Here we go again......

Indeed here we go again, after last year with all the trials and tribulations, finally getting in a lap, qualifying and ultimately finishing the race this year, Stuart didn't get an entry. So after both of us investing time, effort, cash and Stuart hanging it out there on the toughest track in the world we got two fingers from the TT committee.  A lot of people have said you need speed to get an entry, well I'm curious. 
A. how do you pick a newcomer? 
B. If it's said it takes 3 years for a rider to get up some really good pace, where is Stu's 2nd year? 
It would appear to be a lucky dip for an entry, unless your name is a famous stout or a brand of tyres. I could rant on for a few more paragraphs but it won't change 'owt as they say oop North.

Still Emily was built with one job and course in mind the Isle of Man TT 37.73 miles of fury. So when I was contacted by another rider with an interest in taking Emily on, the first person I spoke to about it (apart from Liz) was Stuart, after all she was built for Stu and we are a team. Although massively disappointed to not be going himself he did say she's an expensive ornament to be at the back of the garage. So with his blessing I got in touch with this year's potential rider Wayne 'Ciderman' Axon. Wayne rode Louigi Moto's F2 bike last year after Alex Sinclair broke his thumb in practice and Wayne won his class as well. Wayne is also fresh back from the 2015 TT where he competed on his supertwin and finished a very nice 30th with a lap of 109mph. Wayne had met Emily briefly last year at the Classic but obviously we needed to get the two together so we arranged to meet up at Weston Bike night.

  
So Wayne got to grips with Emily for the first time, and he seemed pretty happy during a chat over dinner. Unlike last year where we were building down to the wire, this year we have an almost ready to race bike so the next plan was to get together at the North Gloucester race meeting at Castle Combe. There was a set of Classic parade laps during the days so I invited Rich Llewellin and Wayne to ride Emily over the weekend. Rich on Saturday and Wayne on Sunday.

Rich and Emily.

A relaxed Papa Louigi always smiles for the camera.

Not many things are quite as unnerving as waiting for good riders to come back and critique your bike! Happily all that Rich wanted adjusted was the clutch lever and gear lever, other comments were that the fuelling was spot on and all was good, phew.

Wayne got his turn on Sunday and it was pleasing to hear that he is happy as well, just a few tweaks on suspension and seat height.  Reports were positive again and that she pulls and brakes well and handles fine. Hooray, let's go racing.

Things to do are not many but one of the first was an oil and water refresh and the wheels are off as they are at Avon tyres for some new boots for this year, I look forward to trying them myself later in the year. I have to change the rear spring up to 11NM and I'll change the footrests to the carbon set and race shift for the gearbox.

I'll leave you for now with some video of the recreation of a classic start at Castle Combe. Well worth a watch, enjoy.

Emily has her new dress.

Well, taking the opportunity this weekend as the weather was fair I popped on Emily's newly adorned fairings. I just have to add the #9 to the seat unit and renew a Celeres racing decal, then finish with a final wax on, wax off for the upcoming show at Shepton Mallet on the 7th - 8th February.

35th-Carole-Nash-Bristol-Classic-Motorcycle-Show 

I've also replaced the modern black rev counter with another one in white for that classic look. As part of the show regulations I've drained the tank of fuel although my new fluid syphon device decided not to play so it was back to plan A, even petrol fumes leave an awful taste in the mouth. I also had to disconnect the battery which turns out to weigh about the same as the entire bicycle that Richard Hammond was riding in tonight's edition of Top Gear, around 800 grams. She'll be on display on the Ducati Owners Club stand there and Liz and I will be there on and off all weekend, I have a limited amount of photos from the Isle of Stuart and Emily in action to give away so make sure you find us to get one. 
See you there I hope.

 

Time for a winter refresh.

Well the old track bodywork is off and a little bit of cleaning is required, mostly just brake and clutch dust along with bobbles of tyre rubber.
We will of course most certainly be applying for a slot again at this year's Classic TT so I took the opportunity to get some of the required shots you need with your application. You need to add photos of your bike with and without fairings along with an action shot. Last year we had just the photos you can find at the very beginning of this blog. Now we have plenty!

