Court Jester Racing Results and News

Results and News

--- July 2006 ----

We're right in the middle of the busiest part of the season and just back from our fourth race in five weeks, this time in Mission, British Columbia, for the third race of the CMDRA season. I took the bus and trailer up and Becky took a surprise ride on her street bike, taking advantage of the opportunity to get some fresh air.

Mission is an older track but recently renovated and with the great air up there in BC, is one of the fastest tracks around. The weather this weekend was fantastic for spectating although a bit warm for racing, around 90 degrees. Standing around layered up in gear with a ballistic vest, armoured gloves and helmet with your pulse beating about 180 beats per minute in anticipation of climbing on these bikes, all the while breathing a horrible mixture of burning tires and nitro methane, with your eyes burning from the fumes, is just about the worst way I can think of to spend a few minutes. Its also one of the best ways to spend a few minutes..kind of a yin yang thing. I suppose its like that whenever you can do something that only a few dozen other people in the world can do; you have to balance all the time, energy, money and sacrifice you undertake to get there against the few seconds of pure ecstasy you get when these bikes run the way they are designed. This time, the yang won out.

There were lots of fuel bikes in attendance, about 27 in all, with another 60 gas bikes of various sorts. The pro fuel bike again ran well. I managed to qualify in second position, just behind John Breckinridge, who won the last event. Since I was trying a few new combinations, my qualifying times weren't great, with a best of just about 7.2 seconds for the quarter mile. In semi final eliminations I managed to get by Andy Beauchimin who had beat me in Medicine Hat. On that pass we ran a 7.10 which is the fastest that bike has ever been down the track. On the way, we managed to set the eighth mile MPH record for the CMDRA. It waits for confirmation by the organization, but if that happens, we'll have the record at just under 184 mph. In the finals, John had some problems and although I didn't run a perfect pass, it was good enough for the win, my first in three years. So I get the plaque, the check, plus the satisfaction of beating the last two guys who beat me. I'm smilin today.

Becky managed to make her all time fastest pass on her dragster about two minutes after I ran the 7.10 on my bike, with an 8.24. She won her first round of eliminations but lost in the semi finals when we encountered some problems with the throttle on her bike. It had been working perfectly all weekend, but naturally, chose that race as a time to fail. Very frustrating for her.

Patrick's pro gas bike sat at home resting this weekend. He's in the process of making some changes to it and converting it over to nitro methane so we'll have three fuel bikes running. Hopefully it will be up and running in a couple weeks.

Brandy had her all time quickest pass on her hot rod sportster, but then lost in the first round of eliminations even though she ran within .07 seconds of her dial in time.

Overall, a pretty good weekend other then the normal hilarity at the border. This time, on the US side, they were very concerned we were not attempting to bring in any "cut flowers". Huh? Its O.K. to bring 55 gallons of nitro methane across the border..the stuff used in the Oklahoma City bombing, but I can't bring a roast beef sandwich or cut flowers in. Sometimes you have to wonder whether we don't need a national Department of Common Sense.

To cap off the good weekend it now looks like Becky might be in first place in Pro Dragster and I may have the same position in Pro Fuel in the Canadian Motorcycle Drag Racing Association, which are the respective divisions we race in. May be short lived, but its nice for now.

Thanks again to all of the folks who help out including not only our crew, but companies such as Barnett Engineering who supply our clutches, RPM Oil, Northwest Custom Rods and Hogs, Par 4 Trucking, Pat Josties Excavating, Competition Motorcycles and Bauer Software Design.

We have a week off and then its back to Misison again for an NHRA Top Fuel Harley race, where we'll be pretty seriously outgunned, but should still have a good time.

See you at the track

--- June 20, 2006 ----

More news from the wonderful world of Harley drag racing. Or, more spam...depends on your outlook.

We're just back from the second race of the Canadian season, in Edmonton, Alberta. If you've never made the drive from the west to Alberta, its spectacular. The scenery and terrain are beautiful, the traffic is not bad, the roads good and the people very hospitable. On the trip back, we even got the chance to see a moose munching away on the side of the road. Pretty neat stuff.

