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2012 Update |
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Sunday, 01 January 2012 18:19 |
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This update is way overdue and I can only partially blame the crushing depression that came with this year's big-time blowup. Anyone that has seen the video can see that when something breaks loose at 143mph, not much can get in its way! As far as anyone can tell, as soon as I backed off the throttle at the end of the measured mile, the right side wrist pin [gudgeon pin to Graeme] broke loose from the piston and proceeded on a path of destruction like nothing I have seen before. After smashing the piston into pieces no bigger than the end of your thumb, the rod got tired and broke in half, the resulting flail wailing the whimpering shit out of everything in its path until there was nothing more than a bunch of twisted metal compost, big holes in the crankcase, camshaft bent like a banana, and the guilty, blackened, gudgeon pin lying on top of my exhaust pipe as I coasted to a stop in a cloud of smoke. Upon tear down it was revealed that when the engine finally seized, my guardian angel had sheared off my new flywheel bolts preventing any rear wheel lockup drama. What a blow! We had expected to do so well, boasting that the "Bee" would run 155 right off the trailer! After the drivers meeting we sailed right up to the starting line ready to show everybody that Pepperoni Bros. had it down, I was concentrating on making "4 clean shifts" hoping that all the changes I had made would result in a smooth fast run. We had the third run of the meet, presented chief starter/USFRA president Monte with the official Pepperoni Bros. "bribe", a jar of home-cured olives with a stick of Margerita pepperoni strapped to it, and charged down the track, the bike went straight, shifted beautifully, but didn't pick up in top gear like I thought it might. We now know why that was, the cursed gudgeon pin. After our disastrous first run, Steve and I were sitting in a funk by the bike with a small pile of parts that had blown out of the engine when Rex Svoboda strolled by offering his condolences and saying that, according to his wife, there is nothing more pitiful than sad men. Copy that! It has taken me a while to come up with a plan of action, being broke for yet another year as I scrape together another race motor had limited appeal, but, like any other addiction worth having, there doesn't seem to be any other viable alternative. For reasons of convenience and economy I've decided to rebuild the original V7 Sport engine that has been lurking under my bench since it snapped a rod in two at the BUB meet in '07. That engine has sustained more runs than any of the others I have built, plus it allowed me to trade the Scucci timing gears from the last motor to Bill Ross for a set of re-con Carrillo rods to get things started. Mike Rich is kicking in an 83mm cylinder to match the one I have already, I sold all my spare parts on eBay to help finance this quest and a few folks have given me generous donations in exchange for broken engine parts and pieces. If you have ever wanted to have a piece of an engine blown up on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Pepperoni Bros. Racing is here to help, they range in size from tiny bits of piston to an engine case knocked full of holes that would be welcome addition to anyones living room or man cave. My Guzzi buddies have talked me into using another brand of piston so CP is currently forging us a new set of four, and since Bill ross has had success with PPC Ti wrist pins, I have ordered a set of those as well. The crank and main bearings are still serviceable, the head repairable, I bought another cam from Megacycle before they ran out of blanks, so now all I need are a set of lifters, rod bearings, oil pump, some gaskets, and we should be ready for another round. As always I thank all of the minions that help keep this show on the road, Pepperoni Bros. is a community group effort, eternally grateful for everyones support. Look for us on the salt in 2012, looking to run a 155, right off the trailer! |
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Preppin' for the salt! |
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Thursday, 18 August 2011 00:20 |
