Everyday TR1 - getting ready to race

If you work in a company, where there's some motorcyclists, an annual rideout is a given. (And I am really looking forward to it to be honest.) But given the sporty nature of the rideout and the fact that I am pretty much certainly going to ride the oldest bike of the pack, well some tweaks have to be applied to remain competitive.

But before I could dive into that, first I had fix the mechanics of my fuel cap and grease up the locking mechanism. 

And then it was time to do something that might sound counter-intuitive: I swapped my o-ring-chain for a standard chain. (As it lives in an oil-/greasebath, the o-rings only mean additional drag anyway.)

If you run a bike with a (proper) chain-enclosure, swapping a chain is a bit more work, but then also means that you only do this every 100,000km or so...

It does get a lot easier, if you just connect the two chains...

... and then pull them through. 

Now this is a personal fetish of mine, but with clip-locks on chains, I always mark them with some paint, which makes finding it again a lot easier. (Not so much an issue with an open chain, but if you only have a peep-hole to look into the chain enclosure...)

And lastly add about 0.5kg of grease into the enclosure to make sure this chain never runs dry.

As I was already on the subject of greasing the gear-lever pivot needed some attention too.

Let's simply assume that less drag also means more power making it to the wheel. As a result this implies that something needs to be done about slowing down as well. (I know, it's overrated 'n' all...)

I've run this type of organic pads before and had some rather good experiences with them. With these? Not so much. They squealed like it was going out of fashion AND performed rather poorly feeling unpleasantly dull.

So I took a chance and settled for some sintermetal-ceramic pads in a "hotter" compound, i.e. by the company's own description, the "S3" is on the edge between road use and road-racing. (This is not a sponsored post, but I am very pleased with the pads, but be forewarned, they need two or three attempts at braking to come up to temperature and actually show the full potential.) The same pads are also available in their "AD" compound, which is strictly more road-oriented. (And notably cheaper!)

So let's see what the rideout brings this year. Last year it led me to overhaul the engine and ultimately build bumblebee...