New Race Bike

My racing efforts in 2007 had some highs and lows. In two of the races I finished I placed on the podium. The problem was I didn't finish many races. In fact I think my start to finish ratio was less than 50%. Why? Almost always engine overheating. I tried and tried, and tried to get it worked out, and in the last race weekend of the year I finally got it all sorted. But with that I just wasn't sure if I wanted to keep going.

The 2007 season had started pretty positive (scroll down through the blog, and you'll see). So with 2007 coming to an end I was trying to make sense out of this racing thing. I was really considering giving it up all together. I was tired of riding the 500. I had put as much money into it as I could stand, and still I was not going to win any races. Even though my bike is highly modified it is still based on a 20 year old design, and there are newer bikes in the class that no matter how well I rode I was not going to overcome. So a new thought entered my head. Why not buy a new race bike? I didn't think much of it at first because a modern race bike that was remotely competitive would be in the $6k range, and that was not an option. But then I worked my ass off (see post about Oracle). In fact all I did for three months straight was work, and at the end of all that a new race bike wasn't out of the question anymore. So I started looking at Suzuki SV650's. They could be found fully race prepped with competitive modifications, like a front end swap, engine mods which would include carb's (if first gen bike) cam's, exhaust ect... I hadn't found the perfect bike for the right price until one day I was trolling through a thread on barf, http://www.bayarearidersforum.com/, about a trackday I was looking at attending. I had posted a comment about how I was thinking about getting a new bike, and a well known bike builder named Zoran, http://www.twinworksfactory.com/, let me know that their Kawasaki 650 was for sale. With a couple of days some e-mails where exchanged, and the new bike was mine. I picked it up Thanksgiving weekend at a trackday at Thunderhill. Below is the bike as it was delivered to me that day.

It's difficult to explain how great it is to ride this bike. My old race bike was never easy to ride. The great thing is I didn't know any better. My 500 had an old style square steel tubed frame that even though it was braced flexed like a wet noodle in high speed turns. This made it challenging to get the bike to change directions at high speeds. It took a lot of strength to wrestle the bike over. The new bike is not like that at all. It goes where you point it, with minimal effort, uses modern, suspension, brakes, and fueling.

The bike: A 2006 Kawasaki EX650. It is a 20 year newer version of

my old race bike. It uses a 650cc parallel twin cylinder 4-stroke motor. Fed by fuel injection (my first FI bike), and with after market cams, and a modification to the air box it makes just under 80hp. The front end is off a 2005 Kawasaki Ninja 636, as is the rear wheel. It was bought new in 2006, and immediately turned into a race bike. One of the main benefits of buying a new bike is that it doesn't need much. The suspension is going to get redone to my weight, and the body work has been dropped off at the painters to get it's customary blue. While riding at Sears Pt on Saturday I noticed a little clutch slippage in 5th gear so I think I will put a new set of friction plates in before my first race. Other than that it's change the oil, add gas go race!

Acquiring this bike has opened new doors. I alway wanted to race with other organizations, but my 500 would usually be in the same classes as the 650's and thus being no where near competitive. Now that I have a 650 it's time to put it out there. So with that I hope to race with WERA in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Utah as well as AHRMA at Willow Springs, and my regular AFM here in Northern CA. My first race is in January at California Speedway. That's not even three weeks from now. Yee

Ha!