About 2 weeks ago I was riding to work, I had just left home and was still in the back streets. I get to the intersection and theres a HWP car in the left lane waiting to turn left and I joined the end of the cue to turn right. The cop puts his car in reverse and comes all the way back up the street and pulls in behind me. I take it really easy and he sits on my back wheel for 60 seconds then pulls me over.

Cop: This your bike?
Me: Yep..

Cop: You got a riders license?
Me: Yep...

Cop: You were going a bit slow back there is something wrong?
Me: Yeh I don't want to risk getting booked.

Cop: Had anything to drink?
Me: *Laughs* No  (it's 7:00am)

Cop: The computer says the bike is suposed to be red?
Me: Oh ok, well the bike has been resprayed at some point.

Cop: Why has it been in a smash?
Me: Not that I know of, the original paint scheme was really daggy

Cop: ok see you later.

 

I thought that it was hardly random, I didn't do anything to provoke the guy to go out of his way to pull me over and drill me. Anyway, yesterday on the same road as last time, this time coming home in the afternoon, theres a highway sitting in the school zone. I cruise past him and he quickly barges in between me and the car thats behind me. Again he tailgates me and I'm watching my speed like a hawk. 20 secs later, full lights and sirens on so I pull over.  What do you know, it's the same copper as last time. He starts asking me the same questions as last time and I said "mate you stopped me the other day?" and he smugly says "oh did I?". Next thing I know a paddy wagon pulls up with 4 cops in it and they look like they are ready to jump out and kick my head in. The first cop says something to them and then they all just snear at me and drive off.  Then the cop tries to tell me that my back tyre is "almost bald" I told him its no where near it and he takes a closer look then got in his car and drove off. 

I'm starting to think that my repeated bad behaviour on the road is finally starting to catch up with me because this guy is really out to get me! I have a feeling that maybe some locals have been complaining about me (or a different yellow bike :P). I have a smart ass numberplate and my driving record is as long as my arm, but the first time he saw me he couldn't have looked me up - all he would have seen is the front of a yellow bike. To be honest I don't go crazy in my own area anyway, but all I know is that I need to be really careful because this guy is looking for an excuss to get me.

 

Yesterday the latest muscle car cruise was on starting at Homebush. The weather was bad, but the turnout was still pretty high considering. I rode shotgun in my mate's torana which he litterally got registered on Friday. I'll put some pics up of it soon. The highlight of the day was seeing Joe Paganos blown commodore ute cruise down the M4 on wet roads. The methanol burning my eyes the whole way. He was running his usual sidepipes too, it was rattling the windows of my mate's torana from 2 cars back.

My sister was playing a gig at a small blues festival up in Cessnock called Railway Blues. Me and Andrea went up to support her. The festival was at an old railway yard where there were steam trains that were taking people for rides. My dad was having a chat to the train driver and somehow managed to line up a ride in the locomotive which I got to come along on. It was boiling hot and filthy but very cool all the same. There are so many different controls inside the thing it's amazing. Here's a dodgy photo I took on my phone.

I wanted to see if I could beat last weeks time, so I took the bike down to WISD again. I managed to reel off my PB on the first run! I got 11.89@120MPH which is a bit of an improvement over last week (11.94@121MPH). After that I started getting worse with every pass. I think I was trying to hard to get a big launch... I kept getting wheelspin off the line and looking back at it maybe I was actually overheating my tyre in the burnout. I'd pull out of the water and give it a practise launch and it would bag up hard and I even hit the limiter a few times. I tried slipping the clutch more on the last run and it was worse than the wheelspin runs so I think I'll try smaller burnouts next time. It's hard because I love my burnouts but I'm sure my $300 rear tyre will apreciate it if I lay off it a bit.

In the last burnout comp I had trouble knowing what gear I was in due to the crappy VR commodore shifter that was rivited in with no gear indicator. I decided to spend the money and put a proper shifter in. I went with the B&M Pro Rachet which seems to be the way to go if your not running a center console. Installation was pretty straight forward. Because the commodores have a flat section in the tunnel for the shifter it made it very easy. I had to make up a new plate to cover the massive hole from the original shifter, other than that it was all pretty much bolt in.

The burnout car is almost ready to hit the pad again. I've trail fitted the VN diff and there are no problems there. I've purchased a good second hand 4.11 gearset so I've now got to get them fitted up to the center with a spool.

