George

As some of you may have noticed in Erik Warrens thread about what he is spending all his time doing, I have also been bitten by the racing bug again. I have decided to start my own thread about this endeavour back into racing motorcycles on pavement and feel that because this is my first love in competitve sports, it deserves to be in the What I Like forum. To that end, I have realized that this will soon become my "new" hobby and that competition shooting may very well take a back seat to this Real Soon Now. I do not expect to become totally inactive, but I may only participate in a couple matches per year now. I plan on continuing to spearhead the multigun program at my local club, but those few matches per year will probably be my total involvement in competitive shooting other than maybe one bigger match a year. I am in that totally excited point of a new sport where you are completely engrossed with gearing up and sorting out the details as you day-dream of the first time out at some point in the near, but all too far future. I took a big hump first approach to my method of getting back in (it's been 30 years since I raced a motorcycle) and bought a ready to race dedicated GP bike first so everything else is now downhill to getting onto the track. BTW, this is a racetrack only machine. No lights, no mirrors, no license plate, no nuttin' It desn't even have a battery or a speedometer. Tach and temp gauge only, just rap it out until you bury the tach and hang on until the race is over, or the temp gauge flashes, oh yeah! ;-) To bootstrap this effort, I cashed out a $10k bond and bought a 2000 Yamaha TZ125 purpose built GP racing bike. This bike went for just about $12k when new. I paid $5.5k "cash in fist" for it along wth a ton of spares and new/specialty parts. It was owned by a racing team in Japan and sold off to the USA after three seasons. It was bought and rebuilt by a racer in MA back in 05. After racing it in 06 and then freshly rebuilding it for the coming season, he realized he didn't have the funds to keep this bike going along with his other road racers. End of story, I get a screaming deal on a screaming fast little bike that is ready to go a whole season as is. It only has two heat cycles on it since the rebuild and it's already suspension tuned and has the controls set for someone my height and weight. Big plus having a fresh and strong running engine along with already being in the ballpark on handling and rider setup with a bike as specialized as this one is. I will have the bike in about a week. It is being crated and shipped as I type. It is ready to gas and race with a spare set of wheeels with a set of slightly used Dunlops mounted and brand new Bridgestones on the bike. It also has a complete spare set of in the white bodywork and a freshly black painted tank. These two images show it before the newly painted all black parts were installed and it still has the slightly scuffed white bodywork and the spare black tank on it. The new finish is all black in screaming glossy lacquer. I will post more photos after it is in my hands next week. Specs for the TZ125 have it at 160lbs dry weight. 50 horsepower and a top speed of 140+ if you can get a straightaway long enough to get it rapped out in top gear to the full 14k rpm it will do. It's no blazing giant killer, but there isn't a 600-700 cc super street bike it won't beat up on in a head to head run through a chunk of curvy road and it will probably munch quite a few even larger ones for lunch whenever it's about fast you can go through twisty and fast sweepers. This one comes with a few trick extras like a Battle Works speed shifter and tire warmers, hot stuff I sent in my application to the AFM (American Federation Of Motorcycles) for a racing license this morning. If I can get geared up and get a track day in real soon, I can make a NRS (New Racer School) in either late September at Infineon Raceway, or in late October at Buttonwillow Raceway. Even if you have racing experience, no one gets to race until they have completed a NRS if they have been inactive. I expect to have my racing number in a couple of weeks and can get it painted onto the fresh bodywork professionally. With the large lump of cash I have left, I am now gearing up for the rest of the racing package. Safety gear is my number one concern and I have decided that this is where I will spare no expense. I also figured that the cash outlay warrants making it look good too. So with the basic black bike as my style starting point I commenced purchasing my riding/safety gear today with the ultimate in protection being the first order of business and style coordination being the second. The helmet is the star of the safety package and where I started. I went with the HJC Carbon -12 in th Elbowz style. After talking with Erik, I realized the ultra lightweight of the carbon fiber helmet compared to the others would be a large factor in reducing "rag-doll" flailing in the noggin' area. A helmet weinging half as much will torgue your head and neck less under rapid accelerations and decelerations and when a spill happens, the whiplash effect will be lessened. I went to local dealer today to fit one and paid cash for them to special order the Elbowz paint style they don't have in stock. http://www.hjchelmets.com/ac12_carbon.htm Tomorrow I go in search of Sidi Vertigo Air boots in red and Held Phantom gloves in white and red. http://www.kneedraggers.com/details/Sidi_V...-34-SIDI-7.html http://www.heldusa.com/phantom.htm The leathers are being designed right now and I will close the order with Vanson Leathers in MA later this week. I will be getting a custom fitted Mark III (Volante) race suit with every possible piece of kevlar/carbon fiber/CE gel armor I can get stuffed into it along with their CE certified back protector and the obligatory Aero Hump that one must have to be considered "fast" nowadays. http://www.vansonleathers.com/product_page...s2/mk3_suit.htm I will post the leathers design image when it is done and you will see how the above items will completely color coordinate with the racing suit and the black bike (the wheels will be anodized, or powder coated to red). Why dump 10k into a lot of gear and not have it match perfectly to a pattern you like/designed Stay tuned for more as this new/old hobby of mine develops further.

