When people ask, "Do you ride at the track?" I generally respond with a "Yes." That, I feel, is a bit misleading...Because what I have been doing is showing up at the track, riding for about five minutes, and then sulking with my nose in a book the rest of the day. That, unfortunately, describes Monday as well.
I showed up yesterday morning with the biggest set of butterflies that I've had in my gut in a long time. I fidgeted through the riders' meeting and was sweating just putting my gear on. The bike is still very tall for me, but there was a small indent in the pavement for drainage, and I'd park the bike in that and hop on, using the depression in my favor. I wobbled out like a first timer at MSF to join my group in line to ride.
I expected the first lap or two to be sighting laps lead by instructors, as I was in the C group, but it turned out that the entire first session was
all sighting laps. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't even able to warm up my tires, but relieved that the slow pace was allowing me to get to know a brand new track and get used to the bike. I maybe hit second gear and was already noticing that there seemed to be a nice flow to it. I was going to enjoy getting to know this little ribbon of pavement...
The bike was feeling OK. I could tell that it handled way better even at this speed than it had tooling around the block at my house, and I was excited to open it up a little. I had noticed a bit of rough running towards the end of my first session, but thought maybe it was just a booger working its way loose through the system. The bike smoothed out and I kept riding. The checkered flag came out and I went in.
Second session comes up and it starts with a sighting lap and then a standing yellow. I was stuck behind a really slow person, so I just chilled. The bike felt fine and I was momentarily relieved that whatever had seemed to be ailing it earlier was gone. I came down the front straight and saw a green flag. The yellow was gone, so I decided to see what my right wrist felt like doing. I cranked it opened and the bike came to life. I dropped anchor big time for the first set of turns to focus on hitting every apex and try to find some braking markers. I was slow, but smooth.
I came out of the first couple of turns and head toward the turn-worker's station and the bike seems to want to run roughly again. I eased way up again for the corner and gave it some serious gas upon exiting, and that's when the bike decided that our day was over. It coughed, sputtered and backfired like a prissy thoroughbred. I totally backed of the throttle, eased over to the side of the track and threw a hand up. Crossing my fingers that maybe this was one last whatever coming out of the system I gently eased back on the throttle. Uh-uh. No-go. The bike technically ran, but barely. I limped it back into the paddock and started removing the plastics to see what might be going on.
I checked all the connections, hoses, everything...and I actually found that one of my coils was barely attached to the bike. It was secure to all of its connections, but it wasn't attached all that well. Looks like a nut had fallen off. I found a frayed wire to one of the pick-ups, too--looked new--but there was some weird little wires coming out. There was about a half a thimble full of gas that had leaked from one of the connections at the tank. I called my mechanic and was told that while these things might be the cause, they didn't seem like obvious answers to my problem. I asked if it was bad gas--I was using pump 92, but decided to try 100 like the previous owner used. Nothing I tried made a difference. To add insult to injury my ingenious seat attachment solution had failed me, too.
I let the bike cool down and tried playing with it in the paddock a couple hours later. When I started it up, it seemed like maybe something I had fiddled with had made a difference. It idled well and it seemed to run pretty smoothly. Then, as it warmed up, it started sounding crappy again. Defeated and frustrated I put the tank back on, and ended up cross-threading the bolt. Grrrrrreat. Just freakin' grrrrreat. What a noob mistake. Guess I was pumping a little too much adrenaline and didn't realize that I was forcing the bolt in. Ugh.
I crawled into a chair in the corner of the garage and began the sulking. A few hours later I felt no better. In fact, I felt worse. A lot worse. "What was wrong?" "How much is this going to cost?" "Why in God's name did I ever buy another Ducati?" "Am I ever going to actually ride at another trackday?" These were all things going through my mind...over and over and over. Enzo was having a great day, but I think he was finding it difficult to pull into the garage only to see me give him "the look." There had been a bunch of red flags during the day and he had decided to call it quits after the last one took a long time and resulted in our paddock-mate across the way needing a ride to the emergency room. We loaded up the bikes and started the long drive home.
So today I stopped by the shop to ask a few questions. The good news is that according to him, "It seems like a simple problem." I was given a few electrical things to test and am hoping that something is revealed. The culprit of the moment, after my description of what happened, is some sort of thermostat thing. So I'm checking that and am going to try to reproduce the problem. I'm also going to take the bike into the Dyno, even if I pin down the problem on my own, just to make sure.
Looks like I have at least a few hours' work ahead of me--again. Fixing the seat, checking the gas leak, attaching the loose bits...in addition to doing some electrical tests that I've never done before with a gadget I've never used before. It didn't seem that hard when it was described to me, and electrical stuff has not usually left me too baffled.
Part of any hobby is learning to fix stuff associated with that hobby. So... naturally I had a good workout tonight and tried not to think about the bike at all.
I didn't even look at it as I rolled into the garage. I'll try to clear some time tomorrow evening to dig into it.