Canada is also a more worldly country then most of the US. You see folks from all over. We stopped in a resort town in the Canadian Rockies called Fernie. Chatted with some local folks and had breakfast in one of those sprouts and leaf spinach type places with hard bread, thick coffee and eggs with sauce on them. Got to listen to discussions about what really was the hardest trek in Peru and whether there were more Australians or New Zealanders in town this summer. Not a conversation I have very often in Sumner, Washington.

Edmonton was in party mode given that Saturday night was game 6 for the local heroes, the Edmonton Oilers who were playing for the Stanley Cup. We managed to squeeze a night out at the local eatery with our friend Dennis, who was crewing for us up there. His Dad even came along and 'learnt' me about hockey. I'm a fan.

The track in Edmonton is much improved over the years. Our last visit was about 4 years ago and I swore I'd never go back. But today, its really a first class facility with a great racing surface, hard working crew and nice pit areas.

Things at the track did not go as well as two weeks ago in Medicine Hat, but we had fun nonetheless. We ran my bike with the top fuel bikes, which puts us at a bit of a disadvantage, but we can still compete. Unfortunately I had trouble getting down the track on Saturday during qualifying. The bike would spin the tire down the track about 300 feet and I'd have to get on and off the throttle to get it to hook back up, a process known as "pedaling." That costs lots of time and I ended up qualified in a bad position, 12th out of 16 bikes, with a time of 7.80 at about 175 mph. I made some more changes and hoped for an upset in eliminations, but it just wasn't in the cards. In one of the bonehead moves of the year, after the bike started and as I was idling up to the start line, I reached down to make an adjustment and inadvertently hit the fuel shut off. Bike died and I was done. Restarting a fuel bike like ours is a bit complicated; you have to remove the spark plugs and purge the engine of fuel which is essentially spinning the engine over with the starter. The starter is this big affair on a cart, so pulling the plugs, dragging the cart over, purging the engine, putting the plugs back in and getting the bike running again is time consuming and the officials just don't let you take the time you need to do it safely.

The good news was that I entered into a consolation race and ended up runner up in that and did manage to eliminate the tire slip that had plagued me on qualifying day.

Becky's bike ran well enough to let her qualify 3rd. In eliminations she beat the guy who she lost to in the finals at Medicine Hat, but then lost in the semi finals to the eventual winner. However, I believe her finish puts her first in points in Canada, at least for the time being. I have to believe this is the first time in Canadian drag racing history that a woman has led the points in one of the nitro bike classes, although I'm certainly not sure.

Patrick's Pro Gas bike exploded the transmission AGAIN and we're beginning to think it may be an issue with the hardness of the gears. So its back to the drawing board. He's doing some pretty creative stuff on that bike and it will take some time to work the bugs out, but he'll get there.

Like me, Brandy couldn't match her performance from two weeks ago and lost in the first round. Her bike is running well and she's getting it dialed in after all the changes made to it, so hopefully it will come around for her. She's getting faster and more consistent with every race.

So on to the big news. This coming weekend is our big race of the year, at our home track in Kent Washington. Its a first class facility with a great surface and it should produce some very fast times. We have a few minor things to fix on the two nitro bikes and a whole bunch of stuff to do on Patrick's, but we'll be ready.

As always, our pit areas are open to everyone and we'll have plenty of refreshments for those who stop by. I suspect there will be at least 30 nitro harleys in attendance as well as a couple hundred gas bikes of various type, so come on out and have some fun.

See you at the track

--- June 6, 2006 ----

More news from the world of Harley drag bike racing....

We're just back from the season opening race in the Canadian Motorcycle Drag Racing Association (CMDRA) in Medicine Hat, Alberta of all places. Medicine Hat is bigger then I thought. Sits kind of out there on the prairie, more or less north of Great Falls, Montana. The track is kind of interesting. It was built by a bunch of guys who got together and decided to build a track so they wouldn't have to travel all over to race. In fact, as I was sitting down at the end of the track waiting for a tow back, I got to chatting with one of the track officials and he had just donated the shovel that turned the first bunch of dirt on the track, back to the track for a keepsake. Things you learn sitting around waiting at the end of the track. The whole operation is done by volunteers and they were great. They worked hard all weekend to make the track as good as it could be. Tracks have to be prepared very carefully for high performance bikes. They can't have any bumps, can't have any obstructions and have to be sticky...flypaper sticky. All that takes work and these guys were the best. They have been trying to host a CMDRA event for years and did all they could to make sure we'd come back.

