Hey everyone, Been a member of this forum for a bout 5 years and have made a few attempts to get a bike on track but have had some silly things holding me back... I decided this year that no matter what i'm going to actually do it. I've been road racing cars (time attack mostly) for about 7-10 years and have always wanted to do bikes as well. I've ridden sport bikes for about 12 years and my first bike was an 07 ZX6R. In 2013 I picked up a 2005 Raven R6 that i intended on doing track days with.. long story short, i popped the engine in my track car and I liquidated the bike to get it repaired quickly.. in February 2014 I picked up a 2009 CBR600RR that i again attempted to do track days with. TWO WEEKS LATER, I broke the Ulna and the Radius in my left arm for the 3rd time.. Dr. told me that i wold more than likely need surgery and that tracking a bike shouldn't be in the foreseeable future. So I sold it.. LOL I ended up not needing surgery, but i was told this after the bike was gone.. From there I ended up buying a new FRS to make into a 2nd track car. So that took up all my time and money for the last few years. After tracking hat for the last 5 years i have decided again that i want to track bikes. So i did not do any further upgrades on the FRS, and I sold my other track car. So as of now I am in the market again for a decent 600cc bike. I plan on trying to do 3-5 event this year. Grattan, Gingerman, Mid-Ohio and maybe Road Atlanta (these are all tracks I have driven before and feel most comfortable with) Current plan is to pick up another bike by end of Feb early March, and have it ready for some May/June/July/August/September events. So.. After reading my life story lol. I am wondering if anyone on here is from the Kalamazoo area? 90% of my friends all race cars and I cant get anyone to jump into this with me. My end goal is to end up club racing with WERA and other sanctioning bodies. So I would be looking for some people to pit with my first few events, get some tips, or just basically hang out and talk bikes. I'm sure track bike folks are just as nice as car folks so I don't think i'd have any trouble. But with cabin fever setting in, i figured id make this post! Thanks guys!
Hey there. I am not too far from Kazoo in Middleville. My bike is currently in process of an engine transplant, and I am recovering from double carpal tunnel surgery in December. We're both hoping to be healthy for Grattan in April, weather pending. I have a friend from who has already signed up. You're welcome to pit with me/us. I relocated fro Indy and built a house last year, so I am probably limited to Grattan & Gingerman, but I might sneak out to ACC, Blackhawk, or Putnam if I'm lucky.
Awesome! Thanks for the reply. I'd like to be able to do an event that early. I am currently searching for a bike, and as of last week i am also searching for a new SUV... My trusty 1998 4runner gave up the ghost after 300K+ miles.. I had money set aside for both of them but it's also my busy season with work so finding the time to get both is going to be a headache. Maybe if i don't ride i could at least show up and meet some folks. I've only been to track days that were finishing up before my racing events at Gingerman. -Billy
Welcome. I'm SE Mich based and end up at Grattan and Gingerman quite a bit. This will be my 2nd season of track days. I'm still slow and new, but love it! All the STT folks (staff and riders) are friendly and are a great group to be around. Good luck finding a track machine!
I’m about an hour away from Kalamazoo down in St. Joe. After many years of street riding I bought a track bike last year. Made a couple of trips to Grattan and a weekend down in KY at NCM. Like you, I didn’t know anyone. As Matt said, folks are generally pretty accommodating and were willing to answer all my stupid questions. Good luck in your search!
First welcome to the group, nut house, addiction. Ride for you, ride at your pace so you will have fun and learn. You only need to impress yourself. Open invitation for those out of town that aren't into camping and want a place to flop. I'm about 30 miles away. Since STT only has one day at Putnam look at there schedule as two other groups run there along with NCM. Hope you make it to Road America, what a track and the June date offers a actual race to watch on the Sunday before. June 3rd I think. Also consider Mid-Ohio, nice place and I've got a rain check to use there.