Occasionally the cat seems to take a shine to the nose fairing that has been on the conservatory table during the off season.

Finally for now we're all off to the Bristol Classic Bike show at the showground Shepton Mallet soon so it seemed like a good time to unveil the new livery for this year. I may have to change the race number but live long Giancarlo the Lion of Jesi. 

Emily in action, Cartagena.

Well Stuart had his fun on the Isle and at last I get a proper go in Cartagena, Spain. With Liz and The No Limits mob we had three days on track in the sun. I had an issue with the brakes at one point with the lever coming back to the stop but they were still working, so a bleed and a check over with the lever moved out a couple of clicks all was well. The braking here is more intense than the flow of the Isle of Man so this may be why Stuart had had no problems before. As you may notice in the series of pictures Emily has the spare road fairings fitted with green highlights.

She handles like a dream and I finally got both of my knee sliders down as she makes it easy. Just one trip into the gravel, but that was my fault with a missed gear going into corner one on the last afternoon.

Stuart and Emily in action....

Just for all you 888 lovers, here are some action shots from practice and the Classic TT F1 2014.

 

Emily is now wearing a new dress, well fairings, for a trip to Spain in November. A post TT inspection found only one fault on her where an alloy boss had become loose in the under seat air box. That's been re epoxy'd in place along with a refit of the light weight battery for the trip south. 
In other news I had contacted K-Tech about the fork issues and they were somewhat mortified that the forks had been sent out in such a condition, to be fair they did immediately offer to do any remedial work and inspect. They have since collected/returned the forks and removed another internal component that may have been the cause of plastic shavings in the left leg. They have also added a 5mm preload spacer. I've still to get an answer on why the original 355mm long springs were replaced by ones 425mm long. I'll see what they are like in November.

To finish on an upbeat note I must say a big thank you to The Image Works, at some point Emily will get a new set of replica decals to adorn her race fairings. One of the decals was oversize but a quick call resolved this and a new pair were sent out two days later, nice work guys, thanks.       

The prologue...

And so the race is done the van is packed the Ben-my-Chree awaits. Lessons have been learnt for sure, the main one being try and get a test in somewhere. That was not to be as the planned time line just evaporated, so we started the two weeks with a bike that had only turned a wheel under power on the dyno. Over the two weeks we have made one adjustment front and rear on the suspension, so that's not bad after a rear set up at home and a tweek after Louigi saved the day with 20mm off the preload spacer. A slight adjustment to the steering damper and brake lever travel are just about the only other settings we have had to make, above the clutch and alternator issues that were suspect from the start. All in all a very good result for an untried recipe.

My thanks in no particular order go to 

Louigi Moto: to Christian for building an engine that Stuart says will pull from anywhere and of course Richard for the engine recipe and the parts to pull it all together. He even brought parts by plane.
Oronero: Peter for supplying the carbon parts and the new wiring loom that was just plug and play.
Reality Motor Works: to Nick Anderson for some most excellent powder coating.
Rob Scheuer aka Slob: for gifting me the rearsets.
Willow Services aka Grumpy: to James White for supplying a set of tyres.
Stewart aka Capo: for also supplying a set of tyres and technical support.
Avanti Race Parts: Antony Espindola for chipping in with a handy box of race comsumables.
Burton Engineering: Guy Burton for sorting us out with a smart set of the newly required fireproof attire for the pit stop, we looked smart too.
Chris Allanson aka Shuffy: for designing the Celeres Racing Logo. 
Along with financial support from Stewart and Jill Calkin "Calky", Martin Biggs, Charlotte Ponting and Gordon Hardie.
Keith Fothergill: for letting me use his spare set of clutch plates.
Jeff aka Utopia: for making a new front wheel spacer and posted in 24 hours.
Steve Wright: for helping out with loads of tea, rolls and pit crewing.
My wife Liz for letting me complete the build in the conservatory and pit crewing as well.
Finally to Stuart, for 14 years after an off at Black Dub nearly cost him his life, he entrusted me to build a bike to take him around the mountain course once again.

I thank you all.

