Redneck Express Race ReportManufacturers Cup The crew for this race consisted of Steve Legendre, Steven Legendre, Jim Fox, Denny Hickman. DJ Plesser Dick Boxell, and John Alwine Chris and Sharon arrive at the track around 8:00 Friday morning to get setup and ready, the Legendre's are right after them. Chris had 3 motors ready, Galahad is in the frame rails along with Robert E. Lee,and Merlin, for backup . Friday morning they fire the bike getting ready for the Friday afternoon qualifying pass, the bike sounds good with no leaks so they ready the bike for the run. They ask John Alwine to do what Boxell normally does, he asked them "what is that" and they tell him. The call goes out and they were ready, line the bike up and ready to fire for the run, the Steves Run down the track to push the bike back. Sharon rolls the motor over while John runs the squirter, the bike fires then idles through the water box, John wipes the front tire.
Chris hits it and does the burnout . The Steves push back as John is guiding. Chris prestages and Sharon pulls the tape, Chris hits it as the lights flash, the bike runs a6.53 @ 178.66. Obvious something wrong here. Saturday morning Boxell finally shows up, and we set to changing out the motor, we put Galahad up on the operating table so Chris can start the teardown and rebuild , Merlin get the call for the second Qualifying pass. We ready the bike get it fired up and warm, Chris checks the air and makes a fuel adjustment. The clutch is set, NITRO is in the tank we are ready. Call goes out and we pull to the staging lanes. Steve and DJ go down track as we fire the bike and bring it through the water box, Chris starts the burnout and it sits for a millisecond before it starts smoking the tire, Steve and Dj Push Chris back as Fox guides them back. Steve Jr takes Tire and Track temps Chris prestages, Sharon pulls the tape, the bike moves off the starting line good for about 40 feet then the rear tire goes up in smoke, and Chris shuts it down, in the other lane Larry McBride has the same type of pass, it was probably the slowest those two have gone down the track side-be-side in forever.
We get the bike back and the leak down indicates that we hurt one hole so we remove Merlin and start to install Robert E. Lee, Chris is in the trailer with Alwine and Fox talking tuneups, we finish getting R.E.L. installed , clutch set and fueled up, we are ready but Chris says "Either we are in or we are not" so we pass on the last qualifyier and get bumped out. We wrap it up for the day. Race day Sunday, We get to the track to possibly make a test lap but the word from the tower is No, Chris wants to look at the clutch package so we take the left side off the bike to make it easier. We check everything and all checks out, Chris tells me to remove the clutch shroud and after I take it off i see an extra air gap one of the clutch disks is "potato chipped". So we take the clutch apart and put in another set of disks and it is flat now. Reassemble the bike and start to load up. We would like to thank the Valdosta track crew track and staff , SGMP Owner/operators, and the manufacturers that pulled together to put on this race, the pits were PACKED and there were full fields in all the pro classes. We would like to recognize and thank our sponsors. |
