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2014 Starts Here… With A Mechanical Scare

GSXR Repair In the Dark

Well it’s been a while since I posted anything new. But 2014 is about to kick off for me. After skipping the pre-season test and the first round at Brands Hatch, I am about to through my leg over the GSXR for the first time since Thruxton. Since my last post there has been little has changed, bike and racing wise, hence my silence. Anyhow it’s back to NG for the next round at Oulton…. and I am sneaking in a track day on Wednesday there as well. But it’s not just a track day. It’s my long held over day with Mike “Spike” Edwards. Hopefully 3rd time lucky on this actually happening.

The Gixxer is the same as last year, all I have done is repair a few things that were not quiet A1. When I took my bike for it’s MOT, a requirement with Street Stocks, I had a chat with Phil at Spring Court. Now some of you will say “who?” but others will know he is a former Manx GP winner with a wealth of long circuit knowledge and not just a little engineering nouse. He found the reason I got the weird error code every so often when trying to start the bike. The code was a “tamper” code for the ignition. It turned out one of the wires had been exposed and it must have been shorting out every so often. So that is now fixed. The lower fairing has been fibreglassed around the lower right mounting and cut back to give a bit more space for the exhaust. It isn’t pretty and I’ll be replacing it soon, but I need time to get that done…. and maybe even a different colour scheme 😉

So everything is ready, cleaned and ready to go. I hit the start button and…… nothing. Arrgh! Kill switch is on, fuel pump primes and everything is ready to go. A bit of checking and panic sets in. My thoughts are it must be clutch safety switch, for no other reason than it’s like the clutch isn’t pulled in. A quick panic and check in with friends on Facebook and Gixxer.com to get the usual suspects to check (master fuse, side stand switch and clutch switch). I then set about checking them. My intial guess is right, there is a broken wire at the switch itself, all very visible once the initial panicking is over.  So it’s out with the soldering iron and after a bit of swearing and heating my fingers a bit, everything back together and it all fires up. I think the phrase “Pheeeeew” covers my relief best, the thought of having to cancel my day with Spike again isn’t something I really wanted to do.

Bring on Wednesday… and Oulton Park

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