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Skunkworks


mossrider

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Well here goes;

Thursday: Up at 2am and finish loading (switch from Suzuki stuff to Yamaha stuff after getting bike at 7pm)

hit road at 3am, get to track at 3, pit set up by 4, put together bike-in-a-box by 5 and head to tech,

Pass tech!

 

Friday: first practice. Tony is getting used to a new bike on new tires and doing well on cold slick track. I get the suspension dialed in for him and work on setting pressures and getting heat into the dunlop slicks. The spec tires are leftover stock 1000 spec tires designed for 200 hp/400+ lbs bikes, not ideal for Lightweight class bikes but everyone gets the same so we deal with it. Later in Q1 we make more awesome progress and Tony qualifies, putting it on the grid. By the end of Q1 we're making serious progress, motor is a monster and the bike is dialed in and working awesome. Our trap speeds are near the top of the grid and several mph above the suzukis. Tony has yet to push to 100%.

 

Saturday: morning Q2; we only did 1 lap on wet/cold track and decide not to press our luck, not wanting to fix crash damage prior to race.

 

Saturday race time:

sighting lap goes perfect, we take our grid position, warmers on. Clear the grid and off for the warmup lap prior to start of race

 

KaBoom, motor disintegrates, weekend over, load 356 lbs scrap aluminum back into trailer.

 

Had the time of my life, would do it again tomorrow.  I got 2 weeks to rebuild for my next race.

 

What's the hurry?

 

I'll add pics when I get them downsized.

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16 hours ago, mossrider said:

Well here goes;

Thursday: Up at 2am and finish loading (switch from Suzuki stuff to Yamaha stuff after getting bike at 7pm)

hit road at 3am, get to track at 3, pit set up by 4, put together bike-in-a-box by 5 and head to tech,

Pass tech!

 

Friday: first practice. Tony is getting used to a new bike on new tires and doing well on cold slick track. I get the suspension dialed in for him and work on setting pressures and getting heat into the dunlop slicks. The spec tires are leftover stock 1000 spec tires designed for 200 hp/400+ lbs bikes, not ideal for Lightweight class bikes but everyone gets the same so we deal with it. Later in Q1 we make more awesome progress and Tony qualifies, putting it on the grid. By the end of Q1 we're making serious progress, motor is a monster and the bike is dialed in and working awesome. Our trap speeds are near the top of the grid and several mph above the suzukis. Tony has yet to push to 100%.

 

Saturday: morning Q2; we only did 1 lap on wet/cold track and decide not to press our luck, not wanting to fix crash damage prior to race.

 

Saturday race time:

sighting lap goes perfect, we take our grid position, warmers on. Clear the grid and off for the warmup lap prior to start of race

 

KaBoom, motor disintegrates, weekend over, load 356 lbs scrap aluminum back into trailer.

 

Had the time of my life, would do it again tomorrow.  I got 2 weeks to rebuild for my next race.

 

What's the hurry?

 

I'll add pics when I get them downsized.

Any idea on how the motor blew?

 

Craig Mapstone
Upstate New York

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Blue Line Racing

Haven't tore into it yet but looks  (sounds) like tranny grenaded. Locked up and sounds like a milk jug full of rocks. Can push w/clutch in and there's a new vent hole in top of engine case over tranny😕 where oil shot out to recreate the Exon Valdez. 

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1 hour ago, Blue Line Racing said:

Haven't tore into it yet but looks  (sounds) like tranny grenaded. Locked up and sounds like a milk jug full of rocks. Can push w/clutch in and there's a new vent hole in top of engine case over tranny😕 where oil shot out to recreate the Exon Valdez. 

Welcome to the forum, @Blue Line Racing . Thanks for joining! 

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Blue Line Racing

Haha, oops. It's actually me, Mossrider. The new security features locked me out from road america so I opened an account under my race team, Blue Line Racing. The warden actually owns it, I'm the rider, builder, mechanic and dishwasher. 🙃 Sorry for any confusion. 

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Mmmmm, Moto America @ Road America. Wow!  Never, did I ever.....

