It was like a monkey f___ing a football getting the bike ready in time, but Ricky and I rolled into Bonneville with the bike in the trailer, pulled by my trusty steed the 88 Caprice the night before tech opened.
I didn't know if the ole Chevy was up to the task of pulling a trailer since it is pushing 365,000 miles on the original engine and tranny (never even had the carb off!) , but she was still running when we got home Saturday. Other than a fuel pump going out in the middle of the Nevada desert on the way there, we had no problems with the car.
I was able to get the bike on a dyno the day before we left, just long enough to show me that on high boost, it was running really lean above 9000 rpms.
I didn't have a computer that could communicate with the secondary controller, so figured I would borrow one at Bonneville and add some fuel to it. The bike had been previously mapped, but the compressor wheel in the turbo has since been changed to a larger one which screwed the mapping all up.
It took me a few days to find a laptop to add some fuel to it, so I did some low boost passes on it to see what she would do. It wouldn't pull past 9000 rpms on low boost, so I figure it is running lean there too... Managed a best of 195 mph on low boost. After finally adding some fuel to it (maxed out the secondary injectors) I tried a high boost pass and promptly blew the intercooler hose off the intercooler. Fixed that and went out for another try, sat there for 4 hours waiting on rain to stop to have the meet called for that day...grrrr. The next morning, sat there waiting for two hours for the winds to subside, finally, the wind dropped to 4 mph at the starting line, lined up, took off, and just as I got the thing rolling at about 210, the wind picked up again. This put me at about a 40 degree lean angle and blew me from one side of the course to the other (about 100 feet), I held the throttle steady as I didn't want any sudden inputs to the rear wheel which was already at the edge of traction. The wind subsided after about a mile, so I jumped on the throttle only to hear the intercooler hose pop off again.
Two clamps finally solved thsi problem
At this point, I turned the controls over to Rickster, as she wanted to get out there and get licensed (at least a B license). Scared the crap out of me watching her go down the course, but at the same time made me very proud... She fell a few mph short of her A license as she didn't get on the throttle soon enough, she averaged 196 mph through the mile with an exit speed of 205 mph!!! She is now a card-carrying fast-assed bitch!!!!
After that, I told her that if I couldn't get the bike into impound in the next two passes, I'd let her try again for her A license. As fate would have it, I blew the head gasket on the very next run, which was verified on the following pass by a temp gauge in the red followed by a lot of coolant on the salt...
On the run that I actually caused the damage, I had it pinned for the full five miles (the only run of the meet that this occurred) and managed a best of 219 mph.
I gotta give thanks to all those that helped put me there, inlcuding Noonan, Hank, Motorhead, Erik, Paul, Fulltilt, and Ricky. You guys/gals are the greatest!!!
Now to get to work tearing this Busa down and getting it READY for the next event...
