So I lied... I barely took any photos, we'll wait and see if any of the onsite photographers got me in any >
I was up till 1 am both on thursday and friday getting the bike ready for the saturday track day and sunday race day this meant spending a lot of time getting acquainted with the factory service manual, thursday night took the wheels off and drilled all of the brake caliper fasteners and axles for lock wire
Friday during the day I had my s20s mounted came back from work at around 430 after picking up the uhaul trailer and some extra supplies from home depot it was already 6 pm and my plan was to flush coolant, change oil drill fasteners, mount tires and body work, since it was my first time installing the wheels it took my probably 3x longer than the more experienced wrencher
front wheel was straight forward but had major issues figuring out where the spacers went in the rear, after finally figuring it out I then spent a crap load of time trying to physically get the axle through the adjusters, wheel and spacers, then after torquing everything down I realized I forgot to adjust the chain's slack! 12 am rolls by and now Im starting to get stressed, need to be up at 5 am the following day to load it all up and make the trek out to the track
not enough time to swap out the oil and coolant along with drilling remaining fasteners so racing on sunday was no longer an option, quickly slapped on the fairings with a ton of help from zip ties (those things are awesome!)
In my haste I quickly took off the rearset risers to make the bike back to stock again because when I was at the track I really wanted to work on the basics with my instructor I shouldve taken the time to install these properly
Saturday morning, arrive at the track, meet my instructor, set tire pressures do some light stretching and head out for the first session, first lap is great feeling comfortable on the bike, cross start finish to begin lap 2, hit brake marker for T1 try down shifting and nothing happens, at first I blamed this to user error simply assuming I missed the shifter due to it being moved lower to stock position, so I take T1 in 4th (usually a 3rd gear corner), now comes T2 another 3rd gear corner, so I go to down shift again and I still cant feel my shifter, I Look down and see that it is pointed very low towards the ground... uh oh, so I had to finish my lap stuck in 4th the whole time all the while using the clutch for the lower speed corners, exit track, back in the pits to see whats up...turns out my shift rod had fallen out on that first lap!
Asked every vendor if they had a shift rod that fit, no luck! Last option is to make the 2 hour round trip to home and back to the track with my rearset risers and shift rod! I was so lucky to have the spare rod, if I didnt have any of this my day wouldve been done after the first lap and I wouldve never gotten my race license!
By the time I got back to the track and mounted the risers and shift rod the entire morning was done, but I was still able to sneak in 2 sessions and a mock race in the end
I felt so comfortable on the risers which sucked because I realize I never shouldve swapped them out, I had them on the lowest and most forward setting, I could easily shift my hips to either side of the bike now and lock in with ease! It was awesome! The mock race at the end was the best I still day dream about it, great battle with a cbr300 and a ninja 250
I ended up completing the course and can now officially race with the club, next race weekend is May 21-23, anyone in the vancouver area should come out to the track day on the 21 and come watch the racing its awesome!!
My bikes back getting its body work done it wont be ready for next weekend but my connection said he will have the belly pan on there for me so I will be good to go for the race weekend it just wont look pretty, my body work is expected to be finished by early/mid June I will post pics once I have it
all in all minus the shift rod it was a great day caught up with some friends learned tons from my instructor while I was on track, my downshifting is much smoother and quicker now I just need to work on my vision and conditioning
lesson learned here: HAVE AS MANY SPARE PARTS AS YOU CAN FOR YOUR BIKE ON HAND AND BRING ALL SPARES WITH YOU TO THE TRACK!!
fingers crossed I'll be racing next Sun & Mon, will be out at the track day for sure on the Sat, no promises but I will try to take photos!
big shout outs and thank yous to spears racing for doing the walk around video on their r3 racing bike, this gave me a great reference on drilling and safety wiring and of course a HUGE thank you for yamahar3racing.com's how to blogs along with my service manual I was referencing those the most!
this pic is not from my previous track day but from the one before that