Zodiac Racing ready for the 2009 European Championship

After a somewhat earthshaking introduction of the "The Godfather VII", as both cylinder heads were blown of in its first shakedown pass late last year, the team is now ready to take up the challenge of the 2009 European championship tour with the new bike. There are still gremlins that need to be sorted out, but at Easter the team visited Santapod Raceway to test the newly designed engine parts and apart from some minor issues, everything seemed to be working like what they had hoped for. And at the start of the season, the team is happy to announce that Kibblewhite Precision Machining, Inc. has joined the team's very loyal sponsors Zodiac International, Supertrapp Exhaust Systems, Spectro Oils of America and ACCEL Motorcycle Products. The team have been relying on Kibblewhite valve train components with great success for as long as they run Nitro Harleys and now KPMI have decided to increase their support for the Zodiac Racing team.

It was back to the drawing board after the first shakedown pass of the new Zodiac Top Fuel SuperTwin bike last year, as things didn't go entirely as expected. Still in it's experimental black bodywork, a huge engine explosion blew both the cylinder heads off at the hit of the throttle in it's first trial. Fortunately all safety features worked as they should, and damage was solely mechanical. Still a lot was learnt from it and over the winter new cam profiles were designed in conjunction with Andrews and new rocker arms were designed by Ton and manufactured by Puma Engineering, to withstand the increased exhaust pressure of the supercharged engine. On top of that a new state-of-the-art fuel management system was installed to more accurately control the fuel pressure of the BDK valve. Flexion came with a new Gates Poly Chain GT Carbon, to get maximum reliability out of the primary drive and a complete spare engine was also manufactured over the winter along with extra spare engine parts. Finally a lot of effort was put into new body work and the cosmetic aspects of the bike to give it an appearance that is worthy of the name "The Godfather VII".

With all the new parts in the bike it was setup fairly safe to do some testing during the Easter Thunderball at Santapod Raceway. Modest boost, ignition timing and nitromethane percentage were put in for the first pass of the season, with the objective to get some data and see if the new engine parts would be able to cope with the harsh environment of Top Fuel drag racing. With the tricky track conditions in the cold and damp weather (at least no snow this Easter!!), the throttle was modest as well when leaving the start line and Roel was able to feed the throttle slowly as the bike started to gain some speed. No big numbers on the scoreboard, but the bike did run in a nice straight line and the skies were lit by the header flames from the exhausts for some 400 feet. Around the eight mile the bike lost its power so Roel shut the throttle and coasted past the finish line. Back in the pit the team found that there were still some issues with the rocker arms as they seized on the axle, causing all the push rods to bend. But the rocker arms themselves were still in one piece. The team decided to skip the second qualifying round to double check the whole bike and found that everything was in good condition and prepped the bike for the next day, eliminations. With the fuel system altered a bit and the idle set a tiny bit lower, the bike was fired up the next morning after some hilarity about a loose connector. All was checked A-OK again and so they prepared themselves for first round to get some more data. Roel was up against his "old racing buddy" from back when he was running 4-cylinder bikes, multiple UK champion Steve Woollat. After a long smokey burnout from the T&V powered twin, a small fuel leak was detected and Vincent immediately signalled Roel to kill the engine. It turned out to be a good thing to quit the engine, as now the rocker arms and shafts that gave trouble in qualifying could be examine after very little stress. Again the seizing marks were present, so some modification was clearly needed for the rocker arms.

The rocker arms are redesigned and altered in some small areas and team Zodiac is confident the modified items will be up to the task for the season opener of the European Championship, The Main Event at the famous quarter mile of Santapod Raceway. They will probably need a couple of runs to find their base setting, but with a little luck, and weather permitting, they hope to run all 4 qualifiers. It will be tough to qualify with 12 Top Fuel Super Twins entering the event to try and get a spot of the 8-bike field, but hopes are high!

See you at the racetrack!

The Zodiac SuperTwin Top Fuel drag racing team is proudly sponsored by Zodiac International B.V., Supertrapp Exhaust Systems, ACCEL Motorcycle Products, Spectro Oils of America and Kibblewhite Precision Machining.

The Zodiac SuperTwin Top Fuel drag racing team is proud to use products from Zodiac International B.V., Supertrapp Exhaust Systems, ACCEL Motorcycle Products, Spectro Oils of America, Kibblewhite Precision Machining, Performance Machine Disk Brakes and Wheels, Goodridge Fluid Transfer Systems and Flexion/Gates Belt Drive Systems.

View the race team's progress on http://www.zodiacracing.com