Crackdays & Racing

A collection of 33 posts

Crackdays & Racing

Analyzing Your Data with Race Studio 2

As racers, we’re always looking for an advantage over the competition- better brakes, exhaust, motor work, titanium bolts to reduce unsprung weight- you name it. With the advent of modern electronics, now data logging and analysis is becoming available for not just pro-racers, but club racers as well. Most

Crackdays & Racing

How to build a "Duzucati"

It’s been a few years, but I really wanted to do a write up how I came to build my race bike: a Suzuki SV650 powered Ducati 1098S- or as I like to call it, a “Duzucati”. A big reason why I wanted to write this up is because

Crackdays & Racing

Cheap Racing

So I was looking through my “Drafts” folder and found this post that I started writing back in September of 2011. This was back when I was racing my first race bike and before I built the Duzucati. Not sure why I didn’t post it back then, but looking

Crackdays & Racing

Initial AiM MXL2 Review

After comparing AiM, Race-Technology, MoTeC, AEM, RaceCapture/Pro, GEMS, XT Racing, TraqMate, VBox and 2D data logger offerings, I decided to go with the AiM MXL2 for my race bike to replace my XT Racing GPX Pro. There’s a number of reasons for choosing AiM and their MXL2 over

Cool

GPX Pro Review Part 2

This is an update for my original XT Racing GPX Pro Review. First, let me say that the reliability problems I had in the past with the screen seem to have been solved. It’s been nearly three full years and the screen is still working just fine. That said,

Crackdays & Racing

2014 AFM Round 4 Race Report

After Round 3, I was able to get a lot of track riding in which ended up being both good and bad. The bad came early- a lowside while riding the new full 5 mile Thunderhill course. Both I and the bike came away with only minor damage (me bruised

Crackdays & Racing

2014 AFM Round 3 Race Report

After missing the last three rounds (my engine leaking oil from the cases at Round 7 last year, an electrical issue for round 1 and an injury sidelining me for round 2), I was desperate to finally get back out on track. I literally hadn’t been on a motorcycle

Crackdays & Racing

2014 Racing Season Preview

This year looked like it was going to really start out on the right foot. Gregg Spears of Spears Enterprises finished building my new motor in early January- well in advance of the race season.  I really can’t express just how impressed I am with Gregg’s professionalism

Crackdays & Racing

The 2013 AFM Season in Review

So I had planned on doing regular reports after each and every AFM round during the 2013 season. But after missing the first three rounds due to mechanical problems and then a constant struggle to not just develop a new bike, but make it reliable enough so I could just

Crackdays & Racing

New SV650 ECU Decoder Firmware

So I’ve been spending my time working on the firmware running on the Teensy board which does all the ECU decoding. I’ve added support for displaying water temp and ECU error codes on the four digit LED display as you can see here: As you can see from

Arduino

SV650 ECU Decoder Part 5: They're here!

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. So I got the new boards back from OSH Park: The boards look really good. I’m waiting on some parts to show up from Mouser, but was able to mostly populate the board

Arduino

SV650 ECU Decoder Part 4: Third time is the charm?

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. So my v2.0 boards were a complete dud.  Turns out some how I messed up the design and ended up wiring up the connector to the wiring harness backwards so nothing works.  Wasn’t a

Arduino

SV650 ECU Decoder Part 3: New boards just arrived!

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. So I got the v2.0 boards back today from OSH Park and they looked really good: The back side of the PCB has solder holes for both the stock dash connector as well as a 5 screw terminal block in case

Arduino

SV650 ECU Decoder part 2

Part 1 is here. So I got the first boards back from OSH Park: And with the all the components populated: And finally in the small ABS plastic enclosure: At this point I decided to do a little more with my decoder and add: 1. LED display for decoding FI

Arduino

SV650 ECU EFI warning decoder/dash replacement

So I finally finished the design of my very first PCB and placed an order with OSH Park to get some samples. The basic premise is I needed a way to decode the data stream from my 2nd gen SV650 ECU to know when there is a problem with the

Cool

XT Racing GPX Pro Review

Note, this is a review of the first generation GPX Pro, not the current GPX Pro4/8 units- however, much of this review should apply to both units. Overall, I’m in love with the GPX Pro- it’s a great cost effective solution for capturing and analyzing data while

Crackdays & Racing

2012 Season in Review

It’s been a few weeks now so I’ve had time to digest the 2012 AFM season. Things definitely started on the wrong foot with the first race of the season being cancelled due to weather conditions. That left six races for the season- four at Thunderhill and two

Crackdays & Racing

Why do you race?

After a weekend of racing I was emailing back and forth my mentor K.C. and during the exchange he asked me: “Why do you race?” Surprisingly, I couldn’t just spit out the answer- it took some time to internalize the question and get to the core nugget of

Crackdays & Racing

2012 AFM Round 4

I don’t really have the time to write up a full race report, but I really wanted to send out a few thank you’s to everyone who helped me out at the last AFM round: Dave, Jim and Nickie at Catalyst Reaction for completely redoing my suspension and

Crackdays & Racing

AFM Round 7: Well That Was Fun

KC wasn’t able to make it up this round which was going to suck and not just because it meant I’d be without A/C either- KC has been a great mentor for me all year and it seems I need someone to kick me the pants lately

Crackdays & Racing

AFM Round 6: Progress (Finally!)

So I haven’t done my normal post race writeup’s this year… mostly because I really just wanted to forget the early rounds. I had really high hopes for this year: my first year with white plates, a new motor, new fairings with a pretty paint job. And then

Crackdays & Racing

Worse to Better: AFM 2010 Round 6

I didn’t do race reports for the last two rounds at Thunderhill because frankly I just wanted to forget them. Even though I put in personal best times at round 4, dropping 4 seconds from last year, I was disappointed with my results where anything but top novice in

Crackdays & Racing

AFM 2010 Round 3

Rounds 1 & 2 were a bit more difficult then I was hoping for so I was really looking forward to round 3 and a change of luck. That almost didn’t happen as I crashed on cold tires during a Keigwins track day just a week before the race.

Crackdays & Racing

It's how you finish that matters

This being my very first year racing, I started this year with a simple goal- finish in the top 50% in 650 Production. I honestly didn’t know how realistic that would be- how many people would run in the class and how fast would they be? The good news

Crackdays & Racing

A dark cloud

So a couple of days ago a dark cloud started following me- literally (on twitter). Why? Well probably because my race bike’s motor just got diagnosed with TCMS (Ton of Crap in Motor Syndrome). At this stage of the game, it would normally be game over- my season finished.