Welcome to the Ditch.

    Its been a really long time since I posted last, but lots of stuff has been happening.  The biggest thing to happen would definitely be an email received by T.N. from someone Extra Awesome who took notice of my last blog post. Quite the Honor & Wow! is all I will say on that. 

    Several weeks ago, I am ashamed to say that I was grifted out of a dollar by a juggalo in front of my corner grocery. Yes. Please friends, take a moment and spend some quiet contemplation on that one. The 'how' this occurred isn't that important or interesting really. I like to think of myself as a nice person. I usually 'Chip-In' when someone gets runned over, I'm kind to animals or I would help a friend move to a new digs. If say, you, dear reader, were bleeding in a ditch somewhere, I would act as expected: call the paramedics, get you out of the ditch, apply first aid, etc... But as a man of principle as well, there are people that I would allow to remain in the ditch, people who simply don't need to exist -who have through technology or the manipulation of civilizations' principles have dodged the darwinian thinning of the herd. Take notice, fans of Insane Clown Posse, you are now in the ditch.    

    I have prepared another graph to illustrate this concept:

So yeah, I don't like juggalos. Moving on...

    I've been working primarily on two projects of late, my smallframe's engine and Plan B's custom subframe. If you recall from the Polini Cup season finale, I built my bike unwittingly with a warped subframe, and even if I was comfortable riding/racing a bike with an off-camber rear wheel, it created clearance issues with the rear clutch pulley that had to be addressed for the bike to fully function. I'm also a big believer in good ergonomics as a performance gain, since the bike can only go as fast as you can ride it. Everything I've read on ergo stuff says that the average mopeds' center of gravity is way too far back, especially since I weigh almost twice as much as Plan B. Lastly, my carb location makes having pedals difficult and I liked the idea of getting pedals back on the bike. All these reasons resulted in the new subframe being longer than stock by several inches. The subframe isn't done yet, but pretty close. Hopefully in time for the next race??

 Back in 2004, I realized that Horsepower is great for racing, but only in a RPM range that you can access. At the time, the 'King of the Hill' of smallframe cylinder systems was the Zirri MR2000, rocking a reliable 25+ hp at 12K. Not bad for a sand-cast, air cooled, cast iron jug.  But racing the small tracks that we did, the bike rarely rose above 6K rpms. I then schemed up a conversion that would get around 25+ hp but at 7K. Afterwards, life/school/girlfriends stepped in and the idea was shelved for years. I have now finally started to work on that idea. In my last post I had reamed out my Con-Rod to fit the new gudgeon pin for the new jug, I have also now welded on the 13mm decking plates necessary to span the difference in cylinder sizes. I then machined off the excess so the cases will fit together. I need to bore the cases to the proper spigot dimension: 70mm, and fab the reed intake for the new, much larger reed block. Overall, the engine will gain about 30% more capacity, from 136cc's to 168cc.

I've been spending a lot of time down at Naz's workshop, big thanks to him for all his help and letting me use his tools. 

 Naz and the hellfire glue-gun.