we are now on twitter @chrishannam3

if its good engough for the motogp and superbike boys its good enough for me, should be good for race updates..

2012 reveiw so far

First of all let me start by thanking LUCAS OILS for their continued support, we are now in our 3rd year with Lucas and this year we move on the new nitro race oil which we will be trying at the main event, Lucas came to our aid through Andy carter when we were having major big end brg and crank issues and I’m happy to say I think we now have a now formula to make the bottom end live longer with the help of a great product.

Once again in what seemed a long cold winter we made the annual team trip over to Valdosta for the big race in November for another parts haul and watch some great racing in sun, while we were there we talked about what we wanted to improve as all season we have been suffering with bad leak down due to incorrect piston rings as our original ones had been discontinued, I had been speaking to Johnny Vickers at Hawaya racing and between us and Johnny we had me some new pistons made at C P pistons to my design incorporating the total seal rings they use, we also re positioned the skirt buttons to aid with scuffing etc, now I have to say a big shout out to CP and Johnny as these were made inside 4 weeks which for a custom piston is amazing, again we had our parts for the year and we could start and plan our work load as we had plenty of time right !!!

we wanted to reduce weight on the bike( quiet funny when you consider the rider and there is a story there too) as we have a 27 liter fuel tank which we now know is too big and nitro is very heavy and wanted to get that down to 20 liters and move all the ignitions under the tank to neaten up the bike, we also bought the new more efficient supercharger from puma to give us more hit off the line as this bike has always been lazy with me on there, we also had new longer rods to increase the compression from up to 6-1 all of which we thought was a doddle, how wrong can you be!
So into January with our normal work to do and lots of parts to make with the biggest been a 28mm wide spacer to fit the new shorter blower in where the larger one had been, after about 8 days machining over 2 months and on the 2nd attempt we had our spacer which also incorporated all the new fuel bracket upgrades that we wanted to do, this spacer is a work of art and you can’t even see this when on the bike, we have also made a reduction gear drive and pick up plate for the msd to drive from the crank to remove the fluctuating timing we had as last year as it was taken from the end of the cam which as you know is belt driven and prone to fluctuation, on top of this we also made timing belt outrigger plates and idlers to eliminate belt whip and stop the cam timing jumping on the run and all this turned into a much bigger job, bottom line no reduction in tank size and msd s not moved as Easter was fast approaching so all the parts were then taken down to midgo at Colchester for him to assemble and re build with the original length con rods as it was decided not to make to many changes and one go and see what the blower upgrade would net is in the performance stakes.

Neil spent a lot of time putting all the new parts back on and making the fit just as he wanted and on top of this built a new piston skirt oiling system that had been discussed with Pete Davis and got the bike almost ready to go, so once again we turn up at Easter a day early to get the bike to a running state, thanks here must go to Ian marshall, Darren prentice and all the santapod crew for not only helping with our pitting and giving us a great place to race but taking our oil delivery from Lucas so big thanks there.

so with bitterly cold weather we get the bike running and it sounds very sharp considering the cold and we go to make a pass, we make a great burn out and shut the bike down for an air leak as I’m taking no chances now, we strip the bike down and check everything as the weather starts playing its part and holds us up for some time, once we get back out on track all is ok till the green light, at the hit it leaves very hard but I can feel that something is wrong with the drive, on looking at the data we found a damaged sprag brg in our gearbox which I have to say is the 1st sprag in 4 years so it’s not bad, now this could have been worn from last year and with the data showing much higher G s even with a slipping sprag the future is looking good, unfortunately we knew what Mondays weather had in store for us so we just packed up ready to pull out Monday morning and fight another day.

Back in the workshop the bike was stripped down completely and checked and all found to be like brand new, the pistons and shell brgs did not even have any signs of use, so basically it was rebuilt and the new spare gearbox fitted and we are ready for the test day at the main event and we are hoping for a great race with good weather and seeing all our friends again.

After the main event we are to attend www.bikewise.org.uk on the 1st July, this event is run by the Durham constabulary and is none drag related but a massive bike event, myself and the Dave Coates stunt show will be the main attraction in the arena so we hope to showcase our sponsors and drag racing at santapod in a positive way.

After this we having some more testing planned before we get to the euro finals and national finals which will be our last events this year in the uk and subject to all going ok and having some spares left we plan to fly the bike out to MRE in Florida in October for the finals at Valdosta in November and the spring race next year, we have spoken to Malcolm Francis at air sea logistics to fly the bike out there and my good friend jay at MRE has offered me his workshop and trailer and tools for the trip, we also have help form Johnny at Hawaya racing and we have enlisted our old team member Andy Dawson to help getting things prepared for our arrival in Florida so if we don’t break too many parts we can look forward to racing the fastest bikes on the planet on our busman’s holiday.

Finally getting back to the weight issue myself and jay of MRE decided we should have a $1000 bet of who can lose the most weight before next November, to make this fair I have to lose 1.25 lbs to jays 1 lb so that its fair as I have more to lose, now you will see that its quiet funny we are trying to lose weight off the bike when I could make the biggest difference but I know it all helps , so we weighed in at the track on Dave scaggs prostock scales and the bet is on so we will see who takes the prize in November but I believe it to be about even at present.

So that’s all for now and updates on the usa trip will follow nearer the time.

see you at the track.

photo of the week again !!!!

today we have the privaledge to be phote of the week on www.dragbike.com . we must be doing somthing right!!

LUCAS OILS

we would just like to say a big thank you to our sponsor LUCAS OILS for there very valuble support throughout the 2011 race season, we cant say enough about the lucas range only to say that it keeps the hardest working topfuel twin on the track and we look forward to next year..

ooppps !! burnout from the barn !!!

fire in the hole !!!