 

IMG_20180601_080648461_resized_resized-3.jpg

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Well our initial assessment was only partially correct. When we pulled the head in hopes of transplanting it to a donor motor we discovered it is trashed.  The photo bellow shows what fell out of the bore after the head came off. I dont think its supposed to do that. The tranny is fooked too, sounds like all my missing tools are in there. We still haven't been into the bottom end to see what the mains and big ends look like so I  don't know if the rod let go due to fatigue or some other malady. 

 

temp_2.jpg

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14 minutes ago, mossrider said:

Well our initial assessment was only partially correct. When we pulled the head in hopes of transplanting it to a donor motor we discovered it is trashed.  The photo bellow shows what fell out of the bore after the head came off. I dont think its supposed to do that. The tranny is fooked too, sounds like all my missing tools are in there. We still haven't been into the bottom end to see what the mains and big ends look like so I  don't know if the rod let go due to fatigue or some other malady. 

 

temp_2.jpg

That is hard to look at.  :(  Hope you find out the cause.

Craig Mapstone
Upstate New York

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Blue Line Racing

Not bad for a couple days work. We salvaged the cams out of the wreckage and put them in a stock motor from a salvaged bike and ended up with this. Middle Trace is new build, falls squarely between motoamerica unit and last year's super sport version. No pistons or decked head but oh well, be fun for club racing which is where we're at right now, mmmm racetrack life. 

temp_3.jpg

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Here's a pic taken between showers/storms last weekend at BIR. Some dry races, some wet. All fun. Sure beats hell out of work or drudging along doing chores around the house especially in bad weather. I'm really lucky. Wife is a rider and a corner captain so she works corners at the track and scolds me when I dog it on track, she's more aggressive than I am. There was snowmobile watercross and drag racing going on the same weekend so plenty of action.

 #takeherwith

 

 

IMG_20180616_104233124_HDR_resized.jpg

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At the risk of sounding like a sicko...I LOVE racing in the rain. It's the only time I used to do REALLY well.

 

Go forth and modify my son...go forth and modify...

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To the name of the thread!!! Anything to do with the "Surtee's Special" frame by Ken Sprayson??  The" Frame Man"

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If you find the time, can you spec what the different tune state mod's are? Curious, looking at the dyno runs - speaking of which, do you have a larger picture to see the numbers? Is red peaking at ~87HP around 9k? 

 

I know you commented about pistons, so you must have bored it out - which run? Also is sounds like you increased the squish and compression ratio by removing material off of the head - do you know what the final ratio was?

 

Enjoyed the read. Thanks.

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5 hours ago, fzar said:

To the name of the thread!!! Anything to do with the "Surtee's Special" frame by Ken Sprayson??  The" Frame Man"

Although John Surtees and Ken Sprayson are certainly worthy of their own threads, I was actualy ripping off Lockheed Martins' Advanced Developement Projects, aka Skunkworks. The epitome of "what if" "bet ya can't" engineering. 

 

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1 hour ago, mossrider said:

Although John Surtees and Ken Sprayson are certainly worthy of their own threads, I was actualy ripping off Lockheed Martins' Advanced Developement Projects, aka Skunkworks. The epitome of "what if" "bet ya can't" engineering. 

 

I’ll have to look that up, I was curious as Im  an acquaintance of af a guy who who helped re-build the AJS Surtee’s Special under the now owner Rob Iannucci @ Team Obsolete. He is also their lead rider/tester/ resto- mechanic. Interesting stuff

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5 hours ago, sansnombre said:

If you find the time, can you spec what the different tune state mod's are? Curious, looking at the dyno runs - speaking of which, do you have a larger picture to see the numbers? Is red peaking at ~87HP around 9k? 

 

I know you commented about pistons, so you must have bored it out - which run? Also is sounds like you increased the squish and compression ratio by removing material off of the head - do you know what the final ratio was?

 

Enjoyed the read. Thanks.

Purchased new off showroom floor in October 2015 and converted to race bike over the winter. Motor specs; stock airbox, AP Motoarts flashed stock ecu, Yosh full race exhaust. First raced in Chuckwalla in March of 2016. I have a dyno trace for that somewhere, done on the same dyno/same operator as the others that appear here as a baseline for comparative purposes. IIRC it was 70hp on this dyno.

