Trackday Eastern Creek Easter Monday.

Hi all

Have decided it's time for a trackday, it's been near 5 years since
I've been, so about time I thought. If any ausmotian's will be at EC
on 24th March come and say G'day, I shouldn't be too hard to spot I
doubt there'll be any other Cagiva's there - it's a black X Raptor.

JL
2004 Cagiva X Raptor

 

In aus.motorcycles on Sun, 2 Mar 2008 20:38:06 -0800 (PST)

^^^
BLAM!

Zebee
- who thinks JL should know better.

 

Give that lady a seegar!
Nice shot!
Moike

 

Hehe I thought it was apstrophe MAN ! ;-)

Cagivas looks wrong though somehow

JL
He now has a sidekick huh ?

 

Well no one came and say G'day so either no one from Ausmoto was there
or my reputation preceded me !

Pics
The index (in case you want to see photos of other people - can't
understand why you would ;-) I'm in red group.

http://www.jpmphoto.com.au/frame_2.htm

Turn 2
http://www.jpmphoto.com.au/Gallerie...s_2006/24_03_08/red/pages/240308JPM_0257.html

If you look closely you can see where I've worn a hole in my boot -
need toe-sliders !

Turn 3 I think
http://www.jpmphoto.com.au/Gallerie...s_2006/24_03_08/red/pages/240308JPM_0657.html

Ditto
http://www.jpmphoto.com.au/Gallerie...s_2006/24_03_08/red/pages/240308JPM_0687.html

NFI ! Exiting a left hander.

http://www.jpmphoto.com.au/Gallerie...s_2006/24_03_08/red/pages/240308JPM_1091.html
http://www.jpmphoto.com.au/Gallerie...s_2006/24_03_08/red/pages/240308JPM_1150.html

For anyone bored enough to have read this far, it became obvious quite
quickly that not having ridden more than 8 or 10 times in the last
18months has made a negative difference to my skills. While I was
circulating at a respectable pace and the tyres are now ragged to the
very edge of the tyre, I was not smooth enough and I was a bit all
over the place in terms of nailing the lines, gears and getting on the
gas. I'd do one quick lap and then 4 crap ones with mistakes all
through them. The latter is neither here nor there, but not being able
to get into a smooth groove was pissing me off !

The other thing that became very quickly apparent is that while the
Raptor is a fast road bike, it needs some changes to make it a decent
track bike.

- The pegs are set too low (as can be seen by the boot damage) and the
mounting frame for the front and rear pegs that also includes the
exhaust hanger goes from being a nuisance (for radiating outwards so
you can't tuck your heels in properly), to being a royal pain.

- The steep rake that makes it so quick at legal speeds made it
flighty above 200, I've also got to play with the suspension settings
a bit - I really didn't have any confidence tipping into turn 1 - on
both the KR1 and TRX I used to enter 1 at about 40K more than I was
comfortable doing on the Raptor. It might respond to some suspension
tweaks so I'll fiddle with that.

All of the above are very fixable if I was going to make a track bike
of it (which I'm not), a set of rearsets and ditch the rear pegs
altogether. Lift the rear ride height 20mm. Not much point really
though, it's not what it's built for, and even with mods it's still
never going to be an R1 or GSXRthou on a track.

On the other hand I have to say how impressed I am with the Michelin
2CT's - I've done 1500K on the road (mostly putty, national park etc,
have done a track day now and they still have life in them. They're
seriously sticky and give you a lot of confidence throwing into a
corner hard. I go the Med compound - I might try the soft next.

JL