2014 track season has officially started for me! After making a few small modifications to the Triumph 675 (such as new brake pads and the switch to GP shift) I was ready to go. It worked out that Pacific Track Time had a trackday that worked with my schedule, so I signed up and got prepared. This was a Monday trackday, so I spent Saturday and Sunday prepping, packing and then Sunday afternoon picked up my carpool buddy and we headed up to Thunderhill.
Upon arrival, I went to see If I could sneak in for a baseline prior to Monday morning with Jason Hauns at JPH Suspension, my go-to suspension guy. I love his work, and have been VERY happy with the results. He had room, so I ran over and unloaded the bike, hooked up the battery, turned it on - and nothing. Well, almost nothing. I had backlights on my display, but that was it.Try to bump start it, but no go there. One of the very nice gate guys at THill lent me his battery charger to us, so, figuring that was the issue, threw the battery on the charger and let it sit for a bit.
While it was sitting we set up pit and then went to walk the track after all the riding was done for the day. That was an interesting experience, definitely saw things in a slightly different light than you do just riding it!
Back at the pits, the battery was showing good, so I pulled it off the charger and back into the bike. Same thing happened this time. Um, not cool. That then turned into a flurry of testing, swapping, charging, jumping, etc until someone found a loose battery that we could test the bike with to completely rule out battery. Well, still had the same thing. Dammit! English electronics....off to plan B of troubleshooting this, but an initial search showed nothing. Unfortunately it was getting rather late by this point, and had been dark for sometime, so it was time to call it a night and attack it at first light in the morning.
Of course, I crawled into the Land Rover for some sleep with no luck as my mind was spinning about what this problem was. Google being your best friend, I pulled out a phone and did some digging. Finally I came across a couple threads in my forum where people had experienced this same issue, so I saved those pages and had a plan for the AM.
A few hours of sleep later, I woke to a cool, breezy morning. I pulled fairings off the bike, and started searching for some elusive fuses. Located those, and found that 2 of the fuses had blown - one for the turn signals the other for the headlights. Neither of which does this bike have, but the electronics on these bikes require the power to still go through the system in order to power up the gauge cluster which has to power up in order to allow power to the starting system. So, after replacing those, we were back in business!
Off to registration, tech and suspension for an initial set up. There we discovered the steering head was loose, so back to the pits I tore that down to check the bearing, which seemed okay but everything had been loose, so tightened it all down and it seemed fine. Finally, I could head out for a session on the track!
I spent the first 3 1/2 sessions just getting the suspension dialed in. The wind was making this far more difficult than it should have been, but we got a solid base line after all of that. Four adjustments later I felt like it was as good as I was going to get it with the wind throwing everything off. Now it was time to really learn how to ride this bike.
It became abundantly apparent that I would have to completely change my thinking on how I ride the track. Thankfully the basics are there, now it was how to apply them to the new bike, which turns out to be a completely different animal to ride! A few of the big changes that I found:
-- I can carry WAY more corner speed on this bike. That moves my brake markers, shift markers, and mental approach to corners.
-- This bike downshifts significantly more smoothly than the in line fours I'm used to. That meant changing shift patterns a little bit, and mentally this was a huge challenge. I am able to downshift far later on this bike, which is awesome, but mentally I feel like I'm waiting too long. Will have to get over that with a little more seat time.
-- I was struggling to hit my up shifts due to the position of the shift peg in relation to the foot peg. On the stock sets, with my foot out on the end of the foot rest, in order to hit the shift peg I literally have to move my foot not only forward but also in. This makes hitting these difficult since I'm not used to having to make that movement for an upshift. Due to that and realizing I needed higher pegs, rearsets got moved up on my priority list a lot higher than I was expecting.
-- Obviously missing my up shifts was destroying my drive, but the few times I managed to time everything right, WOW. I was able to over take larger bikes until they had too much time to really open up.
-- With the improved brakes and corner speed on this bike, I was eating people alive on the brakes. Me. I'm like the worst person ever on the brakes. Yet this combination had me closing huge gaps in very short periods of time. My lack of drive (see below) tended to ruin my gains, but the foundation is there!
-- I need to work on my drives on this bike. Due to the higher corner speed, I'm nervous about getting on the gas as hard as I can as soon as I can. I nailed it a couple times, and it was a thing of beauty. Now that just needs to become the norm lol!
-- There was a weird paradigm shift. The corners that were my biggest struggle on the R6 were the ones I shined in on this bike, and the ones I loved on the R6 were more of a struggle on this bike. I'm guessing it's a combination of ergonomics, cornering, etc, but definitely a different ride!
-- Ergonomics are different. I compared a photo of the same turn on the new bike with one of me on the R6, and on this bike, I am WAY more "on top" of the bike. Which leaves me a LOT more ground clearance.
-- It was estimated that I was probably running about the same lap times towards the end of the day on the new bike as I did on my best days on my old bike. Which means that once I really learn how to ride this, it will be awesome!!
It turned out to be a great day, well spent. I did what I went to do, which was get the new bike going, figure out the quirks, start getting used to it and start to figure it out. I did all of that and more, have a homework list of things to work on, and I am looking forward to what is to come!
