Countdown to Spa
The classic endurance race at the Biker’s Classic at Spa is one of the best events of the year and there will be Bike stickers on two of the bikes that are racing. Hopefully.
BUILDING RACE BIKES from scratch is a big job, especially when you’ve got a deadline – that’s the Bikers Classic, 29 June at Spa. Fortunately we have got a good team on the job with our Suzuki GSX-R750S, but even they can do with extra help from time to time. Ben Needham who’s one of the mechanics at B&B Motorcycles, Lincoln built the engine and the cylinder head was flowed by Paul Cumpstone from PRP Tuning, but we roped in Butch Cartwright to help dialling in the camshafts. I’ve known Butch to say, ‘hello,’ to since the 1980s when I was racing in British Superbikes and he was James Whitham’s mechanic. About four years ago he moved to Lincolnshire and we’ve got to know him a lot better since then. Butch has a lot of experience with oil cooled Suzukis, but he admitted he hadn’t dialled in a pair of camshafts in 30 years. Good for him to get his hand in I reckon. The race camshafts have come from Kent Camshafts, and the adjustable camshaft drive sprockets are from APE race parts in America. Obviously you want the camshafts opening and closing the valves at exactly the right moment to get optimum power, and you don’t want inlet and exhaust valves tangling or hitting a piston at high revs, so you have to get it cock-on. The APE sprockets allow you to adjust the timing by fractions. You need a degree gauge on the end of the crank, and dial gauges on the valves so it’s a bit fiddly. Butch and Ben spent a day on it, but I reckon there was quite a bit of chat and tea drinking in that time too. Anyway, it’s done now and the engine can go into the frame and that’ll look like a big step forward. By the time you read this we’ll have raced the 1100cc Suzuki XR69 at Donington. I’ll tell you how that went next month.
IT’S 35 YEARS SINCE the original Team Bike first raced at Spa. The bike was a Honda CB1000R and the riders were Howard Lees (the team boss), Mat Oxley (still a Bike contributor) and Peter Clifford. They didn’t finish, but it was a pretty heroic effort. We took the same bike, completely unrestored, back to Spa for the Bikers Classic event in 2009 with Stephane Mertens (Belgian EX-WSB rider and local hero) and myself riding and managed to finish fifth, so we’re looking forward to going back again this year with two Honda RC30S. Our bikes are getting new Maxton suspension but our real advantage maybe tyres. The Spa organisers insist on road tyres, which is pretty crazy because you’ve got 130bhp bikes and apparently it sometimes rains at Spa. Modern sports bike tyres are amazing, but they’ve got almost no tread, which is a handicap at Eau Rouge in an Ardennes downpour. Avon invited us to a test day at Mallory Park to try a tyre that they’ve got in development. It’s a road tyre with tread, but available in a soft compound. But don’t tell any of the European teams about it, OK? Not sure what we’ll use in the dry though.
‘They didn’t finish, but it was a pretty heroic effort’