Tri Valley Moto is a local shop out here in Livermore California. The day I met the owners they pointed me to an orange Superduke demo sitting in the lot and asked me "Would you take it for a few hundred miles and see what you think? See if you think you could race it?" I didn't know what to say. The bike didn't look like a racer. But since my days of spending every penny I earned to go racing on my own had long since past, my mind was very open to new opportunities. I extended my hand for the key.
Shops used to give me Ducatis to break-in on the street. I remember the excitement of getting the newest model like it was this morning. But the next thing I remember was how my body felt after two hundred miles finally turned on the clock. Agony.
The night I brought the Superduke home I asked my wife if she would like to go for a ride. We'd been having some down years since our racing had ended, so we both kind of took a break that night, and remembered the good times as we carved through the beautiful night mountain roads. The bike felt very soft to me, and the front a little steep, but it was a joy to ride. By the twentieth mile I began to wonder if racing this thing might actually work. We stopped at the mountain top and looked over the Silicon Valley where we live. It was like looking back at our lives in motion, as tiny lights from cars crawled their way across the night landscape. I told her about the offer to race this bike, and asked how she felt about it. In half of an instant she looked back at me and said "GoGo, you were born to race. And judging by the last twenty miles, that fire burns hot as ever. ... Let's do it"
Tracy may be a huge pain in my A$$ sometimes, but down deep she is all right. I dropped that orange Superduke back at the shop with 600 miles on it, and a huge frown on my face. I've been promised many things many times in racing. It's rare when deals actually pan out, especially in the US, and even more especially in THIS economy. For all I knew that six hundredth mile would be my last mile on a KTM. But the Tri Valley Moto guys came through. A month later we lined up last on a grid filled with 600 & 750cc inlines, in what was their last round of the year, but our first round of a new era in our racing career. Fifteen minutes later, on a bone stock Superduke, with a rusty old Ducati racer aboard it, we came through the checker in 9th place. Would have been seventh but our shift linkage broke with a lap to go, so we did our final lap in 5th gear.
No one, especially not myself, expected our little Superduke would do so well in it's first race for us. But it did. So Tracy did what she loves to do - she got half naked for a photo shoot - only difference was this one was orange instead of red. It didn't take long for that photo shoot to lead to another - only difference is this one got printed. Both she and the Superduke took the front cover of a local motorcycle publication by storm. Life was good going into last winter. We had bikes, girls, dreams of race wins again, and a promise of an RC8 for 09.
But as anyone on planet earth knows by now, last winter carried with it a pretty heavy reality check. Kawasaki tried pulling out of MGP, half the factories left the AMA Superbike series, and KTM pulled back just as well. By March 09 our vision of turning our Superduke race program into an RC8 program turned from "What day is it scheduled to arrive" to "I wonder what running one of those would have actually been like?"
But honestly, I didn't have a problem with running this Superduke at all. I love this bike. And I especially love running up under someone on a fully decked out 50 thousand dollar Ducati superbike. I sometimes find myself wising we left the horn attached..
With a pretty horrendous hp deficit, just about everyone was surprised as hell to see us come out onto the front straight, on the last lap of the twins race, in third place this March. Especially the guy on the 1098R. But before we could reach the checker he passed us by again. Not much we could do other than to flip him the bird. The rider was Pat Blackburn. He rides like an animal. We are actually friends (or at least we were until that last turn..)
This is where our story takes a turn. It's also were we need some help. In the hopes of closing the hp gap we got our hands on a race prepped (but abandoned) HMC KTM Superduke R. I loved the power this thing made but holy mother of disastrous setups. This bike throws me on the ground more often than my older brother did when he discovered I stole his ten speed bicycle to go trail riding. As well as we could push the front end of our standard Superduke around a turn, we now get to push this bike back to the pits - broken and bruised, crashed and burned.
I write about our racing a lot. We have a great time of it. I actually look forward to contributing to this site as well. In fact, because I am the consummate optimist that I am, we actually entered the Daytona Sportbike round during the MGP weekend at Laguna Seca this July 4th. This is great, this is exciting, and I can't wait to see Tracy's umbrella girl outfit for the race. But honestly, if we can't figure out how to get this R setup better, we don't stand a chance of finishing on two wheels.
Since this is a global forum, and these bikes seem to see way more track use overseas, I was wondering if anyone could offer up some setup advice:
How do you solve the choppy throttle condition? Mid throttle it's either full on, or full off. There seems to be NO subtle modulation possible.
What's the trick with these WP forks (and shock)? Does anyone offer a superbike internal hop-up kit, like Ohlins? Or am I dreaming..?
What heights do you guys run? I've had the chassis measured and it seems to have 7degrees of swingarm angle. That's basically flat. What do you guys do to improve that?
We had a really trick upper triple clamp made by an aerospace manufacturer out here. It lets us push the forks down as much as 20mm. This really helps the rake and trail. Originally we were at 23 for rake and 97 for trail. Now we're at 24 and 102, which feels MUCH better. But we're still off on spring rates.
Tomorrow is a test day for us, where we will try some new ideas. I would LOVE any tips, tricks, suggestions, or you can just post pics of KTM girls. Either is just as valuable to me...