 

Into shop for upgrade over off season. Head was decked. Only room for a few ten thousand off the head due to piston-head clearance (piston-valve clearance was roomier) but got the head squared to the bore at any rate. Could only guess at change to CR, maybe half point (messed with thinner head gaskets too). Cams were slotted by hand to allow degreeing. PC5 was added to permit easier meddling with things and to switch from AP's direct wire quick shifter (took a sh_t) to a dyno jet unit (also later took a sh_t). The idea here was to permit switchable fuel mapping for race/pump gas. Pistons and bottom end were left alone to stay in Super Sport class racing. This is the green trace on the graph overlay. This was the 2017 raced-as configuration.

 

Back into the shop during off season for MotoAmerica build when the class was announced. This time the cases were split so it could be given a complete overhaul after having approx 3000 race miles over 2 seasons put on it. AP's tranny upgrade was added, Spears stock bore 13 to 1 pistons went in, Spears cams in, stock airbox and intake were modified this time, no air filter. New bearings blah blah in bottom. This is the red trace above. We obviously dinked up something in the process since it went BOOM shortly thereafter.  This was 2018 prototype version 1 (see what I did there)

 

Back into shop in June 2018 for quick mid season update; 2 ebay motors were quickly sourced from less fortunate fz07s, cams were salvaged from blown motor and degreed into stock donor motor. Everything else same pending version 3.0 due in July 2018. This is the blue trace above.

 

You can easily see the extra balls displayed by the pistons and decked head in the previous versions but also visable is the fall off due to stockish airbox remnants curtailing it's ability to  breath on top. I have a Hord box that would have undoubtedly put me over 90 but didn't have enough time to make it rules legit before race.

 

When is enough, enough?

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Just now, fzar said:

Never!!!!!

Send money, I'll go till you're broke!

 

 

Hahaha

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12 hours ago, mossrider said:

Purchased new off showroom floor in October 2015 and converted to race bike over the winter. Motor specs; stock airbox, AP Motoarts flashed stock ecu, Yosh full race exhaust. First raced in Chuckwalla in March of 2016. I have a dyno trace for that somewhere, done on the same dyno/same operator as the others that appear here as a baseline for comparative purposes. IIRC it was 70hp on this dyno.

 

Into shop for upgrade over off season. Head was decked. Only room for a few ten thousand off the head due to piston-head clearance (piston-valve clearance was roomier) but got the head squared to the bore at any rate. Could only guess at change to CR, maybe half point (messed with thinner head gaskets too). Cams were slotted by hand to allow degreeing. PC5 was added to permit easier meddling with things and to switch from AP's direct wire quick shifter (took a sh_t) to a dyno jet unit (also later took a sh_t). The idea here was to permit switchable fuel mapping for race/pump gas. Pistons and bottom end were left alone to stay in Super Sport class racing. This is the green trace on the graph overlay. This was the 2017 raced-as configuration.

 

Back into the shop during off season for MotoAmerica build when the class was announced. This time the cases were split so it could be given a complete overhaul after having approx 3000 race miles over 2 seasons put on it. AP's tranny upgrade was added, Spears stock bore 13 to 1 pistons went in, Spears cams in, stock airbox and intake were modified this time, no air filter. New bearings blah blah in bottom. This is the red trace above. We obviously dinked up something in the process since it went BOOM shortly thereafter.  This was 2018 prototype version 1 (see what I did there)

 

Back into shop in June 2018 for quick mid season update; 2 ebay motors were quickly sourced from less fortunate fz07s, cams were salvaged from blown motor and degreed into stock donor motor. Everything else same pending version 3.0 due in July 2018. This is the blue trace above.

 

You can easily see the extra balls displayed by the pistons and decked head in the previous versions but also visable is the fall off due to stockish airbox remnants curtailing it's ability to  breath on top. I have a Hord box that would have undoubtedly put me over 90 but didn't have enough time to make it rules legit before race.

 

When is enough, enough?

Great info, thanks.

 

Curious where you located your lobe centers after you slotted th cams? I did this long ago on a GPz550, and thought it made a nice difference. Did you play with it at all or just shift for best high-end perf? Personally, I like to alter the lobe centers for low-midrange for street riding and have thought about it for my FZ but haven't gone there yet.

 

Are there no big bore kits for the FZ or did you need to stay at the stock displ for racing reasons?

