) - I’ve replaced this in the main with cycling up and down the hills around here on a MTB, and although it’s good for that bit of cardio and mental well-being, the bit it hasn’t been able to replace is the competition element that the 10k and half-marathons I used to enter gave me.I used to get a real buzz out of knowing that I had a (running) race coming up at the week-end, and although I knew I was never going to remotely trouble any of the front-runners , I logged every single run I did, and my aim was always to beat my previous PB for any given course/distance.
Of course, I didn’t manage that every single time, but most of the time I did, until my joints, or more specifically my right hip told me it was time to stop. And although I have what I consider to be a fabulous life, if I’m honest, I do really miss having races to look forward to.
Anyway, enough of the woffle- the tipping point for me was when my my young (well I guess he’s not really as he’s just hit 40 but he is compared to me , and the vast majority of us on here
) , fast mate Tim sent me a pic of his latest purchase a few weeks back – he did his CTC ( the classroom and on-track assessment you have to do these days to get a licence) a couple of months ago and now has an ACU road race licence, so he’s off MiniTwin Racing next season, with the aim of competing in the F900R cup in 2025/6 as soon as he’s got his National licence.Along with the pic he sent me, he asked me if I’d help him out spannering next season, or even better, get a suitable bike and join him, and after initially discounting the idea for lots of reasons ( admittedly the main one being thoughts of being shit and slow), I thought fuck it, YOLO etc, I’ll join him
The only decision then was what class to race in, which of course defined which bike to buy.
My initial thoughts were to buy a beautiful and very well priced Gen2 RSV Millie race bike that was available, and have a crack in BOTT on it, but lovely as the bike and idea was, I really don’t want to be spending £500+ on tyres every meeting, so was pretty decided on a MiniTwin when I stumbled on the FPR Suzuki Bandit challenge, and after reading the regs on it decided that was the one to go for.
Major factors for the decision for me were the control tyre ruling (currently Sportsmart TTs), and the very limited amount of mods you are allowed to make, with the aims of keeping costs down and close racing- I’m also reasonably sure that it shouldn’t be half-full of annoyingly fast teenagers, so I hopefully stand less chance of completely embarrassing myself , not that this was a factor (much) you understand
Seriously though, I’m under no illusions, although I did OK at club level in the 80s, National level showed me that I was never really that fast at all , and I have definitely got slower with age and don’t expect to be collecting pots this time around, but I also don’t want to be getting lapped either so I'm going to be trying- they have a “Seniors” sort of class within the class, so maybe I can score a few points in that.
Anyway, we will see, but I’m approaching it with the main object to have fun, and hopefully to also get a bit quicker as the season progresses
Ignoring the odd Spanish trackday “fun race” here and there over the last 20 or so years, the last time I lined up on a grid on a bike was 34 years ago, so it’s back to square one for me in race licence terms, and I’ve got to go through the CTC process etc, but as of a week ago I've joined a club, got my licence application in, and the CTC booked in for first week of March next year, all being well just in time for the first meeting of the year at the end of March.
So this is what I’ve bought- she’s a beaut eh?
It was last raced in 2021, and has apparently sat at the back of the previous owner’s garage since then.
It’s a runner, albeit very fluffy and farty from cold, and doesn’t want to rev but once it warms up, it revs through cleanly and there's no nasty noises or blue smoke, so I am currently reasonably confident that’ll be sorted with a carb clean, new plugs etc.
The motor in it apparently came from a low mileage (8k he says) bike, after the original poked a rode through the cases halfway through the 2021 season, so I’m hoping I won’t need to rebuild it yet, just give it a thorough service, and once I’ve done that I’ll run it down to Gav and Dan at MSG and strap it to their dyno to see what I’ve got and go from there as needed.
I’ve also got the original motor ( crankcases are obviously toast but top-end, gennie, starter motor, side cases etc should still be good) , along with WoWs, and a whole load of other spares- rearsets, levers, coils, engine cases etc etc.
There is a lot to address to get it to a condition that I’ll be happy with, but it was pennies relatively speaking, so it should hopefully still end up being a reasonably cheap way to go racing
Current first-pass list of jobs is this -
I’m sure there will be more , and when I get it on the bench and start pulling it to bits next week I’ll update this thread, but in the meantime, here’s another few pics so you can appreciate its current extreme beauty ( believe me, it looks better in the pics than IRL !
