Bad Cat Racing

So I noticed brake fluid leaking from one of the Tilton master cylinder literally after I’d cinched the last tiedown on the CSR the afternoon before we left for Reno/Fernley.  It turned out that one of the nylon remote reservoir feed caps on the master cylinder had decided that would be an excellent time to develop a crack and start pissing fluid.  Better there in the driveway than halfway around the track I guess.  As I found out, this isn’t a part Winchester Auto or Kragen just have laying around.  And it’s not a part you can fix with JB weld and epoxy no matter how hard you cross your fingers.  After much panic I discovered that the nylon reservoir on the RGM was exactly the same size as the one on the CSR.  So the RGM was cannabilized and the brakes on the CSR bled in the dark the night before we left for Reno with the rig strapped to the trailer.

Now that things have calmed down I figured I’d pick up replacement cap and a spare for the toolbox.  Tilton as it turns out does not sell direct, but they’re happy to give you a list of resellers in the middle of assfuck-nowhere who do.  So I place a call to the closest guy in the interest of shipping charges.  He takes his sweet time calling me back only to tell me it’s a ‘special order’ part, and to top it off it’s 10 bucks a pop, and there will be shipping to boot.

Yeah, let me get back to you on that…

So I jump on Ebay, and sure enough, there is exactly what I need for Three Dollars and Seventy-Five Cents New in the Box.  I bought two. 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270015006879

The shift linkage/assembly has always been a pain in the ass.  The way JG set up the rig it was quite literally built for him, and nobody else.  By sheer luck Sarah was able to get in the rig and mostly use the shifter with nothing but minor adjustment.  But if we wanted faster/smoother shifts it was going to have to be fine tuned and all the slop taken out of things. 

The way the current setup works your foot goes into a toebox that hangs from a rather loose heim joint.  The toebox is a bit wide so there is too much free play between your boot and the upper/lower bar of the toebox.  From the toebox you have a non-adjustable pushrod with heim joints on either end that connects to a 90 degree bellcrank.  From the bellcrank we go up to the stock shifter pushrod and to the stock shifter bellcrank on the end of the shift shaft. 

The first problem I noticed was that the stock bellcrank on the shift shaft was not in the ideal position for optimial up/down leverage on the shift shaft.  It was about four cogs too high on the spline, or about 45 degrees.  This put the direction of force from the stock pushrod too far on the inside of the bellcranks direction of travel.  This was easily fixed by just dropping the bellcrank down till it made a 90 degree angle with the stock pushrod.

The second problem was the non-adjustable pushrod between the toebox shifter and the lower bellcrank.  This was quickly solved by taking the stock part to Orchard Supply, buying some Allthread, a couple heim joints, and jam nuts.  I threaded one heim joint all the way onto the end of the Allthread and set the stock linkage next to it.  I made an index mark 1.5 inches shorter than the stock pushrod, and took my dremel to the Allthread.  Once I had it cleaned up and quickly test assembled on the CSR with all new fastners it was obvious the new pushrod would allow more than enough adjustability.  I could drop it back enough for my foot to knee length now if I wanted to.

Lastly was taking all the slack out of the top heim joint that the toebox shifter hangs from.  I simply replaced all the old fastners and furry washers with new hardware and some nice thick powdercoated washers I had in my parts bin.  This got rid of nearly all the sloppy feel in the shifter while leaving just enough to allow pivoting and lateral movement of your foot without bumping the bike out of gear.

The original non-adjustable pushrod

The adjustable replacement

 Sarah and I did fairly decent our first weekend out with the CSR.  Our goal was to simply finish a race, bring the CSR home intact, and not die in the process.  Something we managed to accomplish despite the triple-digit heat and both of us being not in the ideal physical condition.  Don’t get me wrong, we’re not lethargic couch potatos, but it turns out this sport demands a far higher level of physical conditioning than regular two-wheel motorcycle racing.  I had to lift poor Sarah from the cockpit at the end of the race on Sunday.  But we finished, 16th out of 17 rigs.  We were not last, and we didn’t DNF.  I wore a hole in the ass of my leathers from dragging my butt through left hand corners.  Helimot is repairing my suit and slapping some velcro on the left asscheek so I can throw a puck on there for ass-sliding goodness.

 We did find out that while the trigger-throttle works for Jean-Guy, it sucks for everybody else.  Two laps with the index finger trigger throttle and your hand starts to cramp up pretty bad.  Not to mention it’s pretty much impossible to modulate one inch of throttle pull with one finger and turn left at the same time.  I figured Sarah was just not used to the throttle yet when she was complaining about it being hard to use, so I took the rig out early Sunday with Wade on the platform for a few laps.  Yep, my hand cramped.

 So when we got home I pulled the assembly and with a bit of careful filing around the starter button bracket was able to slot in a BBR single cable throttle assembly that Jocelyin sold me.  They don’t come with cable slack adjusters, as those are built into the Honda 50 throttle cables, but I found that a standard double banjo brake bolt threads right in.  So in a fit of ingenuity I cut the head off the banjo bolt, slotted it to allow it to slide over the cable, and countersunk one end to allow the cable ferrule to recess snugly.  With the addition of a locknut, I had a slack adjuster.  I lubed the assembly up and hit all the fastners with RTV once everything was assembled.  Test runs so far feel good.  Won’t know till we’re on the track proper.