In a word, YES!. But the market will not be huge, just dedicated

I was more than 5 seconds off the pace next time I went onto a track after that spill on the SMR. I didn't run away from racing, but because I was making good money on the road doing tech work, I let it fade away. Time does dull the memory of scrubbing road rash clean with a toothbrush and alchohol, or feeling like every joint on your body was just rapped with a ball peen hammer. Trick is to not be a crasher

Tossed it over a cliff on the Sunday Morning Ride (Northern CA thing) back in 78 at about 100. Was slingshotting past someone on the way through a blue sky corner next to Tomales Bay on Highway 1. Wasn't dragging a knee cause it was public roads with Bott's dots on the centerline (never, EVER hit a Botts dot wth your knee). Lost the front cause it was hot and greeezy. Went over the cliff on my butt at 90+ and landed on my back on a lawn after a 40 foot fall. I looked around and saw I landed just 10 feet from the bay and a rock seawall lining it. Whew! Bike landed 20 to my left and bounced onto the steps of a little cottage, still in 5th gear, wheels still spinning, engine still running. I was on the bike and back on my way up an access road before the wheels had even spun down. Tweaked the pipes and fork tubes a tad but the real damage was to me. When I saw where I had gone over the cliff, it took my bravado away. I had split a less than 10 foot wide gap between a telephone pole and it's wire rope guy wire. Metal guard rail was 8 feet either side and the bike and I found the only two gaps for a quarter mile while on my ass, sliding backwards at 90mph. George will not be riding on the street again any time soon. Racetrack, yeah baby! Public roads, nosiree!!! My body is definitely too old for this, but my mind is not going to listen. I have a click when I walk in the right metatarsal area when a bone knit poorly after an 80mph attempt to walk it off My neck cricks when I turn it from way too many rag-doll flails into the haybales, but I ain't letting any of that stop me. The modern boots, gloves, leathers and safety gear in use now (back protectors, kevlar plate armor with gel cushions, etc...) is way better than the stuff they let us onto the track wth back then. I may not be the fastest thing on the track nowadays, but I will NOT be the slowest!!!

Thats what I've been telling Erik. The reason for the sliders is not to protect your knee IF you contact it, but to let it slide smoothly with some amount of weight on it at speed in the corners WHEN you contact it. Now you can almost "Flat Track" it around the corners and if the rears scoots, the knee keeps the bike up kinda' like a tripod while adding throttle brings the wheel back in control. If the front pushes, the knee again takes the temporary load while you pour on enough throttle to take the rear around to catch up with the front and get it back on line. In a perfect world, the knee is taking appreciable weight almost all the time you are on the gas in sweepers and is what actually keeps you from sliding out. In my day (late 70's), we used duct tape to get the same sliding effect (hint, leather grabs). You had to put a lot on and maybe even a chunk-o-lumynum under the tape to keep the knee itself from grindin' ifnya' spent much time heeled over. In the rain, it really is just like flat trackin' on your knee I have never raced a 125 before, but at 175 lbs and 35+ HP it oughta' get up and move pretty darned good too

Well, I'm back in. Just bought the bike and now for the riding gear (leathers, helmet, boots, etc...). Just sent the cashiers check for the following bike. 2000 Yamaha TZ125 Bike is freshly rebuilt and has zero miles on all new motor, clutch and chain. Has two sets of wheels, two complete sets of bodywork, 2 spare cylinders and several sets of pistons, all the usual jets, sprockets and other spare parts for days. Also includes stands, tire warmers, Battle Factory rear sets and speed shifter. In addition to all that, it has brand new bridgestone slicks on it and a slightly worn set on the spare wheels. This bike is ready to gas and race The image shows the older set of slightly dingy bodywork. It ships to me next week. A 125 GP bike is the perfect starter for me. Next stop, late model 250 after a full season on this baby! Woohooo, after 25 years in the slow lane, I'm baaaack!!!