Upon arrival, I went to see If I could sneak in for a baseline prior to Monday morning with Jason Hauns at JPH Suspension, my go-to suspension guy. I love his work, and have been VERY happy with the results. He had room, so I ran over and unloaded the bike, hooked up the battery, turned it on - and nothing. Well, almost nothing. I had backlights on my display, but that was it.Try to bump start it, but no go there. One of the very nice gate guys at THill lent me his battery charger to us, so, figuring that was the issue, threw the battery on the charger and let it sit for a bit.
While it was sitting we set up pit and then went to walk the track after all the riding was done for the day. That was an interesting experience, definitely saw things in a slightly different light than you do just riding it!
Back at the pits, the battery was showing good, so I pulled it off the charger and back into the bike. Same thing happened this time. Um, not cool. That then turned into a flurry of testing, swapping, charging, jumping, etc until someone found a loose battery that we could test the bike with to completely rule out battery. Well, still had the same thing. Dammit! English electronics....off to plan B of troubleshooting this, but an initial search showed nothing. Unfortunately it was getting rather late by this point, and had been dark for sometime, so it was time to call it a night and attack it at first light in the morning.
Of course, I crawled into the Land Rover for some sleep with no luck as my mind was spinning about what this problem was. Google being your best friend, I pulled out a phone and did some digging. Finally I came across a couple threads in my forum where people had experienced this same issue, so I saved those pages and had a plan for the AM.
A few hours of sleep later, I woke to a cool, breezy morning. I pulled fairings off the bike, and started searching for some elusive fuses. Located those, and found that 2 of the fuses had blown - one for the turn signals the other for the headlights. Neither of which does this bike have, but the electronics on these bikes require the power to still go through the system in order to power up the gauge cluster which has to power up in order to allow power to the starting system. So, after replacing those, we were back in business!
Off to registration, tech and suspension for an initial set up. There we discovered the steering head was loose, so back to the pits I tore that down to check the bearing, which seemed okay but everything had been loose, so tightened it all down and it seemed fine. Finally, I could head out for a session on the track!
I spent the first 3 1/2 sessions just getting the suspension dialed in. The wind was making this far more difficult than it should have been, but we got a solid base line after all of that. Four adjustments later I felt like it was as good as I was going to get it with the wind throwing everything off. Now it was time to really learn how to ride this bike.
 |
| By the end of the day we were gettin' some! |
It became abundantly apparent that I would have to completely change my thinking on how I ride the track. Thankfully the basics are there, now it was how to apply them to the new bike, which turns out to be a completely different animal to ride! A few of the big changes that I found:
-- I can carry WAY more corner speed on this bike. That moves my brake markers, shift markers, and mental approach to corners.
-- This bike downshifts significantly more smoothly than the in line fours I'm used to. That meant changing shift patterns a little bit, and mentally this was a huge challenge. I am able to downshift far later on this bike, which is awesome, but mentally I feel like I'm waiting too long. Will have to get over that with a little more seat time.
-- I was struggling to hit my up shifts due to the position of the shift peg in relation to the foot peg. On the stock sets, with my foot out on the end of the foot rest, in order to hit the shift peg I literally have to move my foot not only forward but also in. This makes hitting these difficult since I'm not used to having to make that movement for an upshift. Due to that and realizing I needed higher pegs, rearsets got moved up on my priority list a lot higher than I was expecting.
-- Obviously missing my up shifts was destroying my drive, but the few times I managed to time everything right, WOW. I was able to over take larger bikes until they had too much time to really open up.
-- With the improved brakes and corner speed on this bike, I was eating people alive on the brakes. Me. I'm like the worst person ever on the brakes. Yet this combination had me closing huge gaps in very short periods of time. My lack of drive (see below) tended to ruin my gains, but the foundation is there!
-- I need to work on my drives on this bike. Due to the higher corner speed, I'm nervous about getting on the gas as hard as I can as soon as I can. I nailed it a couple times, and it was a thing of beauty. Now that just needs to become the norm lol!
-- There was a weird paradigm shift. The corners that were my biggest struggle on the R6 were the ones I shined in on this bike, and the ones I loved on the R6 were more of a struggle on this bike. I'm guessing it's a combination of ergonomics, cornering, etc, but definitely a different ride!
-- Ergonomics are different. I compared a photo of the same turn on the new bike with one of me on the R6, and on this bike, I am WAY more "on top" of the bike. Which leaves me a LOT more ground clearance.
-- It was estimated that I was probably running about the same lap times towards the end of the day on the new bike as I did on my best days on my old bike. Which means that once I really learn how to ride this, it will be awesome!!
It turned out to be a great day, well spent. I did what I went to do, which was get the new bike going, figure out the quirks, start getting used to it and start to figure it out. I did all of that and more, have a homework list of things to work on, and I am looking forward to what is to come!
Awesome to read your detailed stories! Looks like with some mental and physical adjustments, you will get this Triumph down! Can't wait to see pics of you on the bike!!
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