Keeping my cool(ant) under (more) pressure.

Good Friday friends. I apologize for not having a post last Friday. The weekend before, I had too many family commitments and didn't get any Motorbike related activities into my schedule. I corrected that situation last weekend and now have something to post about. It was a good weekend and much more eventful than I had anticipated. Have a read and see what I got up to.

Last Saturday I loaded the CRF450R Flat Tracker into the Racing Ridgeline and motored off to Riverside to get some dirt laps under my belt. I was eager to see how my dirt skills faired after having spent more than three weeks away. I did get out to Willow Springs for a track day, but would I still be able to slide on purpose? It was a beautiful day for Flat Tracking. Sunny and cool with just a gentle breeze. I arrived at the track that was almost empty. The track surface had been recently watered and looked like it would have good grip. I got out for my first session and luckily enough the wee bit of dirt track skills I've picked up came right back to me. I chatted with my pit neighbor some and was just enjoying the day. All would not stay that calm as one of the other riders took a spill. Bike drops happen while were out here. Usually they are lower speeds low sides and the riders get right back up. This time the rider didn't. I sprinted off to the far side of the track and so did the other riders. I was the first ont to get to the downed rider and found him breathing, but unconcious. I used my training to start the medical evaluation process while other riders got his bike out of the way and summoned the track medic. He came to after 1 to 2 minutes of being out. He knew where he was, but didn't know the day or what happened. Eventually an ambulance came and he went to the hospital. The situation got me thinking that I need to have a contingency plan in place for if I take a bad spill. I enjoyed the rest of my day and had good fun just making circles in the dirt. I did get lazy and ended up washing out my front tire taking an easy spill. That was signal to pack it in for the day while I was ahead of the game.

When I got home, I had a surprise waiting for me. The Amazon Santa made a delivery with a couple of parts for the CRF that I had been waiting on. They were ordered to help with an issue I've been experienceing at the dirt track. For the short tracks we run here in SoCal, 2nd gear is the highest gear we usally use. First gear ends up being too low and speed gets limited by the engine rpm as you just run out of gear in the short straights. Third gear is too high and doesn't have enough engine braking to get you rotated into the corners well. You also end up lugging the engine trying to accelerate out of the corners. Second gear is the best compromise of both of those gears and you make any small changes with your sprocket selection. Most guys hit the rev limiter at the end of the straight which gets the engine nice and hot. Stock CRF450Rs don't have a coolant recovery tank and I end up dumping coolant all over the engine. I picked up an Outlaw Racing Products 1.6 bar radiator cap and a Motion Pro Coolant Recovery Tank.

The first item I installed was the radiator cap shown here in comparison with the OEM radiator cap. I mentioned that the new one is a 1.6 bar instead of the 1.1 bar setting the stock one has. The increased pressure of the 1.6 bar cap will raise the boiling point of the coolant in my cooling system which helps to prevent overheating. Installation was as easy as removing the old cap and installing the new one. It fit fine even though the new one's gasket is a bit tight. When I bought the CRF it had new coolant, but sometime soon I will empty it and do a flush and refill just for my own piece of mind. I want to ensure that I have a non-glycol type of coolant in my system for race applications.

Next I went to install the Motion Pro Coolant Recovery Tank. It is a universal application product and can be mounted in a few configurations. The kit is shown here on the left with a Craftsman 10mm wrench for size comparison purposes. The kit comes with the tank, two zip ties, a cap and several spring type hose clamps with a roll of some clear tubing. I chose a location on the bike that would allow me to easily see if the tank was full of coolant indicating an overheating engine. I also needed to see if the tubing would fit my intended mounting point. I stripped the seat and cowl plastics off the bike so I could get to work. The picture on the right is one of the things I wanted to fix by mounting the new coolant tank. A little bit of coolant is always coming out of the radiator from the pink hose in the upper left of the picture. As the coolant flows out of the tube is covers the left side of the bike with coolant that turns into a muddy mess with all of the dust from Milestone's dirt track. This picture is a relatively clean day at the track, but at times the whole left side of the bike is covered with mud.

Installation was straightforward, but it wasn't easy. First off the included zip ties snapped when I was tightening them down. I had my own that fit and used those in place of the included ones. Next, the included spring type hose clamps wouldn't fit over the hose and nipple combo of the tank. I bought different clamps, but had the same result. I got tired of trying to make them work and just used some safety wire to clamp the tubing to the bottle. As you can see here I mounted it on the right side of the bike to the shock's gas resevoir. Since this bike had had the air box deleted it provided an easy place to mount the bottle and at a glance I can check to see if I'm overheating the engine. I routed the overflow tube down the frame to the muffler so that if any coolant flows out the overflow, it hits the muffler and vaporizes before getting to the track surface. This is an AFT requirement and I figure that I could do while I'm already in the area.

I also ordered a stock OEM countershaft sprocket cover and installed it on the bike. My countershaft sprocket area was open. I felt that the strap of my hot shoe would be too close to the countershaft sprocket for my comfort. It would be a bad day if my strap got sucked into the sprocket. Not only would I possibly lose my foot, but I'd most likely take a hard spill. With my foot stuck to the bike I wouldn't seperate from the bike in the ensuing slide and my air bag vest wouldn't actually deploy. Basically it would be a very bad day. For the cost of the used part on eBay, it was an easy decision to add this part back onto the bike.

These were relatively easy projects, but make the CRF just a bit more to my liking. I am shopping for some Supermoto wheels to add some functionality to the bike. After my day at Willow Spring, I've been getting the itch to do more asphalt work. There are some Supermoto races out here and I think it would be fun to get back to the kart track. There is alot of Racing action on TV this weekend and I'm going to get out on the FZ1 for some canyon riding I hope. Take care and ride safe friends. I know I will!

Blue