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Well, the Loudon Classic didn’t exactly go to plan. I DID get the bike working perfectly with the new cylinder/piston. The bike was FAST! I also got new Marvic wheels, which quieted down the evil handling traits I’ve had when pushing hard on the brakes. Those old wheels were not round apparently!
Qualifying was ideal. The weather was perfect. I nailed the jetting, and set the pole time at 1:16.7, which is half a second quicker than the last time I qualified here.
Sunday came and it was HOT. On the 125, it’s a balancing act between jetting lean enough to make power, but not so lean that it runs above 65 degrees C where you see a power loss.
I got away clean off the line, but Eric gapped me by a second and a half or so. No problem, I settled in and chipped his lead down equally over 4 laps and I was on his tail across start finish for lap 5. Bike reading 62 degrees.
We approached a lapper into T1. Eric went outside, and I went in. Neither of us flinched as we split the guy at the 2 board and I made it to the apex first. I put my head down and did a good clean lap giving myself a little cushion and started to control the race from the front. I checked my temp one more time as we started lap nine of twelve, and to my dismay, the digital display read -00 C YIKES! I assumed I was seconds from grenading my motor and after trying to decide whether to just push on til it seized or quit, I put my hand up and pulled in.
It was a tough decision, but after my narrow escape in T8 at willow, and the total loss of that motor, I just couldn’t have focused on riding enough to finish that race.
It turned out that the bike was fine, but the temp guage failed. Well, I had a blast this weekend and live to fight another day.
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