CBX Racing

[Warwick Biggs]

Somebody once said something smart to the effect that skepticism is healthy but cynicism demonstrates a failure to cope. My failures are many and I often don't cope very well but I do try my best to avoid cynicism.

And altho' I am descended from generations of engineers and my late father was a pioneer of rocketry I think it is fairly obvious that I am profoundly ignorant about the discipline.

But what I do know from personal experience is that engineers definitely do tend to think anything is possible when that may not be pertinent, practical or even worthwhile. It seems that the notion of reversing the crank rotation of a CBX probably falls into the latter category. But then so do ideas of turning the behemoth 6 into a race bike, septagenarians trying to win race trophies or climbing mountains of any kind. It was just a mental doodle and now I've learnt something about Allen Millyard

[Syscrush]

Who is Allen Millyard?

He has built a long list of extremely wild machines at an incredible pace without a ton of fancy equipment.

Here's a start.

[heli_madken]

Yes and the best part is learning how to make cup cakes!

He truly is a genius I love watching his videos

[Warwick Biggs]

I wish I had a workshop with gear like that but then I don't have Mr Millyard's engineering expertise to know how to use it.

If you race old bikes you do need some mechanical ability because more than half the battle on the track starts back in the workshop with a competitive machine. That is a big part of the challenge for an untrained neophyte mechanic like me. I've said it b4 but whatever meagre knowledge I have has been accumulated by the side of the road and as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Not that I enjoy this part of the process because I lack Mr Millyard's patience as well as his skills. I'm more the persevering thru' gritted teeth kinda' guy with a lot of failures and bad language. Then I usually pay somebody who knows what they are doing to fix up my mess.

[Warwick Biggs]

Here are some pics from last w/e's Championships. Some weird things happened. I had to cannibalise the front brake master cylinder off the CBX for my brakeless NC30 and braking was an all or nothing affair due to the poor bore ratio bewteen the CBX master cylinder and the Nissin calipers. That cost me at least 2 seconds a lap. Since then I have been advised that a radial master cylinder from any GSXR600 or 750 from 2006 onwards is a good upgrade for the NC30. Regular readers will know that I possess an '09 750 gixxer. I cannibalised the wrong bike!

I could not trail brake and whilst I may not have been able to beat the winner I could certainly have given the second place getter a hurry up with properly working brakes. Mind you I did have to improve my rear brake technique so that was a positive and I was lucky to get on the podium in 3rd.

[Warwick Biggs]

I was up against this, amongst other faster bikes. This is an immaculately no expense spared resto of Anthony Gobert's Winfield HRC WSBK RC30.

[Warwick Biggs]

The other weird thing is that the guy on the Wes Cooley replica who has been mentioned here in the past also scored a podium in P5 Unlimited with times I could have eclipsed.

Id I'd taken the CBX I would have had a good chance of podiums in both P6 and P5. On the other hand doing 8 races back to back in 40 degree heat would have been a real test of stamina.

This pic was taken by my pit queen, Fran Thompson. I will have to strip the motor of the NC30 to find out why it is pressurising the cooling system. Could be the Chinese gasket set I used or a cracked head. Whether I can get all the bits by April for the Nationals in the current environment will be another challenge

[Warwick Biggs]

Of course I was not the only one with mechanical gremlins. Racing old bikes always involve breakages and on the fly repairs. It is part and parcel of racing. On one side of may I had a tribe a very loud and I mean VERY loud Indians that blew as much ethanol out of their bell mouths as into their motors and dribbled oil everywhere.

[Warwick Biggs]

And this one in a Norton featherbed frame...

[Warwick Biggs]

While on the other side I had a couple of 2 strokes that were also noisy but at the upper end of the decibel range rather than the lower. Here the guys are trying to work out why the TZ was overheating. It turned out to be the water pump impeller that had sheared off and spread bits of itself all thru' the motor. Ouch!

In the background Rob and I are having a septagenarian moment. He was a bit distracted by a huge bushfire that was threatening his property and was trying to work out whether to return to fight the fire or finish his races. Naturally, the racing prevailed and the fire missed his place but burned out a huge area of the Wimmera, including critical habitat of the Red Tailed Cockatoo and the Mallee Fowl.

[Michael Vidovic]

Who is Allen Millyard?

He has built a long list of extremely wild machines at an incredible pace without a ton of fancy equipment.

Here's a start.

love this guy and envy him (in a good way) at the same time. Seriously I think he is amazing in his can do, will do, its done attitude. Now where is my hacksaw?

[Warwick Biggs]

Roly tells me he has been swarfing and dealing with grub screws preparatory to getting the cbx crank ready. I have no idea what he is talking about.

[Warwick Biggs]

I thought the 4 valve Indians might evince a few comments but nix. Oh well, I guess they are as common as muck.

So I gave my NC30 to a local Honda mechanic in the hope that his experienced eye might spot the blow by marks that are the cause of my radiators being emptied. Without results so far. Heads off, valves out. Nix. So I pulled the rear head off my spare motor and we can do a back to back comparo. Compare casting marks etc. Any further and the cases have to be split and crank outed. Sometimes little things can become bloody big things and at least if it was a rod thru' the cases we would know the problem and the fix. What are the chances of a cracked cylinder liner? Almost nix, I know but the options are narrowing. At this rate I could buy a road registered RVF just for the motor and come out ahead. Grrr!

Meantime, I reinstalled the Lump's master cylinder and bled the system. Why hasn't somebody invented a good power bleeder guaranteed to get all the air out? Can't be that hard. Might have to make my own! The old fashioned way is slow and uncertain.

Roly is planning to visit the salt in a few weeks to break some more speed records with Steve Tatt's CBX. There is the remnants of a tropical cyclone bearing down on the red centre that could put the kybosh on that plan.

[Warwick Biggs]

Bonneville no longer exists brought to us by mining so Lake Gairdner in the South Australian desert has taken it's place for all the speed buffs. A huge dry salt lake stretching to the horizon thru' the heat haze is perfect for breaking records. It cannot be mined because its within a national park and it cannot be used at all at the moment because it is full of water due to a tropical cyclone called Tiffany and a 1 in 200 year rain event. Sorry Roly but the salt bike will have to wait. My hopes of benefiting from the misfortune of others however have been dashed. He is too busy with other people's CBX's so I will just have to wait my turn.

Another day, another track day and here are a couple of pics of my GSXR in action by Pierre Cazulet (another CBX owner). The hole in the fairing was a quick fix to stop it scraping and it is past time that I gave this bike some attention, particularly as it is the only one of my brood currently running.

[Warwick Biggs]

And here is another. That truck tyre wall is not as close as it looks which is just as well. Koscho spent 45 minutes giving a dead man CPR at Broadford last month after he locked handlebars with another rider and they performed a sharp left hand turn into the tyre wall there. It didn't seem to slow him down at Mac Park tho'.