three sisters

there is a possibility i still might make this meeting. could anyone tell me which circuit is used and what is the typical gearing. bearing in mind i won´t be changing anything internal .... mike!

ray

Hi Ray,
Hope you make it! the mountains are cold this time of year!
If you go to the following http://www.three-sisters.co.uk/circuit.asp We used circuit 1 the last time we were there.
Use ruddy low gearing to start with! a good bit lower than the Woodland circuit and you have a starting point!
Good luck and see you there!
Alan

Sorry Ray!
It is track 3!!
Alan

cheers for that alan

i have booked my passage so hope to see you there

ray

Ray at a guesstimate for a 175 revving to 9k i'd say 14/54or55 if your not going to change your internal ratios that is Mike

thanks mike

i have it on 14 56 and the wheel is almost coming off the ground ... almost like you!!! might knock it down on the back after a little run around.

Ray

Hey Ray!
Neato! Refreshing to see. Avatar pic is not brill... but your Bantam is not wearing skirt & bra... If by choice I say whacko! Bantams were born naked and racing Bantams ough never to have had them.
Show `em how its done without the pansy frills!
Cheers!
Aye! JB.

sorry to disappoint John but i will be sporting a little more dressing this year but still no full faring. i still try to use as many of the original supports around the frame loop to stick with tradition and my monoshock attempt this year uses the original swinging arm ..... Ooooo risky!

ray

John Bass wrote:

Hey Ray!
Bantams were born naked and racing Bantams ough never to have had them

Leave it out JB. If you had your way, they would have red metal leg shields, with GPO written on them.

Edit - Cripes just realized some of the guys on here are to young to know what I'm on about. Memories eh! John.

Hey Ned! You missed my point...
Who´s for having a petition stating, "Racing Bantams must be naked -- no fairings"? Icarus-1 was a swine to ride after I fitted a fairing. Icarus 2 was a swine to ride because of its lack of reliability (piston breakage and seizures) but was quicker than Icarus 1: -- that without having a fairing. So at 40 quid to build it was "Racing on the cheap" as it was meant to be.
Have a great time in the Wigan Hills, you Bantam racers -- from what I see of the tracks there, fairings don´t amount to any advantage anyway.
Go well and keep well,
Aye!
JB.

The fairing thing is quite interesting really, with the speed differential of most racers in a similar class, the aerodynamic advantage on a quick track would come into affect. On a mickey mouse circuit its the riding that would hold the advantage. My first bantam was naked but i wern't going fast enough to prove it's disadvantages. 250 proddy was naked but we were all in the same boat anyway, the tuning aspect coupled with the riding was the factor. We were forever looking for bhp and suspension/braking tweaks that didn't break the rules(too much). Pretty much like bantam racing really but far more reliable. I learnt alot about 2 stroke tuning in those days and after finding, quite by accident, a tiny flaw in Terry Becketts latest mod for the X7, i found another 500 rpm. I tried it out at a bemsee meet at the old Snetterton circuit. An old mate of mine, Jon Holloway, had just spent £500 on a new Stan Stephens motor. Coupled with the fact he weighed nothing and came up to my armpit in his stockinged feet, he looked good for the race. First lap and i was in the leading bunch going onto the old Norwich straight, Jon was flat out as i passed him and calmly changed up to sixth. He was totally fed up about that as i was twice his weight and size and had tuned the motor myself for a couple of pints to a sidecar racing pal with an engineering shop.
After that it was 250 open, you don't find many naked TZ's so i conformed but i would definately be at a disadvantage at those speeds without my fibreglass.
The only time i remember that i really needed a bubble to get under was testing the Kawasaki at Snetterton, To save messing around, i went out without the fairing and halfway down the Revetts straight, flat out i had to knock it off because my head was being ripped off.
memories Johny boy, yo Ned, now he remembers me at least, lol.
Ned was the first guy to congratulate me on my first competitive ride on the Kawasaki at a BFRC meet at Snetterton, he reckoned i had beaten guys who had been riding big bikes for years with three 4th places, straight off 250's, i was pretty pleased with that.

