Zoltan racing Hourglass Pirtek Newcastle Photography retro retroracing: Team Cooranbong at 2012 PCRA Rd1 @ Wakefield

Team Cooranbong's Race Report, 2012 PCRA Rd1 @ Wakefield Park, Feb 2012

well, what a saturday! As my bike's not ready, I caught a lift with Team Cooranbong... long gone are the days of taking 8 bikes with 6 riders tothe Creek: now only Martin (Dadat - 750 T Suzi) and Rick for his second ever race on the YZF600. Graham will fly back from the UK for the Barry, and hopefully Bones also will be ok there too.

As it was raining all week incl fri night, Rick turned up with wets on to see blue skies and no Bridgestone truck to change tyres. Craig was still on his way, and I helped out doing bike scrutineering in the morning before helping get the wheels in, so the slicks didn't get onto the bike until halfway into his first practice session, but at least he still got some laps in.

Race one saw both riders where they expected to be with no dramas, with Rick making his first ever overtaking move.
Martin's bike however had a weird problem after R1: the bike would be hard to start and would only rough idle even at full throttle. Figuring it was a fuel flooding issue as soon as we got to the airbox off it ran fine! Again, after sitting for a while the same problem would surface. Suspecting a flooding carby filling the box with petrol fumes... then both me n rick twigged at exactly the same time: Tank overpressurisation due to a non venting tank cap! Sure enough, the aftermarket screw on cap was not vented, causing engine heat to heat the tank and fuel and pressing vapours into the airbox system! In fact, while carb overflows are allowed to be set into the airbox, this may be a bad idea and a seperate overflow bottle may be a better option for racebikes?

The chap next to us asked for advice seeing it was his first ever race meeting, and I told him what I had told so many before: Stick some tape on the dash and write on it 'SLOW DOWN' to help avoid 'red mist' crashes. Well I should have put one on rick's bike,as sure enough he got some red mist and ran off into T2 trying to overtake someone, into the mud and on his arse.

In the same race, Martin got rammed going into T4 hard enough for the other rider's handlebar to break open the ducktail on Martin's Suzi and hit him in the lower back, causing the other rider to crash and martin to run off, luckily keeping it upright.

After hosing Rick's bike down as well as hosing rick down, fixing a loose footpeg and checking the rest of the bike, he was good to go back to race 3.

After sorting rick out I helped the chap who ran into Martin's bike: his bike, a CBR600 would not start, having been on it's side. Figuring the problem to be the same, we took the airbox off and away it went! It did take a couple of minutes of restarting and stalling and restarting once the airbox was back on, to get the engine going, as I suspect there were vapours deep in the filter too. Thnks to bobby marriner bringing an electric roller starter over we were able to get it going properly, and once fixing a couple of other small problems from the crash, he was also OK to go into R3.
The action that I did get to watch was great, and while Nigel was out front easily in both the P6 and the Premodern races, the action behind was good, particularly in race 3 between the FE and the P6 bikes where Richard Easton challenged on the BikeWreckGSXR1100, Keith Higgs on the P&M1200 and Roger Quinlan on the Mori1200, with Rog taking 3rd place on the last corner dive.

Well, it's the Barry next, so I'd better pull a finger out!
cheers,
Zoltan

Some vids off my phone. not great , but here it is...