 

What does your gut tell you caused the destruction? Deep into the red zone during the races? It's tough to see that type of damage and not consider the FZs durability.

 

Again, thanks for the write-ups. 

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2 hours ago, sansnombre said:

Great info, thanks.

 

Curious where you located your lobe centers after you slotted th cams? I did this long ago on a GPz550, and thought it made a nice difference. Did you play with it at all or just shift for best high-end perf? Personally, I like to alter the lobe centers for low-midrange for street riding and have thought about it for my FZ but haven't gone there yet.

 

Are there no big bore kits for the FZ or did you need to stay at the stock displ for racing reasons?

 

What does your gut tell you caused the destruction? Deep into the red zone during the races? It's tough to see that type of damage and not consider the FZs durability.

 

Again, thanks for the write-ups. 

We futzed with the stock cams some on the dyno and found as delivered the motor /cams are pretty well optimized for midrange power (hence everyone's love of this bike as a street hooligan). When we went after better high rpm power the midrange sagged off the chart with little gain on top. The stock airbox, in conjunction with the cams, restricts the motors ability to breath and/or make high rpm power. With a wee bit of advance we could get an acceptable midrange trace with the slightest bump in top end. The middle trace shows a nice midrange, helped I'm sure by the raised CR of the decked head, but still falls flat above 8000.

 

Bottom line; Ifin ur gonna race her and rules allow, put in cams n hog out the box. Or leave it alone and enjoy a wheelie or three in stock form, Yamaha got it deadnutson.

 

There are over bore pistons available but alas, regeln verboten. 

 

Me guts frequently get me in trouble. This is a very robust motorcycle if you keep your fingers out of it. It would undoubtedly last +100,000 miles when cared for in stock form. When you start mucking around inside and changing things you run the risk of pulling the pin on a grenade. I must admit that the majority of 'engine work' was completed by a friend and experienced mechanic/engine builder/dyno owner and operator. I'm a hack and heavy lifter, not a skilled artisan. Even the slightest of oversights, errant measurement, missed detail or incorrect torque figure could have caused this catastrophe. Not to mention the physical abuse that is racing. My 'gut' tells me we mortally wounded it on a botched shift over-rev coming up the front straight at Road America (5th to 4th instead of 6th). We have no slipper clutch and that kind of gross overstress mighta kissed the valves resulting in its untimley demise. 

 

You asked, hell I don't know I'm just having fun. Pass the assembly lube!

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12 hours ago, mossrider said:

We futzed with the stock cams some on the dyno and found as delivered the motor /cams are pretty well optimized for midrange power (hence everyone's love of this bike as a street hooligan). When we went after better high rpm power the midrange sagged off the chart with little gain on top. The stock airbox, in conjunction with the cams, restricts the motors ability to breath and/or make high rpm power. With a wee bit of advance we could get an acceptable midrange trace with the slightest bump in top end. The middle trace shows a nice midrange, helped I'm sure by the raised CR of the decked head, but still falls flat above 8000.

 

Bottom line; Ifin ur gonna race her and rules allow, put in cams n hog out the box. Or leave it alone and enjoy a wheelie or three in stock form, Yamaha got it deadnutson.

 

There are over bore pistons available but alas, regeln verboten. 

 

Me guts frequently get me in trouble. This is a very robust motorcycle if you keep your fingers out of it. It would undoubtedly last +100,000 miles when cared for in stock form. When you start mucking around inside and changing things you run the risk of pulling the pin on a grenade. I must admit that the majority of 'engine work' was completed by a friend and experienced mechanic/engine builder/dyno owner and operator. I'm a hack and heavy lifter, not a skilled artisan. Even the slightest of oversights, errant measurement, missed detail or incorrect torque figure could have caused this catastrophe. Not to mention the physical abuse that is racing. My 'gut' tells me we mortally wounded it on a botched shift over-rev coming up the front straight at Road America (5th to 4th instead of 6th). We have no slipper clutch and that kind of gross overstress mighta kissed the valves resulting in its untimley demise. 

 

You asked, hell I don't know I'm just having fun. Pass the assembly lube!

So glad you are on here sharing your experience.  Thanks!

Craig Mapstone
Upstate New York

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