Thanks for all of the replies everyone! Put a deposit down on a Ram 2500 with the 6.7 Cummins yesterday, so I should not be having any issues with future towing. Glad to have that out of the way. Hoping to pick that up this weekend. I have been driving a fellow track buddy's Duramax for the past few weeks, and I realized that its just a nice pieces of mind. I hate buying new daily drivers so i decided to just get something to last me 10-15 years. lol Also trying to coordinate to purchasing a bike in the next few weeks. I have been talking with a few sellers trying to coordinate around my crazy schedule. From there I will get some quality gear, and work on getting back into shape. I'm getting pretty antsy. lol
So i have good news and potential bad news.. Good news is that i finally picked a bike up! found this 2009 ZX6R for a really attractive price. Has a bunch of race ready parts on it, and it is already safety wired. I made the 10 hour drive to go get it on Saturday. However, I also had to make a detour and it added about 8 more hours onto my trip.. (took a good friend to IL so he could pick up his summer car) I left at 4am and didn't return home until 10pm. I'm very happy with the bike and i got to ride it up and down the road at the sellers house and it runs great! Untitled by Billy Ball, on Flickr Onto the bad news.. I was so tired and exhausted once i got home that i just pulled the bike out of the truck and hucked it into the garage on stands. I haven't had any time since to even go into my garage at all to start working on it.. I just realized to day that the bike probably has NO ANTI-FREEZE! So it has just been sitting out there in 5-30 degree temps for the last 4 days.. I'm not even sure what to do now. I wont get home until late tonight and the only solution i have is to just bring it into my house. My garage is insulated but not climate controlled. I haven't been out there in weeks so the heater hasn't ran at all (i have a pretty stout propane jet heater) Anyone have any tips or am i just screwed? As of now i'm thinking to just get it inside and make sure its thawed.. ten maybe check the oil to see if any water got into it. From there start it and see if it gets up to temp without overheating. If all that checks out, then maybe toss some 50/50 mix back in and put it back into the garage. I feel like a huge idiot.. But i've been swamped lately and this weekend was literally the only weekend i had available until May to go grab a bike. Thoughts?
Drain / check the cooling system and see what's in it. You might be lucky and the previous owner may have run an approved coolant. Did he tell you it only had water in it? I wouldn't think so since it's winter and most people don't have heated storage. If it had water and you get it drained, fill it with coolant and pressure check the system. Kind of a crap shoot if that's the case. Once you know your system is okay - replace with Engine Ice or similair STT approved coolant. Then you know what you have, you're track ready, and freeze protected. Good luck! Congrats on the new bike. Matt
Congrats on the new bike! Unfortunately I can speak from experience (see my post above) after a move last winter that meant my bike was in an unheated storage unit. With a newborn baby a 2 weeks before the move, it never crossed my mind that I might have used water wetter. (Never again!) If you're lucky, it didn't freeze. If it did, the damage has likely already been done. I would drain the oil and look for coolant, since I'd change the oil on a new purchase anyway. If it cracked a coolant passage, it should show there. You could do a compression check as well. If you crank the engine with a crack, you'll see milkshake in the sight glass. Good luck!!