The racing itself was good, considering its early in the season. We showed up with my pro fuel bike, Becky's pro dragster, Patrick's pro gas and Brandy's hot rod sportster.

My bike ran flawlessly..much better then its rider. There were a total of 13 top fuel and pro fuel bikes there and we all qualified at the same time. I ended up with the third quickest time of qualifying and ran the eighth mile in 4.57 seconds at 164 mph. We were running only an eighth mile, rather then a full quarter, because of some safety issues down at the end of the track

In eliminations, I made it to the finals and ran against Canadian Andy Beauchemin for first place. I had a great .041 reaction time (to you non racers, that means that I left the start line 41 thousandths of a second from a "perfect" light.) and we had a great race going til about 500 feet out when my bike made a left turn and headed over into Andy's lane. I finally had no choice but to get off the throttle so the front tire would come down and I could steer. Even so, I obliterated these little foam timing blocks that are in the middle of the track. Ran right over that thing, which is about 10 inches square. From all accounts, it disintegrated like confetti. Even so, coming in second was a great improvement over last year.

Becky's bike also ran well all weekend. She ended up qualified 2nd behind many time Canadian champion Al Miles. In eliminations she also made it to the finals and like me, came in second. This time is was a tuning error that allowed her bike to spin the tire right at the hit of the throttle. These bikes have so much horse power that you essentially have to de-tune them so they will go down the track without the rear tire spinning. You do that with things like retarding the timing, changing tire pressure, changing the fuel mixture, or making the clutch slip more. I just flat missed the setup and that was that. Still, second is pretty good...better then the guys who ended up behind her.

Things didn't go so well for Patrick's pro gas bike. We are trying something different with it, using a clutch setup like the fuel bikes run. Its somewhat similar to a snowmobile clutch. There are only a couple guys out there trying to run this setup on a gas bike. The parts we manufactured seemed to work well, so I think we're on the right track. However in this case, the transmission gave it up for the cause and ended up in lots of itty bitty pieces. That happened in qualifying on Saturday so Patrick got to wear shorts and tennis shoes instead of leather on Sunday.

Brandy had a good weekend as well on her hot rod sportster. Patrick had made lots of changes on the bike over the winter and its taking some time to get it all dialed in, but by the time the smoke cleared on Sunday, she was runner up as well. So overall, not a bad weekend. Three second place finishes and only one bike with big damage on it.

Actually, the trip back was more exciting then the racing. As usual, coming back across the border is tougher then going into Canada. The border guys don't care that I have bunches of explosive nitro methane in the trailer; they're too concerned with whether I'm bringing back a baloney sandwich or something. Later in the day, some guy in Priest Lake, Idaho who was about 100 years old just drove right in front of me on the trip home, forcing our bus up onto the sidewalk and planter strip in order keep from running right over the top of him. He just kept going into a gas station while I was collapsing behind the wheel. I walked over to him and all he could say was "hey...I had my blinker on!!!". Good thing for him he was too old to smack. Not much damage to the bus, but it will take a close look to be sure. About five minutes later I was on the phone whining to Patrick who was a couple miles behind us when all of a sudden he got pulled over by the local constabulary and issued a ticket for.......improper mirrors. Huh? Now THERE are some folks with waaaay too much time on their hands. Check your mirrors before you head to Idaho.

Back at the shop and a few relatively minor things to fix. Then its back to Alberta again, this time to Edmonton in two weeks. The week after that its our big race of the year here in Seattle. At least we wont have to travel as far.

See you at the track.

--- April 2006 (Part II) ----

Just a quick note about a few things we've been up to.

After running well in Phoenix, we had to make the decision whether to make the trip to Dallas. Although we'd love to have been there, the cost of fuel for the bus and trailer is just prohibitive. We chose instead to have the bikes displayed at the Tacoma Dome Hot Rods and Harleys show that is an invitation only production at the dome each year.

There were some creative bikes there (ours being the only drag bikes), but the real show was the cars. They were hot rods from the 20's up through modern times. They were simply amazing. Even if you're not a car nut, a show like that is worth seeing at least once.

We shared our display area with Patrick's Northwest Custom Hogs and Rods and the folks from Pacific Raceways, the local track up in Kent, Washington. Patrick had some amazing cars there, including an immaculate 1957 Chevy and my favorite, an old Auburn sedan that he'd stuffed a Dodge Viper V-10 engine in.

