Torque's Cheap

Hey everyone, sorry I’ve been MIA of late. It has been a busy couple of months, but we have some great stuff to come so don’t go anywhere.

The all bike is back again, and it is time for a full race meet devoted to those crazy racers willing to fly down the strip on two and sometimes only one wheel. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I truly believe that bike drag racers are a different kind of crazy.

You see when you strap yourself in a drag car, you have a sense of safety come over you as you tighten your 5 or 6 point harness, struggle to get your helmet on without hitting the roll cage. That cage and harness, you know has been fitted to the car with the sole job of protecting you in the event the unthinkable should happen.

Now lets look back at the two wheelers point of view. Instead of suiting up in a fire proof suit, you squeeze yourself into a set of full leathers. The leathers are so tight that you feel like a 18 year of girl trying to squeeze into jeans 2 sizes smaller than you know you are. And while the 18 year girl is putting all that effort to look good, you know that the tighter the leathers are the less likely that they will come off should the unthinkable happen. Matching gloves and boots go with the suit, offering more than the fire protection your 4 wheel brothers (and sisters) are after.

I always laugh when I hear the jibs between the car and bike racers, most of which are all in good fun. But at the end of the day remember that we are all racers in this great sport of ours, no matter what discipline you prefer to race.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to scare anyone off racing a bike. I do ride, and enjoy it. But I am just not sure if I have enough guts to line up, do you???

If so, I hope to see you racing this weekend at the Doctor 2 Wheels All Bike at Palmyra Dragway. If not, come out and watch the crazy ones try and keep them between the white lines.

Cheers

D

Ok so with time drawing close to the KSOS on Friday we managed to run a small working bee last night at the Drag Strip with the goal of cleaning up the timing gear, and I thought I would post a small update for anyone keep track.

For anyone who has ever had anything to do with cabling, electrical, or electronic work you will be aware that ants, snakes and furry little creatures love to mess with anything and everything. The main aim of last night was to simply clean out all the break out boxes along the track, and re-terminate all the joins. These boxes are located at every spot where there is a light beam, use to record your times and mph.

So we have one at the start line, 60’, 330’, two located at 1/8 mile or 660’, one at 1000’, and two at the full ¼ mile or 1320’.
The extra ones at the 660’ & 1320’ are the MPH’s. The timing system uses these to calculate you MPH when you pass both boxes at each length. Eg, it calculates your MPH off the time it takes to go from the MPH to the ET box at 1/8 mile, and then again at 1/4 mile. So that’s 8 boxes on each side of the track, or 16 in total.

To give you an idea of what we found opening the boxes up last night, I took a photo of the first box.

This is what a lot of them looked like. Ants had decided to move in and set up shop. And judging by the size of the dwelling, I would say they opened a hotel for visitor too. As you can see on this next photo the ants have been eating the gel fill from the cable.

The cabling is a standard underground communications cable, and believe me this is a common problem. Eventually the ants would have started to eat through the plastic shielding around each pair of the cable.

Also we have a “friendly” snake that loves to take up residence in one of the final boxes on lane 2. Being as I’m not a fan of snakes, I decided to pass on taking a photo. But that’s a story left for another day.

Not long left to go now.

Cheers
D

As we quickly approach another scheduled Keep the Speed off the Streets this Friday, we’ve seen the week start with the return of more rain. While it has not been as heavy as previous weeks, it has still been disheartening to see. You quickly notice all the drag racers complaining about the rain, and that they hope it is gone before Friday.

However there is the other side that you might not have noticed, that of the staff hoping it leave long before Friday. You see to ensure that the meeting can run we really need a couple of days of good sun shine to allow us to get everything done. While the track needs a quick clean up, this is nothing major. However we do need time to prep the track, and there is that other issue that some members having been madly trying to work out – the timing gear.

As I’m sure some people are aware we have had a few issues with the timing boards and timing gear of late. We have identified a couple of issues with the gear, and have managed to fix some of them. However we are starting to run out of time. Seeing as we all have day jobs and can’t exactly play hooky to go work at the track, we are somewhat limited in the time available. So we have 3 nights between now and the Friday that the KSOS is scheduled for. Wow it doesn’t sound like much time at all when I put it like that, but at least one of these nights will have to be spent going over all the wiring for the timing system. We wont be able to having the boards running in time for Friday, so our main concern that this stage is the ensure the timing gear is all working.

As for the boards we are now awaiting delivery of the new control unit from the US. Once this arrives and we finish the testing to ensure we are all good to go again, we will be back in business in time for the Nostalgia Drags on the 26th of June. (and I think there may even be another KSOS in between there somewhere to give us a test run.) So what happened to the control unit for the boards, well it appears we have a power spike that caused the initial damage to the unit, and its been going down hill since then. But rest assured with the new unit on its way and the current unit awaiting repair, we will have a spare for future events.

Now here is the catch, we can’t open up all the timing gear and clean everything if it’s raining. Kind of defeats the purpose of cleaning everything, if it is going to get wet in the process. So here is hoping that the rain disappears, and doesn’t find its way back to Palmyra.

Cheers
D

All week, since ANDRA and Palmyra announced that the Pro Stock opening round of the ANDRA Pro Series would be held in Mackay, I’ve been trying to think what to right. And to tell the truth I must have started writing this blog 5 or 6 times, but continued to get a little stuck on what to discuss. So here we go again.

This is not the first time that ANDRA has asked us to run this event, but it is the first time that we have been in a position to accept the invitation. We came close last year, but simply did not have enough time to fit the meet into our racing schedule. So you can imagine how excited I was when the club decided to go for it this year. Apart from the standard bonuses that come with hosting a round of one of the nations top levels of our sport, such as the meet being nationally televised, we will be the opening round of the season. Not bad for a track that sits 1000k’s from the nearest capital city.

It has been said that our track will never be as big as the likes of Willowbank and WSID, but we have something that the larger tracks don’t have. There is that certain atmosphere and character that always surrounds regional tracks, and its something that the locals are very proud of. I was out at the track earlier this week doing a little work on the timing system (that’s another story for another day) when a gentleman pulled in to say hello. From memory, and don’t hold me to this I believe he said his name was Gavin. Now Gavin was up here on business for the week, and is from down Sydney way, but I won’t hold that against him. He was driving past the track for a look, when we saw me opening the gate. So he took the opportunity to stop in, say g’day, and sneak a peak at the track. He mentioned that he use to race in Pro Stock a couple of years ago, and had just seen the announcement that we would be holding a round. We only spoke to about 20 mins, but one of the points he raised was his enjoy of visiting regional tracks for the character they provided.

Not long after that Gavin was on his way, after taking a quick look around the track and thanking me for letting him sneak a peak. But it got me thinking about the benefits of a regional track over one of the capitals. Every year the racers that make the long pilgrimage up this way for the Sunstates Nationals, or the Pro Street meeting and even the exhibition events like the Brays, Jet Cars and Nitro Funny Cars all express how much they enjoy coming here to race. And while our track might not be the best in the country, I for one am very proud that racers enjoy visiting enough to not only express it, but to return year after year.

Well now after all that I really didn’t talk much about the Pro Stocks at all, well I guess I can save that for another day.

Cheers
D