It was a long trip down (750 miles)and the problems we had going through Charlotte at 5pm on Thurs. night (82 miles in 3 hours) made me wonder if I would ever make the trip again! We found a better route back and
NOT driving in the rain for 750 miles made it an enjoyable trip. We came back through South Carolina and caught I20 then I26 up to Ashville NC. It made for a much more enjoyable trip with beautiful scenery.
With the full day on Friday for tech inspection and Saturday waiting out the rain, we made some new friendships with a few racers and with the hospitality of the ECTA volunteers and the NC locals, I thoroughly enjoyed the down time.
We went to the 2007 awards banquet on Saturday night and enjoyed some good Carolina barbeque and funny stories about the past racing season.
The racing didn't get underway until late Sunday morning after the track dried out. I had a new set of Mikuni's on the bike and started with the same settings I had on the 38mm TM's. These were the older 38mm VM's and I found out they use the same jets, but they obviously don't work the same.
I was able to only get in 2 tuning runs with adjustments made from the data logger. The first "best guess" run with 240 jets only allowed me to run up to about 5-6k rpm and with the fogged glasses, I only got to 102.585 mph.
I up-sized the jets after reading the logged data to 260 and got in line to run again. The second run went much better since I left the glasses in the pits and could see the track this time! The jet change let me get to about 7400 rpm before it went too lean and I had to throttle back when it started cutting out. The good thing about this run was the top speed was 111.860 mph. That beat the record speed of 110.974 mph.
With the new carbs and the several tuning runs that are required at the track altitude to get them dialed in, I think I could have added up to 20+ mph with the proper set-up if I had the 2 days to run, but I'll take what I got.
I have to apologize for the blurry pic. I found the spot on the left side of my camera lense on the way back
We arrived in North Carolina Thursday night and got to the track early Friday morning...
We drove by the entrance the first time there because it just didn't look like any more than a muddy road...
We turned around after we realized that was the right road. the ECTA crew was just starting set-up, so we found a place to park in the pit area and started unloading...
