Subj:	Trials of an RG500 racer, part 1 (long)
Date:	1996-09-19 08:26:28 EDT
From:	ScanRan@aol.com
Sender:	2strokes@dorje.com
Reply-to:	2strokes@dorje.com
To:	2strokes@dorje.com (Multiple recipients of list)

Well, the time has finally come to get the ol RG500 running.  I have spent
most of the summer racing an F2, and then a ZX6R, and am somehow in striking
distance of the Great Plains MWGP title. (utterly meaningless) Unfortunately,
the 6R is terminally bent and the F2 is up for sale.. so I finally got my
butt in gear and put the RG back together.

I haven't ridden the RG in over a year, since it expired at Road America.
 Since then it has a new front end (90 GSXR w/ lindemann revalve) new brakes
(EBC pro-lites+ Nissin 4 pots) new pipes (stan Stephens) new porting (timings
altered by Eric Gorr), so I didn't know what to expect.

The reassembly process was a pain.  I must've forgot to order small end
thrust washers for the damaged cylinder, so spent a day ransacking the house
to dig up a pair of used washers.  My replacement cylinder turned out to have
been decked, and so was 0.3 mm shorter than the other 3 cylinders, cutting my
squish clearance down to about 0.010".  I had to peel an old head gasket
apart and use it to shim up the short cylinder, lots of spray copper used
there... ergh...  my new clutch springs are nothing like the old ones ( 3/4
the diameter and 30% longer, guess I'll keep the old springs), my new
adjustable suspension link which was supposed to lower the bike (fox shock is
long and the bike lacks rear grip) starts out longer than stock and goes up
from there. Had to grab the hacksaw and do my own adjusting...  man, cut off
the stock subframe spars, get new ones welded on, piece together the new
upper pipes, tape it all together and  cover them w/ reference marks, then
drop them at the welder's...

when the pipes come back, one of them is welded wrong and points down at the
axle. Sadly, I take hacksaw in hand (again) and cut my beautiful new pipe
back apart.. 

2 days later I fire it up.  wow, it runs!   3 days till we leave for the
track.  A few short  rides reveal the clutch is dragging mercilessly, can
barely disengage it. This will NOT do. have to fix that.

MAN, is this thing light.  After getting off a stripped ZX6R, the RG feels
like a toy.  I finally flick it down into a corner and nearly smack the side
fairing into the pavement, it turns like nothing!!  The new GSXR triples
reduced rake by about 10mm, and along with the short 120/60 front and PM rim,
it changes direction much faster than I'm used to.  In addition, I've reduced
the wheelbase to about 55.4, and the result is a scooter that turns in
awfully fast.   I find I'm being very tentative with it, things happen much
faster than on my other bikes.

Hmm... powerband.   Well, I'm probably rich..haven't done a proper plug chop
yet, it's barley broken in. it runs perfectly well from below the tach (2500
or so) and pulls really well thru the midrange, almost as well as my F2,
surprisingly. Amazing, actually.  Maybe a bit TOO much compression.. At 7K it
begins to start moving out, At 8K it takes off like a bomb went off behind
me. Definitely no dip in the torque before it hits, though. That's nice, my
P-Pros took a big YAWN from 7 to 8K before they started pulling.  I don't
remember it hitting like this... unfortunately, it drops dead at 10,500.
 great, 2500 rpm to work with. >:(  And the  accelleration is hard to judge,
but it sure seems  a LOT stronger than the 6R.  1st gear is useless, the
front comes up so hard even at part throttle it's just good for nothing. The
bike positively bolts when the tach clears 8k. I try to fire it off of a few
corners in higher gears and it slithers and wiggles while spinning the back
and flapping the bars. Put it down to crap pavement and dusty conditions. In
2nd it picks up the front and runs wide or blows the tire off.  How in the
hell I ever raced this thing is beyond me.    Riding an RG hard is quite an
interesting experience, racing one is beginning to seem a bit daft.  Of
course I have had no other bike to judge it against in the last 2 days so for
all I know it might be a very exciting, slow bike.  Damned 2 strokes!  So
hard to tell. (I love em)

Gorr reduced the transfer timings to approx stock settings. Said there wasn't
enough blowdown for high revs. That may be, but w/ advanced timings it used
to run 11500... In addition I have gone back to stock, uncut rotary valves.
 I tried swapping in the BDK ignition box but it seems to have zero effect on
where my engine signs off, stops yanking at 10.5 and nothing left by 11k.
It's in full warp drive by 8300 rpm, though. Nice not to have to rev its guts
out.
Hard to say but I'd guess BMEP is probably pretty healthy, as strong as it
runs w/o revving it past ten-five. So something must be working right.
 Still... weak ignition?  I pulled a plug and the spark is totally pathetic.
I can barely see it. This bike just has never been a real revver.  Dang,
another 1000 rpm w/ the power curve climbing at the same rate would be pretty
interesting.  I'll hit the dyno if I get it well sorted.

