Thursday: The weather is perfect, almost 30 degrees C, the day before the first qualification day. The team, Matte Tärnström, Jarmo Pulkkinen, Carina Dahl and me Charley is setting up everything in the pits and do the final checkup and adjusting with setups on the bike. Hasse Björkman, who spend the last night before leaving the shop for the trip to Finland together with Charley and Carina doing final assembly and loading up everything, is not with us at the races.
Friday: There is light rain this morning. There is two qualification runs for the Pro Classes. The first round has to be cancelled because of the rain and a huge oil down along the whole track. There is 18 Super Twins that should try to get into a 8 bike field so it will be tuff to just qualify. On our first pass did the engine misfire under load on the front cylinder so it became a short one, only a second of full throttle from the starting line and a smooth rolling on again one more second just to see that the engine is running okey. Just over 14 seconds and 104 km/h at the finish line. We were happy, just regular service and nothing damaged.
We have to find out why we get the misfire. One thing we not know yet and have to find out by experience is how much flex there is in the drive system for the mags (ignition generators with rotors). The ignition is timed by triggers at the crankshaft for a perfect timing and the spark is timed to the right ignition wire out to the spark plug by the rotor and cap at the generators. This needs to be at the optimised to get the best spark. We moved the generators 5 degrees to see if we can solve it.
Saturday first run: This will be interesting. Direct from the hit, the engine is still misfiring but runs a little bit better. Close the throttle after just a second and open it up again a couple of times but not full just to see how it reacts. It runs clean on partial throttle. Now 11,36 and 143 km/h. Just regular service is needed before final qualification round. At the download from the onboard computer we can see that the exhaust temperature is coming closer to be the same front and rear, both on idle and at the run.
The nozzle sizes is changed trying to get the temperatures to the same values at both cylinders.
Saturday second run: Now does the engine respond without any misfires direct from the starting line and runs clean. It does not pull hard but it runs clean. The throttle is kept open for 3,6 sec than shut off 1,6 sec for correction and then opened again for 1,3 seconds.The time slip shows 8,74 and 210 km/h. The time was not good enough to qualify in the 8-bike field. We ended up us number 10.
Lorenz Stauble from Switzerland became number one qualifier with 6,898 and 324 km/h followed by Per Bengtsson from Sweden 6,929/281 km/h. These two guys did also take wins and met in the final. Per Bengtsson won the race.
After servicing our bike we only find some black marks on the front piston and replaced it together with a new honed cylinder and replaced the upper halves on the connecting rod bearings that was pushed out a little bit. The new Uddeholm Deivar crank looks great as the new Uddeholm Orvar Supreme Wrist Pins that got a Balinit DLC Star coating made by Oerlikon Balzers.
This was the first time we ran Red Line 70 WT oil and at the same time we did run the plain Venolia aluminium pistons into the Uddeholm Impax Supreme steel cylinders. It seems to work good. The black marks is caused by to much fuel in that cylinder.
Now there is some minor things to fix before the race at Mantorp Park 24-26 July. We look forward to continue the work trying to find a “window” in the tune-up that is good enough to compete for a place in the 8 bike field. We are 20 riders trying to be there.
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