Update. Made it home at about 8pm last night and got right to work. First thing I did was get the jet heater running to warm everything up. It was about 18 degrees last night. I ended up noticing a bottle of water i had on my tool box wasn't frozen, so that was a good sign. (Please excuse my garage, its a mess right now as ive just gotten rid of one of my race cars, and my fiancee parks her Bimmer in here during the winter. All my welders, tube bender and other equipment has jut been tossed into a corner for now.. The stuff you see draining into the floor is dirty snow melt. not oil. I do what i can to protect the environment) Day 1 teardown by Billy Ball, on Flickr Day 1 teardown by Billy Ball, on Flickr So I decided to start draining the water/water wetter mix (bike is from the south, so they didn't run 50/50 in the winter) Luckily a steady stream of water started pissing out. I tried to make sure i got it all out and then I slowly started putting 50/50 in until it started to come out of the bottom as well. I then buttoned everything up and decided to crank it over and make sure everything was OK. Day 1 teardown by Billy Ball, on Flickr Bike fired right up. No crazy amounts of smoke (just normal for cold air) Bike went through its rev range with no issues and seemed to be fine. I did notice that the sight glass was showing some signs of moisture, but it looked more like condensation. So, I let the bike cool back down to about 150 degrees and drained the oil. Before I did that I emptied out the oil container (to see if there would be an excess amount of fluid) Everything looked normal, just seemed to be some condensation.. The PO had stated that he started the bike once or twice a week to let it warm up. This can definitely lead to condensation build up. So, as far as i can tell everything seems to be fine. Day 1 teardown by Billy Ball, on Flickr I think I got lucky. (the camera flash makes it look way more "milky" than it actually was..) So I continued on with the tear down so I can clean it up and get it ready for my first track day. Which will hopefully be Grattan in June or maybe something sooner. Day 1 teardown by Billy Ball, on Flickr Day 1 teardown by Billy Ball, on Flickr I know forums are kind of dead, but i've been thinking about tracking my progress here for others to follow along. I have done a TON of car racing, and one of the most helpful things in the beginning was finding threads where others where tracking there progress from the beginning. Its motivating, and if it can help someone else feel comfortable getting on track, then i'll feel good about that. FB and IG are awesome, but they take away a lot of the substance with build/progress threads. I'll post up some fun car stuff I've done as well. I'm a fabricator/machinist so I build a lot of my own stuff for fun. Current checklist for the bike is: 1. Clean up body work and order new tail at the least. 2. Find a tank in better condition. 3. Go through and check all systems 4. Figure out clutch release issue 5. come up with neato livery 6. Adress FI light. (bike has a Power Commander 5) 7. Clean up dodgy wiring Thanks for the help everyone!
Hey I'm in Portage/Kalamazoo area. Bought a 250R track bike, finishing the engine swap up here pretty soon. Definitely interested in club racing
Heck yeah man,I'm trying to get a few of my car buddies to switch over to the dark side. I showed them how much i paid for everything so far. One of my friends spent about $4000 JUST on tires last year.. That's almost double what I paid for the whole bike.. So he is a little tempted.
Hey Ruckus. Im from Kalamazoo, W. Main/Drake area. A friend and I usually go out to all of the Gingerman track nights and a few days up at Grattan. We'd be happy to pit with you and hang out trackside!
Hey Justin, you live like 4 minutes away from me actually! I live in the Arcadia neighborhood. I bought a house about 2 blocks away from WMU's campus. My first track day is actually an STT bike night at Gingerman on 5/24. Bike is ready to go for the most part. Just discovered that the subframe is slightly tweaked, but I don't want to replace it, yet considering the probability of me damaging it in the first few track days is pretty high. Do you live in the apartments near W.Main/Drake? (feel free to PM)
Oh man.. I totally did not catch that. There will be Novice track sessions though correct? If not, I hope i can get a refund, or maybe a Track Night later in the year, if I move up.. If so, I plan on taking it really easy anyway. Mostly getting acclimated to braking, turn in points, and not looking like an idiot.. I don't care about going fast, I just want to be comfortable. I've been tracking at Gingerman for a long time, and that's why I chose this venue first. I know the layout, and the racing line more than any other track I go to.. (well for cars anyway, but i feel like the general principles transfer over) I just want to get my bearings. As far as the classroom sessions, whats usually on the itinerary? I am pretty comfortable with flags, spotting the marshals, looking where I want to go, what to do during engine meltdowns/fires, as well as most general track/pit etiquette. (as long as that stuff transfers over to bike events) Other than the 5/24 Bike Night. I also purchased the weekend of 6/14-6/16 which also includes the Friday bike night.. Again, this will mostly just to work on being comfortable and smooth.. I also have to take it easy anyway, considering I get married 2 weeks later.. If these events go well I am planning on doing 1-2 events a month until Oct/Nov.. Thanks for the help/replies everyone. Looking forward to meeting some of you. Oh, here's a little video of me driving my FRS around Gingerman. I've done some more work to it since this video, I gutted interior, built TIG welded up a half cage, tossed in a nice Sparco and harness, suspension stuff etc... Currently, I don't even have plans to start the car up in 2019.. Maybe ill do an open track day during the week and burn up the rest of this tire set..