2005 – Chapter Two
VIR
Cycle Jam
May 20, 2005
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On the way home from Joliet Tim and I devised a plan for recovering our momentum after blowing up the engine and our disastrous finish. We needed to be 100% ready to race in about ten days. We had one bike with a destroyed motor and another bike with, at this point, unknown reliability.
We decided that when we arrived home Tim would autopsy the motor to determine the cause of the failure. In the meantime I would make sure that we had all the parts inventory that we would need to rebuild the bikes for the next round.
Tim determined that the failure was our fault. In the past we had used exhaust cams with slightly more lift than stock with good result so we had installed them in these 2005 motors. With the new bike’s lighter valve springs and the higher redline the spring was becoming coil bound with the increased lift leading to failure. It was our own damn fault. Strange as it sounds, Tim and I were relieved that it was something we had done because in the past the Suzuki’s have blown up repeatedly just due to shoddy materials and poor design so we were hoping this was not going to happen again.