I woke up on my birthday thinking about ground clearance. There's no doubt my 350 needs more. Today's race compound tires are so good the bike can lean over much more than back in the day and perhaps more than it should. Footpegs are ground down, and exhaust pipes drag. And that's where the problems come into play.
At Miller Motorsports East Track, the last corner is called Windup. It's a beautiful 180 degree left hander that's banked a bit and tightens up right at the exit. Try as I might, I could not hit the apex of this corner, so I was forced to run wide at the exit, losing precious drive heading on to the long front straight. It sucked. I couldn't hit that apex because hard parts of the bike were hitting, keeping me from leaning more. I thought it was my foot getting trapped between the folding peg and the frame, but a post race inspection showed it to be the exhaust pipe behind the footpeg. That explains the rear wheel slides.
I'm sure a better rider could have figured out a way to compensate for that situation. Me? My solution was to stiffen up the front fork and purchase a new pair of Works Performance shocks set for my weight. The fork is a story for later, so here's my story about the shocks.
A call to Works with my specifics and less than a week later I'm in my office with the most beautiful pair of aluminum bodies with black springs. My thinking is that the shocks on the bike are too soft so they are compressing too much with the cornering g-loads, thus reducing the ground clearance of the bike. With my new set up, the rear should ride higher, keeping the weight of the bike more evenly distributed front/rear and thus allowing me to lean more and hit that apex. I'm convinced.
And all of that got me thinking. Like I said it was my birthday, and rather than sink into my usual reflective meloncholy, I was instead struggling with my wife whether our 15 year-old-son could/should attend a co-ed sleepover. It seems we were scraping hard parts no matter which way we leaned. We needed some ground clearance for sure on this one. But where do you get that? There's no Works Performance for this.
So we called our friends. We got some great advice from them, and the boy came home. Not happy about it by any means.
