Welcome to Celeres Racing
First
off let me explain the name. After various thoughts and a few options,
mostly dismissed by the "arty graphics designer" I stumbled on the name
Celer.
The Celeres were a personal armed guard of 300-500 men maintained by Romulus, the mythical founder of ancient Rome. The Celeres were associated with Celer, the lieutenant of Romulus responsible for Remus' slaying in some stories. It is unknown whether they were infantry or cavalry; Dionysius claims the former, while Livy and other sources argue that the Celeres were a cavalry unit. The latter seems more plausible given that celeres means literally "the swift". So courtesy of Wikipedia you have it, the key part of course is the meaning "the swift" also its Italian links and the fact that I come from the Roman City of Bath.
The Celeres were a personal armed guard of 300-500 men maintained by Romulus, the mythical founder of ancient Rome. The Celeres were associated with Celer, the lieutenant of Romulus responsible for Remus' slaying in some stories. It is unknown whether they were infantry or cavalry; Dionysius claims the former, while Livy and other sources argue that the Celeres were a cavalry unit. The latter seems more plausible given that celeres means literally "the swift". So courtesy of Wikipedia you have it, the key part of course is the meaning "the swift" also its Italian links and the fact that I come from the Roman City of Bath.
The
plan is to refresh the 888 with a little help from a few sponsors and
enter the bike in to the 2014 Classic TT Formula 1 race. Before you ask
no I'm not the rider, that honour goes to a friend Stuart Rayner. See
Stuart's blog here Black Dub
The bike itself started life as a humble Strada owned by Hans Quirijns from Holland.See HQRacing for some previous history including dyno graphs and rebuilds. It was then bought by an ex pat in Belgium Paul Dudlington with a 999 engined 888 that Paul has kept as a project. Luckily for me Paul was coming over to the UK so I was able to collect from Brighton instead of travelling to Lommel.
Paul did nothing to the 888 so the bike stands pretty much as it left Holland in 2013. There are some nice parts like a slipper clutch, five spoke wheels, spaghetti exhaust, quick shifter, Domino fast throttle, lightened internals with HC pistons running with a PC3. Hans has set the bike up to run on 100RON fuel which I'm not even sure you can buy it on the island so I'll need to research that or dyno with Shell's finest.
Aesthetically the bike looks very purposeful but, there are a few things to change to survive the rigours of the TT circuit.
The quick shifter will be removed along with the PC3 and after rework the bike will be on the dyno for a remapped chip. The last dyno run had an output of 120.1BHP, now different dynos give different readings so even though that's a nice figure at the end of the project I'll be happy if the motor puts out 115BHP and survives the race.
The next item on my list is the exhaust system, I'd like to get back to the lower but straighter sweep of the Corse bikes. There will also be two mounts for the exhaust as per 888 WSB bikes back in the day.
All that leaves is a rewire to remove a lot of the road loom that is still in place, an overhaul for the suspension, fitting of new bodywork, powder coating of parts, various new bearings, chain and sprockets, overhaul to some replacement billet calipers and a lick of paint. Somewhere in there is an engine blueprint as well, but more of that later.
If that all gets done along with anything else I've forgotten or just crops up as these things do we'll have some testing to do at Castle Combe.
Is it me or does that seem a way off?
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