As Liz has just said "It's difficult to put into words, the whole achievement and emotion of what we have all done." I hope that all of you that have been involved have at least felt a piece of the emotion that we had here on the Isle.
Having conquered Everest perhaps next year we can shoot for the moon, if you fancy coming along for the ride we'll be happy to have you on board. 

Mission accomplished.....

OK so the lead title sort of gives away the end of the tale, but hey we all know how the Mousetrap ends, don't we? So if you've read Stuart's blog at http://www.blackdub.co.uk/ you do know but here's the tale from inside pit wall to tell. With the race shortened to three laps we had a choice of fuel strategy, to fill at the end of lap one or splash and dash after lap two. Stuart fancied the splash and dash, so no flying lap but if the race was stopped after two laps for an incident we would be ahead of the game. So scrutineering was passed without comment, the bike was fuelled and tyre pressures checked, simply add tyre warmers, bike cover and wait. 

Fairly easy for us but I'd say Stuart was certainly feeling the nerves as he kept going off to look for the thing. With Emily in her allotted space in Parc Ferme I'm just thinking is there anything else to check so in my head I'm trying to go from front to back and visualise each nut and bolt, not too hard really as a race bike there's not much to her. The announcement is made for the entries in the Formula 1 and 2 race to line up on the road ahead of the start, we wait as long as we can to keep heat in the tyres as we don't have a fancy portable generator.

It's not too long before we're on the move and start to line up in numerical order, that makes it nice and easy for the starter and spectators on the first lap anyway. It turns out that 3 of the 4 Ducatis in the race are starting line astern.

With a final thumbs up from Stuart he promptly stalls the bike but she restarts fine.

There's no going back now and Stuart gets the tap on the shoulder and almost the last ridge can be climbed. 

We put what we can away and having already filled the fuel dispenser with the required amount of fuel we wait by the pit wall and watch the arrows that the scouts move to indicate which section the rider has passed, Glen Helen, Ramsey and Bungalow, well they do sometimes as some seem to never move and others are seen to go backwards. Stuart was shown at Ramsey as his light comes on to show he's at Cronk ny Mona, oh well, I ask Steve to get his fuelling gear on in case we have an unexpected stop. We watch, we wait, and Stuart flies through looking good, but then he says he always does. Fine, just wait another 23 minutes and he'll be back we hope, others pit on the first lap and we look for tips. To be honest any way is good as long as it works. The pit box is tiny for the three of us with a box of essential spares and a paddock stand. Times passes and once again the light above 56 comes on. We get ready, I turn on the ball valve for the fuel and Steve gets his fire proof gear on, Liz once again sticks a spare visor in her top should Stuart require one. Now we haven't actually physically practised the stop, Steve's only had a quick go on the rig to assess fuel flow, Liz has practised the visor change sometimes it goes well, sometimes not, Arai helmets are a sod. I see Stuart arrive at the pit entrance and step out to guide him in, now it all goes in a bit of a blur. The paddock stand locates and Liz shouts "YES" to indicate her bobbin is engaged, I flip the bike on the stand and Stuart cuts the engine. I pop the key in the fuel cap, open, and leave Steve to the fuel. I spot the scrutineer give a thumbs up to his colleague so he's spotted nothing awry so I crack on with cleaning the screen as Liz has a chat with Stuart and gives him a drink. Stuart's declined the new visor but does have time to mention "It's lovely out there". I've cleaned and Steve's done so I close the cap and flip Stuart back on two wheels. She starts, he's off. Now it's taken longer to type and read than time it actually took to do, so I'd say it went bloody well and we're all feeling quite pleased and relieved. One more lap please Stuart and Emily.

The arrow on the board moves, that's Ramsey done, just the mountain to go.

Right on cue Stuart crosses the finishing line and speed trap at 139mph.

Personally I don't feel as emotional as when they both finished their first practice lap. Once we'd overcome the gremlins I couldn't really see anything else to go wrong with Emily. We all rush back to Parc Ferme to congratulate Stuart, it really has been a lovely day. After 14 years since he last rode a bike on a closed road on the Island Stuart has completed the race and a finish is what we'd hoped for but a week ago that seemed way off. I'm pleased for Stuart and hope that next year we can come back and do it all again, this time we have a bike that already works and some data to work with. I think it's ice cream time.