The Lindemann front revalve feels good on the street, track will be the real
test. but the Fox shock is pretty harsh, too much high speed compression for
happy street use... Gonna send it to Lindemann after this is all over.
 Still, the Fox always worked great on the track.

Clutch mysteriously is engaging right off of the bar, and if I take more
slack out of the cable it doesn't engage fully and slips.  What the hell...?
 Going to put the old plates back in, no time to fool with this.  Clutch
cable stretched, maybe? 

Took off the exhaust temp gauges, no time to heat em up and stare at the
needles on Blackhawk's  straight.  Used a Fluke meter to create a REAL temp
overlay for the water  temp gauge... YARGH!  65 C. is halfway thru the first
green bar!! I never run down there!  Does anybody?  I run 1/4 inch from the
end of the 1st green bar.. about 72-75 C as it turns out. Straight up is 80C.
Yikes!  I need to put a real temp gauge on here.  Maybe there IS something to
the large radiator school!!  (like a lot of HP?) Need a diff thermostat, too,
 I suppose...

Well, tomorrow I'll do some jetting, just got new Dragon Corsas mounted, fit
the catch bottle, see if there are any more revs to be found... wire it up
and load it in the van.  Bringing the old F2 along just in case (!) .Friday
is open track at Blackhawk where I'll try to re-learn how to race a 2
stroke.Sadly, I've become a fat, lazy 4 stroker. The 6R pulls hard from 6K to
14000 rpm.  I run from turn 1 thru turn 5 without shifting! My hat is off to
the rest of you who race strokers on a regular basis.. RG..what an obnoxious,
non friendly racebike!   

All the magazine tests say the ZX6R is such a wild, utterly mental bike but
it's like a glass of warm milk compared to a healthy RG500. Amaazing how your
perspective changes.  When I started racing, my first race I ran 1:30 at
Blackhawk on the Gamma.  Last month I ran 1:19 flat on the 6R, same track but
now very bumpy.  I'll be lucky to come within 3-4 seconds of that this
weekend, I bet!  What a crazy bike. :)

I hope it doesn't rain.

Wish me luck!

Randy Norian

RD350  RG500(racer of the week)  91F2  94F2  95 ZX6R

Subj:	RG500 racer, part 2 (not so long)
Date:	96-09-24 11:42:41 EDT
From:	ScanRan@aol.com
Sender:	2strokes@dorje.com
Reply-to:	2strokes@dorje.com
To:	2strokes@dorje.com (Multiple recipients of list)

Well, got the RG all put together and headed for Blackhawk Farms for Friday
practice.  We got there and sat around till noon while it drizzled on us, but
things began to clear off by 1 and we headed out for some fun. I had a pretty
horrible crash at Road America on August 3rd and haven't actually raced since
July 14th, so it was hard to stay patient and pop in and out of the pits to
check plugs.  But, that's what I did anyway.

For some mysterious reason, I needed to jet up 3 extra sizes on the left rear
cylinder to get it to match the other plugs. no visible weeping on the
outside, but seemed suspiciously like an air leak. Maybe the float level was
off. Or a disc seal.  Noticed Todd Nordby taking a few excursions into the
grass throughout the afternoon in the wet... was I imagining that? 

The RG was pulling hard enough, but in my anti-seizure paranoia, I managed to
jet it back down to 600-levels of performance. Still had enough poop to pass
a few 600s at a crack on the front straight, though.   The short powerband
was a terrible pain in the ass, though, making it impossible to get a good
drive off of every corner.  Just couldn't get the revs right everywhere, and
pulling a too-tall gear off corners was costing me about 10 yards at a time.
 To top it off, I had apparently injured my right wrist in the last big crash
because I just couldn't seem to twist the throttle far enough.  I  charged
around for a full session and my sister informed me I was running 1:26s... 7
SECONDS SLOWER THAN MY LAST TIME HERE!!!!!!

