It had been a VERY long time since I had competed on the Shannonville Fabi circuit. The last time was back in 1994 when I was racing in the FAST Championship series on their Yamaha FZR600 school bikes. Back then I downed the bike in the rain in corner 1 at the end of the straightaway and wrote it off… then consequentially quit biking altogether for 11 years! So here we were 16 years later to do it all again. (Race, I mean… not crash.) Ahhhh memories.
Arriving early Friday morning, I found my racing friends had saved a pit spot for me along pit row. One good thing about Fabi is that there would likely be no mud if it rained. To my left was my friend and new Novice racer Vince Rea with his family, to my right was another Novice racer Doug Backwell with his girlfriend Sheri (very nice couple)… as well as my other friends Sam, Cindy & Dave… and John Savoy (who was the previous owner of my RC51). It was setting up to be another great, fun race weekend!
I went through tech with Mark Bell and after some pointers was all set for the weekend. My intent was to get my braking points set up with corner 1, and also learn the best line through corner 3… the ultra-tight, ultra-late-apex RH corner before the high-speed left sweeper Corner 4. The practice sessions throughout the day proved very interesting, though I found that the suspension was… “off.”
At the end of the day Friday, an experienced Pro rider (ex-RC51 racer) took my bike around the track to see how she was. Coming in 1 lap later he declared the bike “unrideable” and said it was talent alone that was getting the bike around the track as quickly as it was! While sure that was an ego boost, it confirmed a growing suspicion that I had about the bike’s ill-handling manners. The bike would not hold a line, and kept pogoing and trying to pitch him (and me) off mid-corner. With advice from some of his tuners, we bumped up the rear compression & rebound to full (for comparison) and also increased the front rebound a fair bit (since the front rebound damping was almost nil). One more lap later he brought it in again and said it was a little bit better but still felt the rear was very soft even dialled up to max settings. It felt like there was no nitrogen charge left in the rear shock. The rear shock is a Fox Racing twin-clicker with piggyback reservoir that is rumoured to have come off of Steve Crevier’s RC51 from “back in the day.” So ended the Friday.
Saturday morning I consulted with Kevin Graham of Orion Motorsports, and we decided to try an SC3 rear 180 tire instead of the SC2. I was initially skeptical as I thought it was purely a harder tire and would take lots of warming up to make it work. That was not entirely true; it would have the grip of an SC1 but would be much more durable. So I went through practice sessions and found that the SC3 is a marvelous tire, and I will likely be “sticking” (haha) with it for the rest of the season. Thank you again, Kevin! Unfortunately, throughout the practice sessions I found the bike to be very unsettled… with the front now tracking better it exaggerated the issues with the rear. After getting through 1 of my 3 qualifiers I made the tough decision to pull out the rear shock and get it rebuilt. Problem was… no-one had a nitrogen tank to recharge the shock. My alternatives were to go into town to hunt for a shop that would recharge the shock… or drive all the way to Calabogie Motorsports Park to have the shock rebuilt by John Sherrard of Accelerated Technologies. That’s what I ended up doing, arriving at Calabogie at 6PM. John had other work to do so he started the rebuild at around 9:30PM. I was fortunate enough to help him with the rebuild.
It was obvious that the Fox shock was in bad shape… and turned out it had only been rebuilt 2 times. The disassembly was “interesting” and a bit difficult. Turns out one big issue was the reservoir assembly was not tight on the shock body… likely leading to loss of oil & nitrogen as well as allowing air to enter the shock body. When John finally got the shock apart and poured out the oil, it looked like a frothy chocolate milkshake. The rebuild took about 1 hour and he increased the stiffness of the compression and rebound valving as well as fitting a slightly stronger spring to better suit my weight. (But honestly, I AM quickly getting down to my summer fighting weight, John! LOL)
I learned a lot of valuable information from watching the master in action. His suspension tuning course is definitely on my list now, as I enjoy and get a lot of good working knowledge from those sorts of courses. I want to learn the “dark arts” of suspension tuning. 
The 2-hour night time drive back to Belleville was in the rain but uneventful… though with deer, foxes, raccoons, and other assorted critters making appearances along the various highways. I arrived back at my Belleville hotel at 1AM.
Sunday morning I was back at the track at 7AM to reinstall the rear shock (which went easier than pulling it out, believe it or not). After setting the rear sag, I had 2 practice sessions to get used to the near rear end. And it certainly was much better than it had been previously!
The first final up was RACE Thunder with mixed air-cooled and liquid-cooled classes combined. For the first half of the race I chased down a Pro rider until I was finally in a position to make a pass under braking at the end of the straight going into corner 1. I showed a wheel and had the inside line and made the pass. I immediately saw my error… my line forced me wide on the exit onto the turtles and I had downshifted 1 less gear than normal so I had no drive out of the corner. My long sought-after pass evaporated in an instant as the other rider took a tighter line and re-passed me again. Now that he knew I was hunting him down, he rode very defensively and I didn’t give me another opportunity to pass him. Checking my times I had done a 1’09.2”… nearly breaking into the 1’08” which would have been a very good time for the heavy RC51.
The other two finals were Sportsman Heavyweight and then finally Masters Heavyweight. Sportsman Heavyweight has a lot of talented riders and some VERY fast machines. That final I experimented with different cornering speeds while hunting down riders ahead. For many of the laps around Corner 4, I swear I was leaned so far over that my left elbow was kicking up pebbles!
In the Masters class, my friend John Savoy and I were nose-to-tail battling for position. Just after the halfway point we saw a dust cloud in Corner 6 (first right hander after a series of lefts) as one of the racers went off in a major way. The race was red-flagged and we were done. It turned out that John and I had finished 2nd and 3rd respectively… a podium finish! We checked that the downed rider was okay… and he was, though very sore after his massive highside.
At the end-of-day awards ceremonies I happily stepped onto the podium to accept my 3rd place finish in Masters Heavyweight. But the thing that really surprised me was the Thunder class; the rider that I had passed and was re-passed by had taken 3rd place (I had finished a close 4th)!!! In hindsight if I had known I was passing for a podium position I would have planned the pass a lot better and tried much harder to make it stick. But such is racing, and I applaud my competitor for a job well done.
Overall it was a well-fought weekend with good results, but room for improvement as always. Next week will see a track day at Calabogie to sort out the suspension on the RC51.
Looking forward to long track again in mid-July!
With some good advice from the fine folks at Kyle Racing USA, the pipes mounted up very nicely. Quality is top-notch.