Great to watch on Instagram and see the bike doing so well. Congratulations Gregor.
Words can't quite describe how tired I am still now, after a day of rest. I also don't know that I can describe this weekend adequately but I will try.
So this little bike started with me sending Thor a photo of a frame as a joke and Thor sending me an actual entry to the 1 Show.
Sure, I thought, why not.
I only had one job lined up and I was only going to transfer parts from my other bike and maybe build a subframe. Well, like most things I kept pulling the stops and wanting to do more and better. I can't say when it happened but somewhere along the line I went from building a play bike to deciding I was going to build the most serious XR100 ever.
As the days ticked down it seemed exceedingly unlikely I'd be able to finish. In fact every single day leading up to the party I was convinced at the end of the day that this whole thing was folly and I'd never finish. In the morning I would would be rested with a better attitude and think, "maybe, just maybe, we can do it"
So Thursday night I'd planned this big party to start at 6 and of course I'd hoped to have the bike finished. Pretty much all my plans hinged on absolutely nothing going wrong.
Lots of things went wrong.
Around noon as we worked on the bike Scott noticed that the clutch seemed to not work very well. I assumed that it was because I'd the heavy duty springs in the stock clutch. Well, when we put the bike on a stand the kickstart was moving with the wheel. Very wrong.
My friend Simon came over to help too - thanks Simon.
Around 1pm we came to the conclusion that something was wrong and I needed to pull the engine because the frame precluded pulling the side cover (tsk, tsk Scott) and so I pulled the motor, pulled the clutch and then, with the gears still not seeming to be working right I had to pull the entire motor down and split the cases.
I split the damn cases with 4 hours until guests arrived.
It's a good thing I did because I discovered that I'd not tightened the oil pump bolts. I also found that I'd assembled the kickstart return spring wrong. Lastly the heavy duty clutch springs bound up and that was the reason the clutch didn't work.
I replaced the springs with stock ones figuring I'd toast the stock clutch in one weekend but oh well and I buttoned up the entire motor and was just about to put it back in the bike when the FedEx guy showed up with the replacement 5 plate clutch.
I then proceeded to tear the clutch side down again and install the 5 plate with 3 hours to go until guests arrived. Then we put the motor back in the frame and put the body work on the bike and while Scott cleaned up the shop I went and showered 10 minutes before guests started to show up.
I was fully frazzled all day and there's no way I could pulled off the party but Lara and Judiaann both stepped up and took me out of the equation and made the decisions for the party.
Here is where you should see a photo of this amazing party, our house filled with guests and everyone having a truly great time. You won't see that because I didn't take any photos.
Sorry.
I was sort of amazed at who all showed up - it was, as described by one of the guys from Nova Motorcycles, an amazing group of smart people who pay attention to small details. I couldn't do better than that.
A friend who is the marketing director of BMW NA arrived with Roland Stocker - BMW Motorad design director and the Project Leader for the R9T and his very attractive younger girlfriend. Or so I thought. I was a bit blown away to have such an important BMW executive at my house but Roland is a very relaxed guy and was just having the best time at the party.
Somehow as the evening went on I realized that Rolands "girlfriend" was not his girlfriend but the lead chassis engineer for BMW motorcycles. I was both embarrassed to have made my assumption and glad I hadn't made a fool of myself! Sara is probably pretty young for her position but she is funny, aware and exceedingly smart about motorcycles.
At one point in the party I went into the garage to find Kyle wet sanding and polishing the paint on the bike. He did a bonkers amazing job - it was like glass.
Roland and Sara both said they absolutely loved my little tracker and picked out all sorts of details they liked. They spent a huge amount of time pouring over Scott's BMW which was with my BMW in the living room. Saul Koll showed up, Sean Chaney from Vertigo (who you know here), Ben and even Ryan from Baisley HP along with a few dozen more people. We had a taco truck cater the event and it was a pretty amazing party.
As the party wound down we migrated to the garage and started to set the suspension up for Scott. He was super excited to be the rider on the bike that he had been following along on for the last month.
Also that night my friends Jamie, Kerry and Tom showed up as they were staying the weekend with us.
The next morning we had coffee and Scott came over to help button up the bike. We still hadn't started it but thought we'd have until 5pm or so to get it running All we had to do was set the timing basically. Kerry joked that she was retired but offered to jump in and help tie up lose ends.
We put in gas and bumped the bike. The compression is way too high to kick start. It started but ran really poorly. It would rev a little but then fall on it's face. It felt like gas starvation.
Now I want to take a moment to introduce you to the true hero of the whole weekend. Kerry is a Ducati Master Mechanic - there are only 40 in the USA and only two women in the world. Before motorcycles she was a NASCAR mechanic. She's also funny, cute, unflappable and relentlessly optimistic in addition to being the best mechanic I've ever met in my entire life.