Right Mick!
and Ned!
Memories as nostalgia is all we Ancients (ooops! you aren´t... you are just `Old´) have left. Regarding the `leg over the saddle´ bit, that is.
I was gonna say its a bit like sex -- if you´ve never had it you dunno what you´ve missed -- but I think the censor would delete that so I won´t say it...
....Even the lightest fairing is a disadvantage relative acceleration. My argument against fitting a fairing on Icarus-1 was that the weight (of the fairing) disadvantaged (`outweighed...?!´-- yuk!) the acceleration -- and we(Icarus-1 & I) would never be at the speed where the fairing mattered.
....This appeared to be verified during a Brands Bantam race where I finished 4th, having been only 14th in practice. That was the day I unneccessarilly swore at Niffy because he told me that bit of news between practice and race...
Damned fairings! There´s a scar on my knee which Ned´s windscreen did in 1981...
Oops! nuff said on that one...
During my Easter `08 trip to The Island I found out that my B&B lady had been chief mechanic to the Starmaker racer (her Dad being the constuctor of that twin BSA Special...). Never seen a racing Bantam, she told me, so I showed her some of my pics... She got all excited... Not about the naked machine where all the fantastic engineering was to be seen -- it was Icarus-1 wearing its all-in-one, nickers-and-bra combined, fairing. (I must admit the pansy covering changed Icarus-1´s character -- made it look less like telegram delivery service and more like a real racer).
"It´s a Jakeman..." she announced as if she were an astronaut just discovering a new planet ... "... the same fairing we had on our bike."
.... So, for me, fairings are `flashy-add-ons´ -- quite unneccessary ...
.... I can, of course, argue the other way. With a drag factor of 0.3 (flat plate, normal to travel direction, being 1...) only 2 horsepower is required to reach 100mph. Of course, to achieve the latter the rider needs a very long straight length of flat road!
....I´m looking forward to hearing that Scutt Jnr has done Mike Powell again, although we must adjust that bit of acclaim to include the fact that Mike was on a 175 at Donington... Well done Ian! I hope 3-Sisters results
show the same...
Take care,
Aye! JayBee.

Gents because engineers discovered theory and practice don't necessarily coincide the motor industry coined the phrase "teething trouble"
In a conversation about fairings with a well known and respected tuner. He told me streamlining doesn't come into effect under 70 mph. When I asked him, what happens if there is a 70 mph head wind on the start line ? And why do fish have such a streamlined shape ? He just grunted he didn't know but he had read that it was fact.

With much gnashing of teeth and spitting of debris I say YOU ARE RIGHT Ned!
...
Proved it long before the bra-and-knickers(fairings) were allowed in... That was on the old Norwich Straight with our naked Icarus-1. It was an hour long race (`Duro´? they said) in a storm. Got to be bonkers! I said immediately after practice, to go out in this tempest and call it a motorbike race. I did, of course. On every lap our first Racing Bantam misfired all the way along the Old Norwich Straight and not at all as I came towards the pits. And going past the pits ran sweet-as-nut... I told myself each time to pull in and quit -- but approaching the pits it was running and sounding so good! My mentor and engine tuner would not believe me (about the misfire...) and demanded to know the revs. With the rain sloshing over my goggles and the fogging up I´d not been able to read the ***++!? revs... Mentor changed his tune when an `expert´ told him the head wind on the old Norwich Straight had been measured at 75-80mph -- which meant that with a fairing we might not have had the speed dragged down to have the revs drop off the resonance rev band. That brought in the making of a number of several variants for our exhaust system and an exhausting practice day at Brands to prove that with my bodyweight mass I needed a higher torque motor with a wider torque band...
Nature brought in the giraffe so´s he could nibble the higher elevated leaves and live on; similarly the black-fat lining under the polar bears´ skin to keep him from freezing up, the snake his extra-special stomach muscles to allow it to slither uphill in a desert and the fish to be `Waterdynamic´ when being chased by a predator or speedier when acting as a cannibal-fish to catch his nosh.
Thus spake my gravity-expert here -- all things are so -- by nature.
Somehow nature persuaded Bantam racers that a dressing up was necessary to keep it going. well, living-on, I guess...
Probably they were right -- it is just that I hated fairings, particularly that Jakeman.
Just recently I read an article on American scientists´doings. They have been working, for several decades, on a device to negate gravity. Think of that!? You have a device, the size of a mobile phone, in your leathers that can be switched on as required... Before it got banned you could become a world beating star -- but imagine the high-sider that revealed your secret when you flew through the air and sat alongside a spectator?
OK -- so I´ll shut up.
Aye! JayBee.

Did a little research, just for Ned...
Robert Bosch in `Automotive Handbook´ give more optimistic values*** ) for the effectiveness of streamlining...
...
*** this by observation & experiment and not based on pure theory.
...
Note:- I have converted all metric values into imperial units:-
The handbook states that with a drag factor of 0.3 -- 0.4 (a well made Bantam fairing, I think) -- at 25mph, the power needed to overcome wind resistance is 0.45horsepower. This becomes 7.6 times greater at 50mph -- needing 3.4horsepower to overcome the increased wind resistance. So the 70mph, this `engineer´ stated, for a fairing to become effective, was somewhat pessimistic -- and proves Ned´s point further (dammitt!) -- but perhaps that `engineer´ had assumed the fairing drag-factor to be much higher than 0.3-0.4...
If we take the Bosch values as being closer to the truth it seems that well designed fairings, with the rider well-tuckecd-in, are effective well below that 70mph quoted -- even down below 50mph....
The Rolling Resistance -- the greater drag -- is not mentioned here.
So Ray, you´d better get fitting a fairing ...
All the best,
Cheers! JB.