CHARLIE’S TZR
With the months flying by, Charlie’s TZR is edging ever closer to its race debut!
It’s now been six months since getting the go-ahead from Beej to take his prized (albeit unbuilt) TZR 250 from under the dust covers, plus a number of boxes stored around our workshop, and get it ready to race. Since that time I should really have started paying ground rent for Wayne Philips’ spare bench at Phoenix Yamaha in Trowbridge – the home of the build – as bit by bit parts have come in to get the old gal running once again.
It’s been a long road with a lot of things to be organised, purchased and (let’s face it…) blagged, but we are now just about there with the credit card abuse and just waiting for a couple of parts to come through to complete the build. Therefore I have turned my attention this month to the externals, the fairings that will cover all of the good work that our Wayne, now returned after an off, is doing with the engine build.
Having already completed the Donington Park round of the Yamaha Past Masters (YPM) series on their club rental bike, my introduction to racing is complete. However, my return in October for the final round at Snetterton will be on this build, so I took particular notice of the bikes I would be competing against at the end of the season. One key thing was the fairing preparation that included slicing the lower fairing in half and hinging it so that you could open one side of the bike without taking the entire fairing off. With these, like my bike running premix, there is no need to have an oil catch tray, thus allowing the modification.
So with a fresh set of fairings waiting attention from Bardney Racing, I gave Gary Button, one of my YPMwingmen, a call for advice. The solution was that I went to his house in Reading equipped with my fairing and a six pack of Doom Bar, and he would help me prepare the fairing (Charlie speak for ‘do it for me’). I accepted, of course, and without further ado he had chopped the main fairing in half, riveted two sets of cupboard hinges together and then went about resetting the fairing. The hinges were attached to the glass fibre using cable ties in case of an off, so they would break before the faring holes ripped. Gary also lobbed off the two most forward pointed ends of the seat faring, as they get in the way of tank removal. Like the hinging, this is designed to save time in the paddock with the inevitable foibles of racing a 25-year-old bike.
Between us we also fitted the MRA screen acquired from HPS, two 3mm aluminium plates were cut and glued to the underside of the seat and rear of the tail unit
for reinforcement. I managed to blag a JHS Racing seat pad, which was glued and two perfect holes were burnt in via heating a copper pipe and then cutting through the rubber to leave two spherical openings to align with the seat bolts.
Gary then crafted a fitment for the seat, again out of 3mm angled aluminium lined up to the frame, cut to fit and then attached together with a sliding scale so the height can be adjusted when finally attached to my TZR. As for the rear frame and the painting of the number boards, well, this was down to me. A flurry of masking tape, newspaper, cleaned surfaces and green spray paint and the number boards fore and aft were complete. The addition of a couple of coats of lacquer gives the paint protection against peeling when race numbers are applied, or more appropriately, when they are removed.
My own metal work consisted of riveting together a strip of 3mm aluminium and utilising 90° brackets from B&Q, thus creating a frame for the back with a Dzus fastener to secure the rear of the tail. Proud of my metal work, I marched into Phoenix with my brackets and unloaded the freshly prepared fairings ready for fitting, which will be complete by next month. As should the final elements of the build – a newly manufactured hose from Samco, being moulded to my specification, is on its way, a new rear caliper from Hong Kong has arrived and been fitted as a rear master cylinder service kit arrived from Fowlers Parts, allowing completion of the rear brake build.
Admittedly, this reads like a list of things accomplished and boxes ticked, which in essence it is. This has been a lengthy process to get us to this point but I fear the hard work is yet to come. Getting the TZR running is one thing but getting it running competitively is something different. Now in August, time is running out for track testing, dyno running and tuning, not to mention upgrading in areas to improve performance. We have undoubtedly come a long way, but there is further to go and not much time before the red lights go out at Snetterton and we see what both the bike, and I, have got in the tank.
More next month. Let’s face it, there has to be!
Massive thanks to Gary Button for the work on the TZR Fairing and Denise Button for lending me her husband and providing the midweek roast.