Stan and I went to the Friday open practice, where I had an ignition problem with my "A" bike in the morning. Rather than tear the bike apart in a panic, I just rode my "B" bike since its motor needed breaking in anyway. There was rain off and on, and I used some of the wetter time to work on diagnosing the ignition deal. It seemed the ignition would cut out suddenly and intermittently at times. To make a long story short, the problem turned out to be a fault in the ignition cutout switch that mounts on the clutch perch. The problem was easy to solve by removing the switch and replacing it with a piece of wire. Once the ignition deal was fixed on the "A" bike, I started riding it, and I immediately noticed it was much harder to corner than the "B" bike. It felt like the front suspension just wasn't working at all. At Sears, Chris McGrail had commented that my forks felt like they had lots of stiction, and I had subsequently adjusted the fork brace to relieve some (but not all) of the binding. Since I thought binding might still be a problem, I removed the fork brace completely and the handling improved dramatically! The "A" bike forks still stick more and handle worse than those of the "B" bike, but the difference is much smaller than it was, and the "A" bike was good enough to race on I decided. Now I'm reasonably confident that the monster fork stiction I had was the cause of my two race crashes last year, where the front end didn't soak up bumps that I expected it to handle OK. Once the fork brace was off, I went out and just took it easy for a session on the "A" bike. Just relaxing, I got down to mid-1:34's, the best T-Hill times I had managed last year, discounting the lap or two right before I crashed. Wanting to maintain my crash-free season, I decided not to push myself to go much faster. Instead, I did spent the dry afternoon time just trying to get comfortable and consistent with the low 1:33's I was doing. Now that I have some time before the next race date, I need to take the "A" bike front end apart and figure out why the forks stick so much. Most likely candidate is slightly tweaked clamps. ------------------------------ Team Iguana had a good weekend at the Thunder Hill races. No crashes, and only minor mechanicals that got addressed at the track. The short summary: Stan seems to be more comfortable putting tape on and off his TZ125 radiator, and all indications are that he will be ready to test-sit on the bike by the end of the season. He's tentatively planning to start the engine sometime early next season, and hopefully will ride the bike within the next couple of years. :-) Seriously, he ran the bike happily all weekend, and missed only a small amount of practice while he played with tape, jets, suspension, and fuel in his efforts to make sure that no matter how much riding he did, the bike would always feel unfamiliar. I don't know his finishing placements, but he wasn't last in either F-III or F-II, and I think he got down into the 1:27's or so -- is that right, Stan? Fast times on 125's seem to be around 1:22 or 1:23. Darren is FAST! He ended his weekend doing high 1:29's in the 250 production race and took third place. In 250 superbike I did several low 1:31's and beat several people I've never beaten before. I didn't crash and didn't come in last in 500 twins (even though I was the only 250 out there). I think I got sixth in 250 production. No one seems to be sure, but it seems like John [Rabasa] got seventh in 250 production. I don't remember his times for sure, but they were quite good. 1:34's, John? All the Iguanas' finishing spots were made easier in 250 production by the fact that Bartlow and Mazur both had mechanicals in the race. I'm working on a long version of the weekend's events from my point of view; if I ever manage to finish it, I'll pollute your mailbox with it soon.