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AltoVyrus - Back With A Bang - May 2009
Season Preview:
It has been a few weeks between write ups which is unusual for us but we have not been sitting idle waiting for the grass to grow, instead we have been rebuilding the bike with an entirely new power plant.
We realised that to have any real chance of winning this years championship we would need to change the bike quite dramatically. Our main competitors have introduced updates and new riders and teams are coming to our series. We needed more power at least if we are to take the fight to them.
Ducati UK helped locate the suitable engine we thought would give us this power and Italsport Ducati in Bury, Lancs very generously donated the engine free of charge.
The motor was BRAND new but had been in a fire. Although smoke damaged to the outside it was perfect inside. A really great basis for our project. Thanks Roy. Just another demonstration of peoples enthusiasm to help us.
The engine as picked up.
...and after the Alto touch - note the Titanium bolts from Hyperbolt.
Once we fitted the engine we found nothing fitted. Even the fuel tank fouled the dustbins on top we call injector bodies.
Thank you to Good fabrications and young Tim who did another marathon day with us and made the new inconel exhaust headers to our design.
To the lads at Docking engineering who welded, cut and shut as needed all the alloy bits. Hyperbolt who must have thought we had thrown every bolt in the engine away...we had! Now its all titaniumlishously light.
To Sigma performance for a new slipper clutch to our requested angles. Oerlikon Balzers coated everything we wanted in DLC coatings. Aarron forgot where he lived for 6 weeks and my wife thinks I am the man who lives in the workshop but looks a little like someone she once knew.
Last Thursday we fired the bike up for the first time. We wrote a base map and decided to take the bike to Bruntingthorpe proving ground to run it in and get some data to make a better map.
After a few gentle runs the clutch stopped working so it was back to the workshop. I had made a small error on assembly which was quickly corrected and that gave us all day Saturday to write a map. Those who know how this is done will be laughing. Factories can take months to do this. We do though have a clever programme that Aarron has written that allows us to do this much faster, but a day was still pushing it.
It didn’t really matter as on the second run the engine blew the head gasket. (Loose water pipe) It only gets lower in limbo dancing I think would describe the mood.
After inventing a few new words for the English dictionary (9pm water shed) we stripped the engine out. Repaired it and rebuilt. 10pm it ran on the dyno. We gave it 2 runs 1 to gather data and the second to prove our new calculated map. 10bhp than we needed but totally untested.
We loaded up and went to bed at 12pm Saturday. 4am we got up and drove to Northwich with 3 bikes. 11hours sleep in 72hours.
Pete and Phil about to take it steady!
After the normal signing on and usual racing stuff we warmed the bikes and went down to the assembly area.
- James Toseland - Yamaha moto GP 2 x world champion.
- HM plant Honda - British superbike x 2 riders
- MSS Kawasaki - British superbike x 2 riders
- Red Vine Honda - British superbike x 2 riders.
...were waiting for us (amongst all the other modern superbikes). Phil cool as ever rode around the collecting area and remarked how nice and friendly the map seemed (he had no idea at this point of the saga).
Phil lined up and the team could only watch and wait to see what would happen. I told him gently please.....and his entire length of the straight, wheelie told me he wasn’t listening. Rear wheel drifting and one grin later he exclaimed through his helmet “its an interesting bike now!”
The only way James Toseland could keep team Alto Performance behind him.
Our boys ran all day and the team never stopped, when we weren’t racing we were doing the cavalcade and then the photo shoot, TV and press, its fun but manic.
The police estimated there were over 135,000 people. We think they may have missed a few thousand who were in our pit area. Phil and Pete signed the Champion race date cards all day. We gave out over 2000.
Close crowds, fast and noisy....oh and free. 135,000 people say yes please.
Results :
- Fastest time of the day.
- Course record.
- First place for Phil and the Vyrus overall.
Pete took our Raptor (equally hard of hearing) and was second fastest all day until some BSB bloke managed to split the pair of them and push Pete into 3rd by 2/10ths of a second.
Post race comment :
Speechless but the right result for everyone. We now have time to strip and inspect and get the bike ready for Cadwell this weekend.
The bike now has to be proved on the normal race tracks against our normal competition. We take each round as it comes and try to win each one, If your free on May 16th and 17th why not come and see the 2009 Alto performance Vyrus team “moving technology”.
Post script by James Toseland. Sums up a great weekend really.
