the gear indicator on the dash also stopped working, so the entire day I had no blip shifter, no gear indicator, a new exhaust with a different exhaust note so I had to recalibrate the sound in my mind to know when I was near red line, then MANUALLY shift using the clutch both up and down on a track that has crazy speeds, and very technical tight turns and braking zones, worse, the glitch seemed to include ALL the electronic Nannie’s….so I had no ABS, no Wheeley control, no blip shifter, no gear indicator, no anti skid….learning a new track, as a new rider, on a 235 horsepower monster that I had to manually shift with no electronic aids hahaha….
had some pretty hinky moments. Tried a double manual down shift coming into the braking zone on turn 1 on the back straight decelerating from 150 mph and locked up the rear wheel…and there is a very hard acceleration through turn 20 onto the roval straight, without a blip shifter I was clutch/throttle shifting and trying to rev match from 40 mph to 150 mph with no wheely control and poor clutch control for a few sessions, if the Pierobon swingarm hadn’t have been on there my front wheel would have been pointing at the moon on those WOT upshifts, was a bit hinky even with it.
being a new rider, on a very fast and technical track, riding essentially a WSBK bike with no blip shifter or electronic aids is not the best scenario….also a bit annoying to have the bike in the shop for a month, spend an absurd amount of money to get a bike delivered that looks like a piece of art inside and out, that’s fast as hell and handles well, but that’s lacking BASIC functionality lol
I eventually stopped trying to go fast on the straights, and tried to salvage the day in terms of learning….what I mean by that, is I’m too new of a rider, and with no need on a properly functioning modern bike, to spend my day trying to learn how to clutch shift a 235 hp Superbike and handle it with no riders aids….when I’m still learning the basics of bike control lol….so I started just cruising the straights so I could be in the right gear and not worry about shifting and braking right in very fast technical braking zones and spent the second half of the day just working on my cornering….i eventually got to the point where I was Corning as fast as the fastest riders in my group, but then they’d blow by me on the straights where I just cruised to set up for the next corner. An odd flip in circumstance where I’m usually the slowest in my group on the corners and fastest in the group on the straights.
so positives and negatives on my personal development and the bike for the day. I can clutch throttle shift better at track speeds lol, though that’s not an important skill to learn on a modern bike, I learned I can handle a bike with that power without electronics, at least enough to recover from a mistake and not kill myself. My Corning did improve dramatically.
the negatives, I have a $150,000 bike that was at the shop for a over a month that rides like a 1990’s WSBK bike but with way more power than any of those bikes and might be a death trap lol….so that needs fixed right away obviously
I took the fairings off and checked every connection, looked for any obvious burnt wires etc…saw nothing, so I think the problems were software related or some wires ran wrong somewhere.
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