I only knew a little of this before this weekend as we'd only had a few dinners together and I knew her mostly from her Instagram (
Velocita Moto) and from Jamie's stories as they raced together and she was Jamie's race mechanic.
Well, as you can see in that photo it was raining and Kerry was smiling and changing needle hieghts on the street. After a while of not being able to get the bike to run despite moving the timing from 27 to 40 degrees and adjusting every thing we could on the carb we realized that load in was actually at 2pm and it was 2:30.
It was time to throw in the towel. We had worked all day trying to get the bike to run and nothing made any difference. I texted Scott that his ride wasn't going to be running and we were going to pull out of the race. I was sad but also so tired I just didn't care anymore. I was spent.
We dropped the bike at the show and hung out for the big opening night party. Sara joined us for dinner and we had a great evening.
That is Roland Sands at the back of the bike. He remembered me from the BMW last year and told me he loved the XR100 - that was quite the compliment - to be remembered as a builder by Roland Sands. What he doesn't remember is we used to race against each other 18 years ago.
The next morning I got up early and was having coffee with Kerry in front of a nice fire. We had nothing to do for the whole day with the bike not running. I was really upset at not being able to race and was saying that if we'd had more time maybe we could get it running.
Kerry said, "Well, why don't we try? I'm sure we can figure it out - it would be a lot more fun to try to get the bike running than just sitting around all day"
Really? Are you being serious Kerry? "Absolutely!" she says.
And with that I went out to the garage in my pajamas and started gathering tools and pulling parts off my other XR. My optimism had been beaten down so many times on this build that I don't think I could have mustered the energy but Kerry gave me hope. I called Scott and he thought I was crazy - he'd given up as well but said he'd come by to see us later.
We headed to the venue and discovered hundreds of racers in a makeshift pit in the parking lot. We met up with Scott (Rounds our rider) and proceeded to spend the next 10 hours working on the bike. We swapped carbs, we swapped jets, we changed timing and we did it all in the rain, outside on cold wet pavement in a parking lot. After several practices and hundreds of changes everyone was giving up.
I need to insert here that we were outside in a parking lot but every time Scott went to practice we had to run across the street, through the whole event, up the stairs and into the grand stands. We'd wait for him and then run all the way back. We did that about a dozen times or more.
As the day wore on everyone was convinced it was somehow carb related or timing and finally I suggested swapping the CDI box for a stock one I'd tossed in the parts. Everyone rolled their eyes but I insisted as the issue was the same all the time - the bike wouldn't rev out. Low and behold the bike worked.
Then I suggested going back to the Lectron and everyone rolled their eyes again. Don't change too many things all at once! We know it works - leave it! But I had felt how much power the Lectron had given it before and knew it would work. The Mikuni was weak.
Kerry is a machine. She is never flustered, never bothered. Once I made the decision she swapped the carb over which meant cables, throttle, intake, gaskets, filter... a lot of things.
Suddenly, with no practices left, the bike was working. The bike still felt like it cut out but we reasoned that this was a stock CDI with a very low rev limit - maybe 7-8000 whereas the aftermarket one was supposed to allow it to rev to 14,000. We were just slamming into the limiter while massive power was building.
The track was super bumpy. Like bumps and dips 6-10" deep and all night long travel bikes were cleaning up. Scott lined up in his race and got the hole shot. He lead for almost a whole lap until a CRF230 dirt bike passed him on the bumps. That bike was absolutely NOT legal in our class which has the rule of 150cc air cooled. The suspension was a big advantage but so was a motor 50% larger than the class limit.
In the end we took second to an illegal bike. It was bittersweet because we did so great against all odds but at the same time we really should have won. We would have protested but there was no one around to protest to and we were all too beat to make the fuss that was needed.
Sorry for the lack of photos - there's plenty of video on Instagram and we tried out doing live on Instagram which was pretty interesting to get this instant feedback loop on the bike and the troubles. Quite a few people suggested timing and maybe they meant the CDI but we'd changed the timing so much we discounted that.
Yesterday we loaded the bike up and headed home. Scott (Kolb) came by today to help clean the shop and he helped tune up the Bridgeport a little.
Before I clean the bike I thought I'd take some photos of it in it's battle worn state.
I don't know that I'd have the energy to do that weekend again. It was amazing but also exhausting - crushing defeats and exhilarating highs. It was intense.
I'm sorry I didn't do the normal sort of job documenting the process but there was never the time and the time I did have I was putting into Instagram. It was an intense build - one I honestly didn't think I'd get finished.
But we did. And for my money we won our race weekend by having the most amazing team come together and pull off a completely unlikely miracle - despite the #2 on our cheap plastic trophy, or perhaps in spite of it.
Gregor