The Royal Discount "Shrinkwrap" OEM XP packages are fully licensed and have valid XP keys. I have bought and installed 14 copies of XP Pro (Shrinkwrap version at $149 when you buy 3, or more) and 5 Student Teacher (3pack) versions of Office 2.3k and 2.7k from them. At $149 for the 3 install license, this version of MS Office is a killer deal. The copies of XP and Office I have bought from them have been used mostly on dual boot Intel Mac's I prepare for my clients, but I have also updated an older Dell desktop from back around 2k (it had Win2K on it) and a 2005 Gateway laptop that didn't have it's restore disc's, but came with XP installed. Yeah, it's the real McCoy. Royal Discount = ***** (5 stars!) :-)

Don't wanna' hear no TZ250 howl over and over unless it's me cuttin' the laps on it :-) I'm on the hunt now for the right bike to get back into AFM club racing, hopefully 250GP, damn you Erik No street ridin' though, track only this time!

Don't push the 147's past 1000 fps and they MAY not keyhole. As far as crimp goes, I don't measure it to a specific diameter as brass varies in thickness from brand to brand. I just eyeball it to see that I am getting the belling flattened back against the bullet. I do use a caliper to check that the case mouth is not wider than halfway down the bulge the bullet makes. This verifies that you don't have any mouth belling left. The idea behind crimp on the neener case is to just flatten the case mouth against the side of the bullet, rather than actually turn it in to crease the bullet.

The only dirt riding that won't make you slow on pavement is flat track. Ifn'ya wanna' get fast again, go find a big flat dirt lot and re-learn getting it slide-ways under power. Can't be afraid to push either tire if ya' wanna' call yerself' fast Now it's time to get going to Laguna Seca to see some MotoGP :-)

He just doesn't wanna' scrub the knees outa' his spankin' new leathers. Nothing a little "race-tape" won't fix right up Worst thing about this whole thread is that I was looking at the ad for that very same TZ-250 that is/was available down here and started thinkin' that I might just want to buy that suckah'. It wouldn't be quite as fast as the 74' TZ-350B I campaigned in the AFM 750GP class for a season way back in the late 70's, but it definitely oughta' handle better than that unruly thing did

Ever since going to a dual boot machine, I am finding my time spent in Windows increasing to a bit over 30% of my total usage time now. It's the only way to go for machine control work (serial port stuff) and there is absolutely no substitute for it as a viewing/testing/building platform for web work (which I do a lot of). I don't nay-say Windows, I simply nay-say mfgr's calling this stuff plug-n-play to sell huge heaps of it to the un-washed masses. The truth to any system is it works fine when setup and managed properly. The other truth to this is that very few folks know anything beyond the most minimal basics about IT systems and have no conception of what it takes to set something up properly and use it trouble-free over the longterm Anyone who is interested in what it takes to have a hassle-free experience carving out a dual-boot machine on a new Intel Mac is welcome to PM me for help. The process and help Apple provides is pretty good, but there are several things that happen randomly on the Windows side of the install and if you don't know what to do, it will stop most of ya' cold. I have done over two dozen of these setups now and know the various foibles that occur pretty well. Regards,

It's just a simple truth that Win 98/2k/XP/ME, etc... are more prone to OS corruption when system lockups occur during disk transactions whilst Nix based systems are less likely to eat themselves in this circumstance. I included all forms of Nix when I posted so as not to exclude, but I really only consider Mac OSX to be a true productivity environment among the Nix's. It is a lot closer to real Nix' anyway being based on FreeBSD instead of a L'Nix distro. The reason I recommend the Mac hardware platform and using it as a dual boot system is that it brings an "extremely" reliable productivity environment (OSX) to the table along with a widely used standard (WXP). Ths is a Win, Win IMHO and not something to be tossed off so lightly. The resistance/immunity to virus/adware/spyware/trojans that OSX brings with it is worth every penny of the price of admission. This may not be as clearcut of an advantage in 4-5 years when the crackers interest catches-up , but right now it is.