Great, I had a case of the post-crash heebie-jeebies and didn't realize it.
 I basically sucked on Friday, but at least the bike held up fine.  The
170-series Dragon (made for my ninja's 5 inch rear rim) was too wide for the
RGs 4.5 and the profile was lousy, so I sprung for a set of 364s on Saturday.
  With these great tires, I managed a 1:25. Couldn't even get my knee down!
Freaking amazing!!   I entered the GTU race for some more practice, hoping a
race would get me moving again.  Retarded the timing on the BDK box for
insurance and headed into the fray.   The RG really handled well, but I was
sucking wind so bad that it was useless.  After 2 laps there was a red flag
and I spent most of the GTu race sitting in the pits (the clock still
running). Got a few more laps in after the restart, enough to find that I had
finally overjetted and underadvanced all the power out of the Gamma. Also
discovered that winding the damper up even a bit too stiff made the RG weave
everywhere on the track.  Pulled some stoppies into turns 1 and 7, but the
new EBC Pro-lite brakes/Nissin calipers were not up to the old GSXR rotor/
FZR thou caliper match. Go figure. Maybe not enough break-in time. Still,
they were quite strong (2 fingers) but the old setup was 1 finger. I think
FZR thou calipers are hard to top. The EBC green pads showed no sign of
 distress, or wear. My buddy, OTOH, completely used up a set of Galfers
(sport cmpnd) in 1 race and a few practices. The 43mm GSXR front end w/
lindemann revalve was a treat, a bit of pogoing was dialled out easily, and
the front straight braking ripples which made my ninja chatter so badly
didn't even begin to disturb the RG. Not too shabby!

Powerband-wise, defeating the exhaust valve in the high-rpm position showed
that the powerband was actually starting around 7600-7700 RPM, but the
powervalve was artificially suppressing it till 8K, when it rotated.
 Unfortunately this was accompanied by a huge hole just before the powerband,
making the bike even harder to ride. Good powervalve!  Just need a Pot. on
there so we can trim the opening rpm. Somebody? Anybody?  This would be a
very useful thing!

So, Sunday dawned and I still sucked.  I advanced the ignition,  sprung for
some 108 octane, put on my race face and decided to pull my head out and
MOVE!  I had 11 points up on #2 in MWGP and only had to finish a few places
behind him to win a title.
went out for practice, following my friend John on his EX500. He really slung
it thru the  corners so I waited for the front straight and blew past; there
were 2 Honda 600s up ahead and I said "I wonder if I can pass them all" and
sure enough, waxed everyone by the S/F line. Cool!  Nice to have a power
advantage.

I ripped it around for a lap (ran a :24 including the slow 1st half lap) but
then *snap*, the shift pivot boss broke off. Previously broken and welded, it
gave out. I limped back around to the pit, pissed as hell. We snatched the
364s off the RG and threw them on my friend's FS FZR600. The brakes were
glazed so a quick sanding job, slap it together, grab the brakes a few times,
and there's my racebike.  A little while later I rolled it out, took the
warmup lap while trying to figure a new shift rythm, and raced it.

Once again I sucked massively, struggling around in 14th place and barely
able to pass some guy who was only a bit slower than I.  Ran 1:22s after
getting by, but finished way down, not enough points, lost the (meaningless)
title, generally disgusted with my riding which has regressed approx 1+ year
in lap times.  Never would have figured I'd be so freaked out by a crash. I
FELT like I was going fast, but wasn't. So strange!  It was a joy to ride the
RG on the track again, and everybody seemed to get a kick out of the weird
bike with all the exhaust pipes. You meet a lot of people when you have a
strange bike!

 The best bright spot is the RG is still in 1 piece!  I met another RG owner
at the track (a first for me), he had an unusual tailsection. His bike was a
bit low in the back, too... 
heh.. And, my good friend won his first race ever with a flawless and very
fast ride.

So that's it for now. Swapping my short cylinder for one that's full length,
we'll see if all that epoxy stuff is still in my ports ( I highly doubt it!),
Maybe try the long duration discs again. I'll be back next spring to wreak
smoky havoc on the 4 stroke hordes! ... On Fridays, anyway.  

Later-

Randy N.  

2nd place overall, Great Plains MWGP class [fooey!  :)  ]