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So, I spent all weekend at Infineon Raceway for AFM’s round 5 or something-or-another. Your typical hodge-podge of petrol powered, 160+ bhp screaming monsters for bikes with loud exhausts, greasy engines, and greenhouse gasses up the wazoo.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved every second of it. :)

A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog entitled “Electric Bikes: This is it?” It was about my dismay at the progress being made and all the hoopla that seemed to be surrounding the electric bike market.

Lots of talk, very little awesomeness.

I’m really starting to think that may be changing…and it appears as though the “little guys” are paving the way…

Little talk, LOTS of awesomeness!

For starters, Brammo, a small company out of Oregon, was at Thunderhill Raceway yesterday with their Empulse RR race bike. Steve Atlas was at the helm, piloting it around Thunderhill’s 15 corners. I was there taking pictures.

brammo empulse rr thunderhill steve atlas
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Holy baby Jebuz, I just had the scare of my life-time. Seriously, I don’t ever remember a time feeling the way I felt only about 2 hours ago.

I’d been editing wedding pictures all day today, and I needed a break. I haven’t ridden at all in a few weeks, and I’ve been going bonkers… not to mention, life has just been tough the last few weeks as well…

I had to get out.

It was already 3:30pm tho….what to do? Oh, load the dirtybike, and go hit some trails for an hour or two! SWEET!
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This past weekend was supposed to be Kev’s racing debut. A mere 2 weeks ago, he was registered to race with TTP in the Open Street Class…then the unfortunate happened; he fell down while riding with some friends on Wentworth Springs Road. He fractured his L1, 2, and 3, and one of his metacarpals. He was out from the weekend of racing.

“GET OFF MY LAWN!”
kevin is angry
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so i was talking to this motor builder guy while i’ve got the hood of the element open at an SCCA race event…i asks “you ever work on elements? can you get any power out of them?”

“oh yeah, of course. we actually work on those motors all the time. just depends how much you want to spend…”

“100 bucks,” i laughed to him. he laughed pretty heartily for a minute or two before i saw a light bulb moment come over his face.

he points to the intake airbox resonator thingo and says “first, get rid of all that crap. you don’t need it. also, if you’re mechanically inclined, you can take the head off and do a 15 thousands shave on the head. about 4 hours of your time and $75 for the cut.”

after talking with him for a while, he said that raising the compression like that is good for about 25-30 ponies under the bonnet..and that you won’t need anything extra..it’ll all just bolt right back together with all stock parts!

i also inquired about taking the airbox thingo out, asking him about driving thru rain and the likes, and would i have any hyrdo-lock issues, and he said no. But sometimes revving the engine through all those puddles and potholes with muddy water splashing on the sides of the car can often have an adverse impact on the core of the car. This might end up making the engine less efficient, and it doesn’t take a lot for one to know Bad Piston Rings Symptoms so as to prevent any further damage.

i was skeptical… so i did it. well, the airbox part. i’ve not milled the head yet…

anyways, after a real world test, i’ve got some figures for ya…

2005 RallEment, 119,000 miles on it, regularly serviced by myself, full synth oil (5-20w), bone stock, except for a K&N drop in filter. i learned about Scrap My Car Ottawa a while ago and all i could do then was calling them to pick up my car. And one wouldn’t scrap their car without keeping in mind to get a new one in its place. It is easier for potential buyers from lakewood to wade through all the proceedings of getting a new car in a bid to acquire it in the shortest time possible.

BEFORE:

i average between 18-19.5 mpg on the car (city and hwy combined), typically driving everywhere in cruise control at about 77mph. the best i’ve ever gotten (and i check nearly every tank against my GPS) was 21.5 mpg of freeway only driving with the wind at my back.

AFTER:

with NO change in driving habits, on my last tank of gas, driving OVER donner pass from sacramento to reno (which is a lot of steep uphill driving, where the element always tries to drop out of overdrive cause it doesn’t have enough power), i got 21.4 mpg. and it did about HALF as much shifting over the steep hills. i drove this new car I had recently bought with the help of Bad Credit Car Loans Ottawa.

i drove another ~100 or so miles to fernley (mostly flat freeway driving) and back over the next 2 days, and topped off again; 23.8 mpg! again, no change in driving habits whatsoever..except, with the added power of the element, i feel like i don’t have to be as heavy footed with the throttle to maintain speed.