While we were there, we firmed up plans for the coming weekend, which is more or less the point of this note. We've been invited to do some exhibition runs at the NHRA Northwest National Open, which is a big event that is expected to draw about 500 cars. The track management lets us test whenever we want for free, and in exchange we offer to do exhibitions at some of their bigger events. The car guys get a real charge out of drag bikes and we're always well received. The race lasts from Friday through Sunday, and we'll probably run 4-5 times. We're currently slotted to run right after the Alcohol Funny Cars. So, if you're in the neighborhood, come on out. Big crowd and lots of cars. If you've never seen a top alcohol dragster run a quarter mile pass in five and a half seconds at about 260 mph, its pretty impressive.

Our next regularly scheduled event will be the season opener for the Canadian Motorcycle Drag Racing Association in Medicine Hat, Alberta in early June.

And finally, we received another invitation that I'm particularly proud of. Many years ago there used to be a drag racing facility in Shelton, Washington. They last ran there 40 years ago. This year, through the efforts of a ton of people, they have managed to get approval from all the relevant government agencies to run one race...a 40th anniversary reunion. Other then exhibition vehicles, its limited to pre 1973 cars, so a lot of the old favorites from the 40's, 50's and 60's should be there. It should be a huge event and the promoters have asked us to attend. Unfortunately it conflicts with the race in Sturgis, South Dakota, so as of right now, it doesn't look like we'll make it. But that's subject to change. If you're in Western Washington, you should put it on your summer list. August 5-6. Details are at _http://www.sheltondragstrip.com/_ (http://www.sheltondragstrip.com/)

And last but not least, we've got some new photos taken at Phoenix which we'll try and get up on the web site soon , but you can catch them here if ya just can't wait.

Photos

See you at the track.

--- April 2006 (Part I) ----

We're back from the first race of the season in sunny Phoenix, AZ, and at least compared to last year, the news is good.

We decided to head down south early this year, to do some testing in Tucson. We'd never been there so we combined work with some pleasure, riding around and touring the area a bit. Headed out to Tombstone to check out the old town. Fun, but I wouldn't do it again. We thought about heading down to Nogales, Mexico, but even though it was warm, the winds were fierce which made riding our street bikes a pain.

The testing in Tucson went fairly well. Mark Flynn came down from San Jose to help run things, and local Tucsonite Mark St. Onge lent a hand as well. We managed to get 4 passes in on the Pro Fuel bike and a couple on the dragster. None were particularly noteworthy but we did manage to get the clutch dialed in, which is sometimes half the battle on these bikes. You measure how well you're doing on setting up the clutch by checking how fast the bike goes the first 60 feet. All tracks give you a time slip that shows 60' times and its a great indicator. We got the bike bike to run times of 1.17 seconds. To give you a comparison, a street bike might do something like 1.8 seconds and an NHRA top fuel dragster might be around .85.

Becky's bike ran well, which was a relief after the chassis changes and engine work we did over the winter. Patrick made some passes on his Pro Gas bike and Brandy got the new revised sportster down the track for the first time.

The race at Firebird in Phoenix over the weekend was fun, if nothing else. Brandy's Sporster blew both head gaskets, but was repaired in time to make eliminations. Unfortunately she was eliminated in the first round. Patrick developed a problem with the clutch hub on the gas bike, breaking off one of the studs which holds it all together during qualifying. He managed to get it fixed for Sunday's eliminations. He was eliminated in the first round, after doing some more damage to the clutch or transmission. That's going to take some work between races. Becky ran the dragster well, but qualified 9th, which isn't such a good thing when they run an 8 bike field. The dragsters are fast this year and you pretty much have to run a low 8 or high 7 to make the field. Her best of 8.5 was a little short. We did make some adjustments and she ran better in the nitro outlaw consolation race on Sunday.

The pro fuel bike ran great. The only problem was the operator (me). I kept chopping the throttle early. Sounds funny but sometimes even when your head is telling you to keep the throttle wide open, your sense of self-preservation doesn't allow it to happen. Even so, I qualified 4th, which is my highest position in two years. The even better news was that my best pass, a 7.31 at 168, was a shut down run, meaning that the pass would have been close to a 6 if I'd held the throttle. I had been running 175 at the eighth mile so the time at the quarter would normally be somewhere between 195 and 200 mph if I hadn't chickened out. I lost in the first round on Sunday and I'm still kicking myself. I was out of the gate first, but the other guy caught and passed me when my hand slipped on the throttle. I almost caught him but ran out of track. More operator error. We have a switch on the bike which only activates when the throttle is wide open. We can check on the computer later to see if that switch has remained open and it showed that I was off the throttle again. Grrrr.

