Taffy Road Racer!

i just wanted them to stop EVERYTHING! i could lean forward an inch at 100mph and watch the wheel bouncing back and forward over 1/2". and beofre you ask, yes the wheel was balanced!

std marzocchi and paoli used to be absolutely shyte! how they came through the 80's i don't know! they need to thank ducati for giving them another chance. 35mm wasn't that aweful but the tolerances would have been sloppy and tight in equal measures and there was no valving as such!

so i just locked everything up.

oh and as you all asked....No. 56 has the fuel cap up. unlucky but thanks to the 9 of you (BT!) that had a go (not!).

regards

Taffy

& theres me thinking it was your tax disc holder....

So why did it pop up only in practice? (or was it only happened the once at that meeting, which was during practice?)

Holy crap Taff..135 races in a season is hard to imagine,,,thats like almost every weekend for 7 months and then 4-5 races each race day.When you include practice laps that is a lot of seat time.No wonder you were chewing up machinery and you emptied a bathtub full of money!
To lose 56lbs at one shot of a race bike is not easy...you must have found a way to jettison a major component.
Or robbed a bank and tossed your wheels for a pair of feather weight mags.

nsman

in those days you raced saturday and sunday at the same circuit and camped next to the car overnight. your bike was outside the tent but nothing ever went missing at a circuit. people used to leave the tailgates up with their tools on display. eventually i decided that before it happened i would close the doors befoire i raced.

we raced that season from the first saturday in march to the last saturday in october (clocks changed that night). 8 months is 35 weekends. virtually all clubs ran two of each event and got through a 16-22 race programme. so you tried to find a main class and another that you fitted in. for me it was F2 at the beginning and later BoTT followed nearly always by 'up to 1300cc four stroke'.

so that was 4 for the day. i would sometimes race with a club that ran through the programme three times and that was awkward.... like a hot cross bun you knew that 3 wasn't enough but 6 was too many!

then there were the clubs that had a feature race for cash. 5 was nice.

later, bacuse of H & S, they had only one practice session of 4 laps when it was freezing cold and then they would start racing at 11am and have 28 races in a day. these promoters were the first pro's in the sport and eventually took all the good dates off the amatuer clubs.

now the 56LB and i bet you're thinking boll-ocks!!!!

well lets put it this way:
i had had 3 x 260mm brembo cast iron discs that weighed 4 1/2 pounds each and i changed to zanzani-plasma-sprayed which weighed about 1/2Lb each. so that was 12 pounds.

next, i had marvic magnesiums which despite being wider rimmed were way lighter.

then with those i could go tubeless! tubes weighed i think 7 and 8Lb each which was a further 15Lb. next, note that the bike had flippin great big P3 calipers on the front and a P2 on the rear. so i converted it to P2 fronyt and the dinkiest little P1 on therear that you ever did see! it also needed a new floating plate and that was done all hollow and the alloy rod was an old bathroom rail!

then i decided that this was the moment to go from steel to aluminium rear sprockets and at the same time "1/4" drive"!. this was another 2lb off.

the only place i didn't save weight was in the actual cush drive which marvic did for you. and i stuck to their system.

so. now. 56LBs. believe me?

talk soon!

Taffy