The dust has now settled after the 2018 Speedtrials.
All the gear has been washed ,cleaned ,oiled and stowed for next year. A two day job in itself. A bit of a rundown on the fantastic week we had.
We arrived at Lake Gairdner on the Saturday after the British and American Bike display in Whyalla. A lot of people got to see and hear the bike for the first time and it had gone over really well.
The condition of Lake Gairdner on arrival was Superb. The Salt was hard and looked fantastic.
Sunday we went through scrutineering and generally got ready for the week ahead. Caught up with lots of old friends and had a good laugh as we always do.
Everyone was keen to run on the Monday and we got our first shakedown run in the afternoon. I had not ridden the bike for two years with the full fairing and had difficulty getting it into top gear, probably some first run nerves contributing too . I was also hit by a side wind mid track which moved me around a lot. We went through the mile at 146mph . On checking the plugs it showed we were very lean so we upped the jet sizes and I moved the position of the gear lever slightly.
Tuesday we were back in line and ready to run late morning.
I got away OK and It went into top gear no problem this time. When I left the start line we had a slight tail wind but in the measured mile I was again hit by a gusting side wind. I was moving my weight a lot and really had to work hard to keep it in a straight line. Unnerving as it was I just did not want to get off the throttle and we went through at 176mph.The bike had only revved 6300 and I was not comfortable with the plug colour so we again upped the jet size this time by drilling the jets out. Something I had never needed or wanted to do . A lot of other racers were in the same situation and everyone seemed to be jetting up. We did another run and clocked 179.211 mph which was to be our fastest of the meet.
Wednesday and the wind had dropped and the temp was in the high 30,s (Celsius) . I took off and revved the bike to near 7000rpm through the gears. I really tucked in and moved my weight forward. It went straight as an arrow but would not rev past 6000 when I hit top gear. I held it at WOT for a full 2 miles trying to squeeze some more revs but the tacho wouldn't move. It was a 168 mph pass.
I had decided to remove the fairing late in the week and enter the A/VG 1350cc open class and see if we could get near our 166 record. We spent a few hours getting ready and then went back through scrutineering because of our class change. All OK.
I wanted to run as late in the day as possible so we held off going into pre-stage. We were in the last group of six and just missed out on the last runs of the day. We would be first to run in the morning.
Friday morning and our last chance to run. Conditions were perfect with a little cloud cover and a very slight cool breeze. We were about to fire the bike when I realized the throttle cable had been flattened in the steering stop. I had no spare but after 15 minutes of bush engineering we had it sorted. The smallest thing can stuff you on the salt.
So I took off and revved it to 7000 in the first two gears. It then started to backfire to the extreme and I pulled off the track. People said they could hear it back at the Lakeside camp area about 3km away it was that loud. Back to the pits. I had swapped out the battery to a brand new fully charged one the day before and soon realised it was the cause. The bike fired up fired up well with the old battery back in so we headed back to the line at pre-stage. It only took an hour to be on the start line and we were off again on our final run of 2018. At full revs the bike started to miss . I tried riding the throttle but it wouldn't clear so I just rode it out and did the best I could. Our final run without fairing was 159mph.
We didn't hit our goals this year but had a great week and we left with the bike in one piece. It was also great to see Valerie Thompson run 328 mph in the BUB 7 streamliner and the Treit,Davenport Target 550 run 345mph, just incredible .
Id like to thank the Dry Lake Racers Australia for putting on a great event, It just keeps getting better.
To all the people who have supported us THANKYOU ,YOU KEEP US RACING!!
And last but not least to the Vincent Racing Crew
Bill Lockwood, Col and Trent Kranz, big Al Fischer and Digger Hamilton . Couldn't of done it for 18 years with out you.
See you in March 2019
Regards Mal