No war intended, main point here is you will always find whatever you choose to look for The other point is that Open Source based OS's (UNIX, LINIX & Mac OSX) are known for a fact to be more reliable than MS written OS's on a day to day basis when you check and compare runtime without failure stats for equal numbers of machines, doing similar tasks, using similar apps. Server runtime stats are the easiest to find and are the most compelling ones too

I will shoot NATO stuff in any of my AR's if they are clean and the stuff passes my ammo drop gauge gauntlet. I have chambers ranging from .223 Wylde (JP) to loosey-goosey 5.56mm ones, no issues as it's all throat clearance differences to allow for fouling and dirty function clearances. Tha ammo itself is pretty much the same from the case mouth on back for.223 & 5.56. The thing I would do if I wanted to make sure is hand chamber a round with the upper removed and no bolt carrier. Mark the bullet with marker ink and grind it in the chamber, if it marks the bullet, the loaded length/ogive are an issue. Bullet no touchee' the throat, you are good to go.

Yeah, it kinda' depends on what ammo you are shooting in it to start with. If you are using 2.75Dram lites in it now, ya' might need to open it up a bit. Using 3.25Dram+ stuff, it ain't gonna have any problems

I doubt that any porting will require the gas ports opened up if the gun runs fine as it is. If it does need the ports opened up, it's simple job that can be done by hand (I did mine and so do many folks).

Results 1 - 100 of about 211,000,000 for windows os problems. (0.22 seconds) http://www.google.com/search?client=safari...-8&oe=UTF-8

BTW, Erik as far as carrying on a bike goes, keep it on yourself and where it can be accessed stronghand, or weakhand. The belly bag will work well for this. If you get off the bike, you don't don't want to be away from the gun, the gun goes with you, no matter how you get off the bike

The statement I made (when taken in it's correct context) was that B&W cameras have better low light sensitivity and resolution "at a lower price point". I did not state that color cameras can't be bought that have good low light sensitivity and resolution, I just said the B&W ones are cheaper. You get what you pay for and B&W gear will provide high rez and sensitivity for less money. That is all I was trying to let folks know if they wanna' buy this type of system. BTW. most of the integrated system packages come with cameras that have built-in IR illuminators and auto-everything. The real trick to good image quality is line resolution. Get 480 line minimum and go for 600 if you can. Most lenses are good enough to resolve 550+ lines. The quality of the auto-focus circuitry inside a camera is another maker/breaker point in the image quality ladder and the cheaper the camera, the cheaper the electronics in it. Color is more circuitry intensive to do than B&W so it costs more for the same performance specification. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming

These guys have a lot of good deals on CCTV stuff. It's easy to install and the number of options is huge. http://www.supercircuits.com/index.asp B&W systems have better low light sensitivity and resolution for a lot cheaper price point than the color systems and work just as well if you are on a budget. The DVR is a much better option than the VHS VCR time lapse recorders. Just make sure the DVR, VCR, or PC you record with can't be taken, or you lose the evidence too ;/ BTW, the PCI capture card based systems are all Windows only!

Second that Norbs. The porting on my Remmy ends just under 5 inches from the muzzle and is about two inches long. It is ported with two offset rows of holes on each side of the vent rib that are about .125" in diameter. They are drilled straight in on each rows axis and they are chamfered for a little flare on the exit side. The holes are really clean and flush on the inside. I think they were done with a milling machine rather than a drill press.

Erik, if you do not have an alarm system and video surveillance along with a bad ass dog in the yard, then get all these things NOW, or you will not have the other stuff in your garage anymore real soon now! And start spending some quality time at home. Maybe take that 2 week vacation and watch a lot of TV at all hours of the day, every day. These type of folks have a couple week memory, then they forget about you when they stop by again and see the teeth bared

Yeah, get the AR. Either a JP, or have Triangle Shooting Sports build ya' one up. No better choices out there.

Sorry Flex, but I'm already hiding in Open and theres no room for you there