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Look out, I'm feeling wordy today!
I'm a mini racer at heart. I learned how to both race and wrench on a CRF70, and only moved to full size bike racing when it was obvious the pit-bike scene in my area was good and dead. Despite selling my mini to focus on road racing, I somehow ended up with a play bike in the garage that wasn't being used...
So I raced it Sunday.
Some background first: My CRF70 was fun, right up until it wasn't. It was fully built into a dedicated pit-bike pavement eater. Sharp suspension and geometry, sticky tires, and an evil motor. At a tight track there wasn't much that could touch it. At Boxshop for example, it had the highest trap speed on radar, and that was vs full Sumo's including Shane Narbone's. If you knew how to ride it, you could fly. It could also bite you in the ass real quick. Unfortunately I built it too far, and the motor just couldn't take the strain. It blew up on me at three events in a row before turning a complete lap, including two long distance road trips. I didn't have the budget to recreate that motor from scratch, or the interest. You all saw the result, Savas bought it with a nice, mild, reliable crate motor installed, and I've been second guessing myself ever since.
Sunday was the opening round of New England Mini Moto, or NEMM held out literally in the middle of nowhere Maine at a revived kart facility called Boxshop. My mount for the event was a TT-R125LE, formerly my wife's dirt bike. Other than safetywire, the only 'mods' consisted of a new BT45 rear tire and a YZ80 front wheel with a front Bridgestone slick stolen off someone's 125 shoved into place via a hacksawed set of spacers. Stock springs, stock everything including airbox, etc. AKA the exact polar opposite of my 70. Undersprung, underdamped, slow, the front brake was soft with no bite, the rear drum has no feel, and I have exactly 10 minutes of seat time on this bike warming it up for my wife before a couple trail rides.
The only way to pile onto the unknowns was to add dirt to the mix. I signed up for the full supermoto experience and opted to run 'Aircooled' which is a play-bike class that runs both the pavement AND infield dirt sections of the track. I went into this expecting to fall a lot, and to be dead last holding everyone up as I learned how to pilot this flexy-'flier' around.
Instead I had one of the best days ever banging bars. There were a bunch of XR100s in various states of tune along with a built TTR running around in our classes, plus an XR150 and a kid screaming around on a 65cc mini monster and it all just clicked. I quickly adapted to the TTR's crazy amount of suspension movement and iffy front brake and spent the day chasing and being chased constantly. I got some good advice for things to watch out for in the dirt and slowly felt my way around in there. I'm not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but dumb luck at the start let me lead some laps and have a good fight in the dirt.
At the end of the day I went home with two 2nd place trophies and psyched that I sold the 70 and have this horrible stock machine to bang around on. Now I just need to learn to stop trying to put my knee down everywhere... guess I had a bunch of them concerned every time I came out of the dirt and back onto the pavement already scraping my puck...
Looking forward to Round 2 next month, 2 days plus a school on Friday if I can rob a bank.
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Originally Posted by repete513
