In which I don’t really talk about a CB160 at all.
Did you miss Part 6? I attempt to make my pile a runner and eventually resort to throwing money at the problem.
While I wait for my next (and hopefully last) 160 to show up, it seems like a good time to broaden this story a bit:
When I started this series the plan was just to race a Honda CB160 in the Moto LeMans exhibition class. But when I was at Barber last year for Nate Kern’s DoubleRFest (which I’m doing again this year, you should definitely join!), I discovered that I might want to bring a second bike with me.
I’ll get into more details about this in the series I’m doing about Kramer ownership, but before the Barber trip a client named Ted generously gifted me an AiM Solo2 lap timer. So for the first time in my life, I had a live feed on the lap times I was doing and it was a bit of a wake up call in the positive direction. Most of my laps were in the 1:40-1:42 range, though my best lap of the day was a 1:39.29. I realize that keeping consistent with your best lap is one thing and that it’s a very different situation in a race vs. a track day, but that time would have put me in 4th place in the Kramer class at Barber (Sound of Singles 1). Again, I don’t actually believe that I would have finished 4th – I have a lot to learn about racing and I have close to zero experience at it.
The one other time I’ve gone racing. Minimotos rule!
This whole time I’ve assumed that I’d do passably in the 160 class and be at the bottom of the pack if I was to race my Kramer. Now that I see that there’s some potential, I’m going to race that, too.
I didn’t have my GoPro running for my fastest lap of the day, but here’s a 1:40 on the Kramer. For some reason my speedo wasn’t working properly (it appears as if it was reading half-speed?):
So all of that is a long way of saying: this season I’m not just going to race the 160. I’ll be racing my Kramer as well. But don’t worry – the focus of this series will still be on the 160, and we’ll get back to regularly-scheduled programming soon.
On to Part 8 – I sign up for my first race!