For the first time in forever, both nitro bikes made it through the weekend with no damage. We'll check things over this week, but it looks like all we need to do is get them serviced and ready for the next race. We originally planned on making the CMDRA race in Medicine Hat, Alberta our next event, but there is a new race down in Bakersfield, CA at the end of this month and we might try that one out, depending on schedules.

Overall, we had lots of fun. Becky's girls were out of school so they came along with us and had a good time. Now its back to the grind and the rain til next time. We should have some new photos up on the web site in a couple weeks.

--- January 2006 ----

The 2006 season is getting closer, so make your plans to visit a track nearby. What would you rather do, feed the family or spend 30 bucks watching motorcycle drag racing?

We have updated the web site with a few things, so those of you who've been whining at me for the past couple months, chill out. We now have the tentative schedule posted for the upcoming season; some better descriptions on the technical aspects of the bikes, and some new photos. The schedule is tentative because as you'll see, they've got us traveling all over the place this year, from Seattle to St. Louis to Phoenix and points in between. With the price of diesel right now, its a major big deal just getting to the races. If that weren't enough, we're planning on making as many of the Canadian races as we can and half of those are in Alberta. We're practicing our "ay"s at the end of each sentence so's we can fit right in with those Canadians. If we can't get it mastered, I've got a few Canadian friends and we may rent one for the races, to translate. In the meantime, I'm in the market for a good map since last time I looked, there just wasn't a good way to get to Edmonton or Medicine Hat. If I can get all that arranged, plus paint a hockey puck on the front fairing of the big bike, life in Canada should be good, ay.

For those interested in the more technical stuff, we've made a few changes. The dragster is out having the chassis sandblasted so I can weld up the cracks and add a few braces where necessary. The chassis was originally designed for a 200 hp Iron Head Sportster engine and putting a 350 hp Fast Cat engine in its place causes some stress. If you can remember back to the days of the old Flexible Flyer sleds and how they steered, riding the dragster is not all that different, except for the snow. The engine is torn down and I'm installing all new CP pistons and re-doing the heads. In the season final in Vegas, we banged a valve off one of the pistons fairly hard so everything needs to be checked. Patrick should have some newly restored body work ready for the season opener so we may even have a new look for Phoenix.

The Pro Fuel bike is apart as well, more for maintenance then anything else. New cylinders are on the way from Hyperformance and a new data gathering computer is due soon from Race Pak. In the type of racing we do, you're not allowed to control anything on the bike with a computer, like your car does. Everything is either done manually, like stepping on the gas, or with electric or air timers that you set in advance. The problem is, you never can be sure if everything works right, other then by looking at how much damage you've done to the engine or judging how well or how poorly you did on the run. So the solution is to add a computer which measures everything that goes on with the bike and reports back to you after the fact. Kind of a iddy biddy tattle tale. You flip a switch just before you start the race and at the end, you download all the data onto a laptop and read the results. In our case, we measure engine rpm, voltage, whether the throttle is wide open or not, the exhaust gas temperatures for each cylinder, how fast the rear wheel is turning, how fast the clutch is turning, how much oil pressure we have, and how much fuel pressure we have, both at the fuel pump and at the little nozzles that deliver fuel to the combustion chamber. In theory, you can look at the data and make appropriate changes. That's the theory. When I have all that info, chances are I still won't know what the problems are, or what to change, but I'm certain to feel more confident in my ignorance. I'd be happier if it didn't cost $3,000.00 to measure my lack of knowledge.

Patrick has fitted new body work, more CP pistons and a re-worked nitrous system to his bike and we're putting the finishing touches on building a hot rod engine for Brandy's Sportster.

In the meantime, Pacific Raceway in Kent, WA is set to open in February and if we get some weather, we may do some testing there. Otherwise, the plan is to get down to Phoenix a few days early and run a few laps down there.

So plan ahead. Count on a day of fasting for the family and come on out to the races.

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