ManxGP IoM -Day 6 Aug 24th – Blog by Alan Boyter Vendetta Racing
Better day for us today! No bike problems and a qualifying time good enough to qualify for the Junior and the senior!. The first job of today was shopping for bike bits.
We needed to pick up a flat Arai visor so we could fit tear off’s to it (those who have Arai’s, look at your screen and you’ll find it has a slight curvature) and we also needed to find somewhere who could repair radiators. After a bit of hunting and failing to find either, we settled on a couple of standard tinted visors and some JB Weld from B&Q, we also picked up some drain-o to try and fix the other rad that was giving Wag some issues on the last outing.
bike adjustments before the practice at 6pm
It turns out that the Radiator that Wag was using was just blocked and the drain-o seemed to clear it. I also patched the other rad with weld just so we had another spare to be sure.
temp fix on the rad till the new one arrives..should be good for 130mph!
We have a new Rad coming (all £280.00’s worth!) through the week so pray we don’t need to use the spare. We got the no2 bike up and running again with the fixed radiator, adjusted suspension and new intermediate tyre’s on so there would be no excuses tonight, it even looked like it was going to stay dry for this evenings practice.
Our landlord from the B&B with his grandchildren came to say hello...
Practice was nothing short of awesome, with Jason hiding over the island somewhere (he’s not telling us where he goes now), the R6 behaving itself and Steve on top of things, we were all set to go.
Steve came through the start finish on a flying lap and passed me at 137mph, a lap time of 97mph average round the entire circuit! but it gets better, on the second lap he completed the circuit on a 99.2mph average!
Steve was happy with the set up at last...and the rad was holding...
When he came in he was happy with the bike, it wasn’t misbehaving and the temp was staying at a very cool 85C. all good then!.
Wag went out on his R6 and managed a 111.2mph average, and that’s with a leaking tyre valve which made him only do one lap.
Flying over the bridge at Ballaugh - Steves off-road expertise paying off obviously...
He then went on to do a near identical time on the Suzuki, even though he had to come in briefly to replace a bolt from the gear linkage that went walkabout.
As you can imagine the mood in the Ducks Cross pits was nothing short of fantastic tonight and long may it continue! I also managed to capture Steve’s laps with an onboard camera which I shall post shortly.
Jasons advice for the day: GRRRRRRRRRR! (it worked)
TTFN Alan
