Mechanical Woes & the all mighty dollar might have me out of the race
Thursday, August 3rd, 2006
So yes… it’s up in the air if I will be able to enter my August 27th race as planned. Motor problems with my bike & Brandy & I have agreed to start a “budget”. Does this spell doom for my racing in 2006? Time will tell.
Over the last ride or two, my bike has been running pretty crappy… with it getting progressively worse. Upon further inspection, it was determined that my head gasket was leaking coolant into the cylinder. To verify that it was only the gasket & not a warped head, I had Max Power RPMs inspect the cylinder & cylinder head. Fortunately they brought good news that the head was straight, plus they verified that the head had been shaved a little bit… which is where my high compression-ratio is coming from & requiring me to run a 50/50 mix of race gas & pump gas. So I bought a new head gasket from them, one that is for my specific 2mm over-bore. So in the end, I came out pretty good… no warped head, it only cost me $25 & now I know how the motor has been modified from the previous owner. Now I just need to get my motor back together again & I should be back riding again and hopefully with some nice performance & motor rideability improvements!!
About the “budget” thing… Brandy & I have agreed to begin a planned budget, to start focusing on paying off our credit debts, finishing the little projects in our home that are not finished… and then hopefully next summer, we’ll pursue buying a newer home. So yea, hell yea! A newer, larger & everything else home would rock!! But it is going to take a definite mentality change on our part. Cutting back, way back on the amount of going out to eat, we already removed the credit cards from our wallets, contacting banks about moving the credit around to better interest rates & etc. I don’t know if we’ll be able to pull it off though…
So yes, me actually entering an official race/s this year… it might or might not happen at this point. I’m not even a memeber of the AMA any more… I would have to join the AMA, District, pay gate fees for me & Brandy… fuel, food, liquids, spare parts, possible lodging & everything else that is needed for a racing wekeend. But of course I’ll still be riding with buddies… absolutely is that a great time… but I do have desire inside of me to enter at least one race again this year… I’ve been away from the races since June of 2004. Time will tell how it all pans out…