I've been helping my mate put his bike together in my garage for the last few weeks. He bought it for cheap, unregistered and damaged. He decided to turn it into a street fighter style bike since all the fairings were road rashed. We finally got it registered and took it for the maiden voyage yesterday arvo. We've still got a few little problems to iron out but overall its turned out pretty good for a very quick budget build. I knew very little about working on bikes when I started, but luckily they're easy as piss to work on much like a muscle car because of their simplicity. 

The specs are;

• 1998 Kawasaki ZX9R (900cc)
• Painted matt black with farings removed
• Renthal Fat Bars
• Mini bar end mirrors
  
• Buell XB12 headlight and fairing
  
• Braided Brake lines
• Hindle exhaust
  
• Re-jettted carbs

I took it for a ride last night and it's got stacks of power (more than mine I'm ashamed to say) and the Renthal bars make it awesome to ride, you've got so much more leverage due to the wider grip.

I took my blade down to the street meet at WSID last night. I've never ran before so I was pretty nervous. My best run was 11.94@121MPH (thats 195KPH) with a .009 RT! It was actually the best reaction time of the night but I missed out on the prize by 10 mins. I've still got heaps more in it but I need to work on my launches. It was a huge rush and I can't wait to get back out there!

Here's a pic that Andrea took.

 

I was getting in my car to go down to my local motorbike shop when I saw all these choppers hovering around what looked to be the main road. I decided to take a detour to check out what was going down. The traffic was banked up for kilometers! It turns out that there were 2 servos side by side both offering standard unleaded (ULP) for $0.94 per litre!! There lines were hundreds of meters long and there were helicopters fliming it from the sky and live news broadcasts from Channel 7 out the front. I happened to have my camera in the car so I grabbed some pics of the chaos.

I asked a bloke in the shop what the story was and apparently it was some kind of protest to the oil companies. I'm sure it'll be on the news tonight.

I've been taking my bike out on the twisties alot and have noticed that it seemed insanely stiff. My low speed cornering on the hairpins has always been pretty bad and I've been working hard on my riding to try and improve it. I decided to check over the suspension. This bike has adjustable preload, compression and rebound for the front and rear. I got out the service manual and reset everything to standard specs. It turns out that the previous owner had everything set to 100% hard or close to it. The previous owner told me that he used to take it to track days a fair bit so I guess he had tuned the suspension for the track.

I took it down the Putty Rd on Saturday and on Sunday I did the Galstone Gorge and the Old Pacific Highway. It's like a completely different bike now! My confidence level has gone through the roof because it feels how it should.

The bike gets a bit of head shake cornering at speed, the old blades were famous for it. From what I've read it's not such a big deal but its one of those things that takes a bit of confidence away. I'm bidding on a steering damper on ebay at the moment which should solve that problem.

The only thing left to do is to change the front tyre. I've completely destroyed it, its practically triangle shaped. I'll be pulling the wheel off this week.

Putty Road Fireplace

I decided to make the journey to the mountain on Sunday to see the great race.

It wouldn't be a car event without a police sting operation and another fine for my resumé. I was on my fireblade with Andrea on the back enjoying a nice ride up Bells Line of rd. I was coming out of a 60 zone leaned over through a corner. I saw the 100 speed limit sign about 100m away so I fed on some throttle to get it up to 100. I look up and there's a highway patrol coming at me, he hits the lights so I pull up. I'm now pretty used to this situation so I was pretty relaxed and tried to play it nice and cool. The cop approaches me and lets me know that he just clocked me at 104 in a 60 zone. I explained that I came through the corner at a reasonable speed then saw the 100 sign and sped up, plus its a downhill run to the 100 sign. Luckily the cop was extremely reasonable and decided to let me off with a 15 and over (3pts, $250). I told him that I've been booked a few times recently and I know I've got to watch my speed more. He warned me that there was massive amounts of cops up all the way up to bathurst and to be extremely cautious. 

While stopped on the side of the road, all the cars that I'd overtaken since Richmond went past. I stopped in at Lithgow maccas and they must have all had the same idea. About 15 different people asked me "so what did they get u for?. 

That kind of took the fun out of the day, but atleast we made it up to the mountain. It seems that this year is was massively packed to the point where we hardly got a good look at the cars all day which was pretty dissapointing. I went up a few years back with my dad and I don't remember it being that bad. The best part was having a look in the pits and see all the awesome setups that they have. I hung around and saw a couple of pit stops take place and stopped to get a picture with the inforcer.

On the way back I've never seen more cops in my life, I got followed by a highway patrol all the way to the city limits of bathurst then between bathurst and the lower mountains I would have seen about 12-15 cop cars.

Will I be going up again next year? No.

Me & Russ

Mockup V8 Supercar at Lithgow Maccas