Santa Pod 16th/17th September 2006
by Phil Wood
First of all I must thank Kirk and the lads at Chester Harley-Davidson for taking time out on Thursday afternoon to help run through a few settings on the bikes ECM. My laptop hasn’t got the connections needed to interface with the race tuner on the bike. Now this is a pain at the track as I can’t change any setting until the bike is back in the shop. So I have to explain to Kirk what settings need to be changed, using his experience of the Harley engine management systems he has a good idea of how the changes may affect how the engine will respond.
With not running the bike at Santa Pod before I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of how the grip in the track would affect the way the bike pulls. Using lessons learnt at the Bulldog bash we decided to take some clutch out of the bike to help the launch, as the Pod is much stickier than Shakespeare the effect of the track would be to literally pull the power out of the bike. The 2 stage rev limiter was set for an 8500RPM launch and the rear tyre set at 8 psi. Well you got to start somewhere. First pass saw a 60’ time of 1.50 but the bike seemed to have decided we were going to revisit an old problem of lurching to the left on launch but even with that a ¼ time of 9.996 @129mph, good start to the day but not on the pace of Chris Stebbins of Black bear H.D. at 9.84 @ 134 mph. Back in the pit the crew were mulling over the next changes, it was decided to just to change the wheelie bar settings and try to get the bike going straight, for some reason it was worse than before although the 60’ was better at 1.490 but the ¼ down to 10.00 @129 mph. Back in the pits the crew were trying to work out why the mph was so poor, checking the rear tyre pressure gave us the answer, 5 psi, to much resistance and to much tyre deflection on the start line.
The day carried on with a few improvements that left us qualified in the No2 spot. We were now into the eliminations, the crew again change the tyre pressure, now we were up to 10 psi, Phil the crew chief decided that more clutch needed to be taken out, now his really is the call that I listen to as he sees the all important start close up. I got a lucky draw for the first round, a Buell. Now, I’m never over confident and never rule out the chance of error so the aim was just to keep going and make the final. The win was a good one and our fastest run to date with a surprisingly slow 60’ of 1.503 and a finish time of 9.916 @ 132 mph.
Final time. The crew checked the bike over and over, we really did want this win, I knew Chris would make it through to the final, he is and old hand on Harleys as he also races a Top Fuel Harley although a very different beast he has the advantage of slicks, bars and V twin set up. To Chris’s credit he has been a great help as he is happy to listen to my questions and maybe not directly giving answers but certainly steering my thoughts along the right lines.
Well here we were the final against Chris. Black Bear V’s Chester.
Both bikes together in the burn out box, oh the noise is something that needs to be heard, awesome. Rolling forward to the start line I can hear Kirk shout “You just got to beat Black Bear” .
The pre-stage lights are on, stage light in the other lane is on, throttle on the stop, 2 step is holding the engine at 8,500 rpm, the amber lights are on and the clutch lever just let go, no slipping the clutch on this bike and off we go, 1.511, 60 foot time from me and 1.463 from Chris, I can hear Chris just behind, I just keep waiting for the shift light and punch another gear and through the finish in front of Chris 9.837 @ 134mph to 9.883 @ 134 mph from Chris, ,sometimes the difference between winning and losing comes down to fractions of seconds but that’s racing, and we had just notched up another win for Chester Harley-Davidson's Destroyer.
What a weekend, more is most defiantly to come just a bit more track and workshop time and I just think we can run a low 9 second pass.
Phil Wood.