my drive home from reno USUALLY takes about 1/2 a tank.. it took me 1/4 tank for the return trip…i have yet to top off to find out mpg from the return trip.

realistically, it feels as though i’ve got a 10-12 hp gain from the airbox mod and drop in filter. i’ve had the drop in K&N installed for the last 15,000 miles or so already…

oh…and about hydro-lock…well, it POURED BUCKETS the entire drive home..i was a little worried for a bit… ZERO issues. i even drove thru snow and giant puddles. no issues.

total cost for mods so far? $56 bucks for the K&N. ~4 mpg gain? ~10hp gain?

worth it. oh oh…and i used a 90 degree 3 inch downspout elbow from home depot on the intake to turn it downwards like that. :D it was $3.

next comes a milled head! :D

i took this:

honda element airbox mod

out of here:

honda rallement airbox modification

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For those of you that know me know that I’ve had a fear of Infineon for the longest time. Being a trackside photographer, I see really bad stuff happen sometimes…Infineon has always been the worst of the worst.

I’ve seen people die at this track. I’ve seen peoples’ lives forever changed at this track… and for that reason, I’d only ever ridden once there before, about a year ago. I did 4 sessions at a Zoom Zoom day.

Well, we were invited to come ride with Pacific Track Time last week, and I said “fuck it, I’ll ride.” and I did. I wanted to get over this fear that I’ve had… Toe was my wingman for the day.

I can’t really say that I’m “over it.” I mean, the track is fun. It’s certainly a workout as well…but I don’t think I could ever bring myself to try and go fast at Infineon. There’s just too many dangers! It’s like Skaggs Springs Road…but instead of guard rails, there’s k-walls.

It’s a lot of fun to just go horse around with the homies tho…I’ll give it that much.

Here’s some footage of me, Toe, Chris from CT Racing, Darius, Tim, and a few other people from the very last session of the day.

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My weekend started off on a bad note. Friday afternoon, I started feeling sick. I dunno what the hell is up with me the last year or so… I had pneumonia in December…then AGAIN in March… it’s like I have AIDS or something…just without all that nasty HIV part. :/

So Friday afternoon, I’ve got the stuffy/runny nose and a cough. Friday night, I feel like death. Saturday morning, I wake up to an awesome surprise of feeling so crummy that I want to die, but Lisa comes to the rescue with a round of leftover antibiotics! WHOOO!

//begin antibiotic, cough-drops, and DayQuil regiment.

Saturday was SCCA PDX. Basically, it’s a sort of time-trials solo race event thingo where people in fancy cars try and lap the track as quickly as possible, and at the end of the day, whoever goes fastest wins. I’m not entirely sure that there’s even trophies or anything.. it appears as though it’s simply a timed trackday for bragging rights. I could be wrong though…I’m still learning about this car stuff.

nissan gtr rfr fernley scca pdx
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This past weekend, Tomas the Terrible joined me after a brief hiatus for some 24 Hours of LeMons action up at Reno Fernley Raceway as well as shooting a wedding for a racer friend of ours.

We headed out Thursday night as there was a Friday practice for all the LeMons Racers.

What is The 24 Hours of LeMons? Well, put frankly, it’s a 24 hour endurance race where people buy pieces of shit cars for $500 or less, put all kinds of ridiculous decorations and whatnot on them…

sheen machine lemons rfr
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Another photographer I know recently sent me a message, angry about people stealing his photos and asking how I deal with it… It made me remember about a thread I’d started on BARF about a year ago. I’m constantly catching people taking pictures with their cell phones of my laptops; i.e., a snapshot of a picture of themself riding.

“Yo dawg, I heard you like taking pictures of pictures…”
xibit yo dawg
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After having augered myself into the pavement in turn 5 at Reno Fernley Racetrack some months ago in October, the gixxer was left slightly bent and battered. Considering the violent nature of highsides and their natural propensity to destroy motorcycles, the gixxer faired pretty damned well in that crash.

Rory was behind me running a GoPro HD when I crashed, and here’s the video he made of it. Thanks Rory!

I broke the bleeder nipple off of the master cylinder. I slightly bent the right stock rearset, popped off the right side tail section, cracked my throttle tube, and smashed up some of the plastics on the right side. Oh, and I put a small hole in the frame from where the bar end stabbed it. That’s IT. I RODE the bike from the crash site to the infield, and would have ridden it all the way in, except that I didn’t want to carry leaking brake fluid across the front straight of the track.
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