Winter Testing Cartagena 2023 .. A false start
So this is my first post for this blog and I thought I would start with my initial prep for my 2023 season racing the old ducati m600 ss. This will be my third year taking part in the Desmo Due Series in class B.
Last year I managed to finish in third although had led the start of the season due to a great opening round at oulton my favourite track. This year we’ll the opening round will be brands hatch indy and despite it being my local track and one of the smaller tracks in the calendar I still havent quite go it cracked. Anyway back on to my prep and testing during the winter
I realised at the end of last year I have rather limited to time, which has to be split between my new born son, my ever understanding fiance, work and a house that seems to be in a constant state of project work. This left no time to get the bike ready for another year of abuse, so I sent it off to Race Engineering in Dunmow Essex. The guys there stripped the engine down, fitted new valve collets, checked the clearances replaced the belts and generally gave it a good going over. Then it was on to the dyno to see what kind of power it was pushing out after all these years. It wasnt great on the inital run just 16bhp… This was down to me forgetting to drain the carbs at the end of last season and the fuel gumming everything up (lesson learned there). After the carbs had been cleaned and needles polished the next 2 runs were much better, seeing 48bhp and then 49bhp which given the bikes age I was rather happy with!
I then collected the bike and took to down to swindon to be loaded onto a truck and shipped off to sunny spain, cartagena. Where I would follow by plan just 1 week later!
First day on a spanish track day is always an early start! up at 6am for a quick conti breakfast and to the track by 7am to unload the stillages and grab a garage space. No sooner had we finished unloading the heavens opened.. typical. Never mind just meant a bit of time to chill out, catch up with friends and mess around with a few bits on the bike. Which for some reason was completely void of brake fluid in the reseviour. Now I had thought I had issues with hel master clyinders last year so came prepaired with a spare brembo system I could switch out in case something like this happened. A short 20 minutes later and it was all swapped out and rebled, not a problem or so I thought!
The rain gave way shortly after lunch and we went out for our sighting laps and got familiar with the track, its a great little circuit for smaller capacity bikes so the desmo was right at home there. Whilst building up speed in the afternoon sessions I kept having check the brake lever to see if it had pressure as I approached any braking zones. If not then a single pump and the lever would firm up. It really wasnt confidence inspiring and was ruining any sort of rythm I was trying to build up. I came back in and rebled the brakes and this contiued for the rest of the day.
The next day It was more of the same but now the brembo was leaking too! Fortunalty one of the guys I was out there with had a spare standard master, so I set about to switching everying over to this one, third time lucky right? The leaking issue went away but the loosing pressure hadn’t but I could ride around it although it was definetly slowing my pace down but at this point I just wanted to get the track time!
The third and final day comes around and at some point one of the guys suggested I check my discs they could be warped… This hadn’t really occured to me as there was no pulsing when the brakes were working, but I had nothing to lose and they had a disc I could use. However, when I took the wheel out the bearing literally just dropped to the floor. So failed bearing it was… maybe. Any way the disc I was about to borrow was attached to a spare wheel so instead I just threw it all in my bike and I finally got in some decent laps and managed to build a bit of a rhythm. I just about managed a sub 2 minute laptime and with 49bhp and 3 days of problem solving I was pretty happy with. Hopefully I’ll get out there again to have another go.
I later found out that when I bought the bike I had been given 2 different generation of monster front wheels. One being slightly narrower than the other so was walking about just a fraction while I was riding. This wasnt enough for me to feel but was enough to push the pads back in the caliper! Which was the cause of all my brake issues and one now junk front wheel!
Atleast I found it out during testing and didnt have these issues on a race weekend when time is alot more limited!