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This is for all those patient folks that have signed up for the website and haven't had much to look at for quite awhile. Being president of the Mendocino county retired employees assoc. and playing in a kickass rock band have put a lot of demands on my precious time but I have not forgotten you. Pepperoni Bro. Steve stopped by yesterday to check on my progress and suggested that I crank out a blurb for the faithful, so here it is. So far I've, mounted tubeless Michelin radial tyres, moved the footpegs back 6" ahead of the rear axle, lowered the final drive ratio [7/33], plan to build a separate "Pepperoni Bros. Secret Speed Weapon" final drive with 8/35 gears as a backup, lowered and moved the seat back to accommodate the beautiful but unfinished Evan Wilcox fuel tank [he assures me it will be finished in time], replaced the RAM race clutch with a stock-type clutch using sponsor supplied Barnett springs, it's a real-man clutch now!, Balanced the flywheel myself on a tyre balancing stand with tips from sprint car/Buell ace Chris Zootis, and Pepperoni Bro./photog Roger has helped with the motor swap, footpeg fab, and $. Today I hope to get the seat close to finished and fab up the shift linkage, the World Headquarters will be a beehive of activity right up until Steve and I bring the "Bee" out to the World Of Speed event on Sept. 12, wish us luck, we are running on a 151+ record, I think we can get on the other side of 160 with the help of some good wishes, luck, and weather! Check out the photo in PICTURES... |
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March 9,2011 |
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Thursday, 10 March 2011 03:20 |
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Hi Gang, I've just returned from a 40 mile test ride and am happy to report that the operation was a success! For those of you not following all the latest Pepperoni Bros. blab, somewhere awhile back I got the brilliant idea of using the race bike on the street in the off season, I started on this endeavor soon after racing ended last fall, I got a 7/33 gearset in time for the World Finals, but decided to sit that one out and squandered the rest of Trumpy's dowery on a set of tubeless Excell rims built by Woody's Wheel Works in Denver. I had run out of time on my shaved Avon's and needed something that would allow me to run over 150 at Bonneville and still be streetable, I looked at mags, but that meant an extra set of wheels and tyres cluttering up the garage so the all-in-one solution turned out to be a set of ZR rated Michelins, 110/80 front, 120/70 rear, on those beautiful tubeless rims, there is no way anyone could have told me how huge of an improvement that radial tyres would make, it is night and day! Anyone else that is still running around on 70's sportpiles should consider this one. Mark Etheridge from Moto Guzzi Classics relined the front brake shoes with some really good modern linings, I spent a fair amount of time converting the old gear change linkage into a rear brake linkage, the final solution turned out to include part of the hood hinge linkage from Hugh McAvoy's 1950 Buick. Mike Rich said that it wasn't a good idea to put too many street miles on the race motor so I started poking around for a round fin motor that I could plug in to this fine machine, what turned up was a low mile, oil pumping/leaking, 850T motor on Ebay for a mere $390. Even better, the fellow selling it, a great guy named Amory, was willing to take it apart and cram a good lot of it into Priority Mail boxes, was able to get the whole thing shipped out from Florida for less than $100. This must have been a Monday motor, the piston rings were installed all wrong, the scraper ring at the top, chrome bores trashed, the cam chain tensioner had never touched the chain, it was fastened down as far away from the chain as you could get, even though untouched, I replaced it with a self tensioning one from MG Cycle, still had the factory oil filter, etc. The good news was that it didn't have much wear on it, cam, lifters, bearings, chain, all good, so I sourced some rings from the good folks at Hastings, LA Sleeve resleeved the cyls, only charging us $100 for a $15 fin repair!, Bob Neilson did the valves, got some single fire Dyna coils, used the RAM clutch from the race motor, matched the ports to my production race manifolds, had Bob Beeler weld some stubs onto my Chicago sourced 850T headpipes so I could fit a crossover a la Dennis Manning, and over the winter, assembled a nice little low budget motor. As luck would have it, my old cycle riding/school teaching buddy Crobar dropped by while up here visiting his sweetie at the perfect time to help me extract the race motor and install its replacement, thanks, Cro! I've spent the last couple of weeks fitting it all together and working out the bugs just in time for Ken Katz [ who Crobar and I met in 1979 during our epic 10,000 mile trans Canada/America ride "The Summer Tour of '79 in Search of Love and Perfect Swimming Holes"] to drop by and we gave the "Bee" a proper shakedown run to Willits and back. The results are in and it's fantastic, much better than I had hoped for, light, easy to handle, smooth, great power band, decent brakes, and a cool factor that is off the charts, it's fun watching people try to figure it out. Besides the annual Red Bud run, I hope to enter it in the Moto Mille for pre '75 bikes this spring. It is great to be back in the game, let's ride!!! Tom |
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Back From The Salt, No Record, But a Good Time Anyway! |
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Wednesday, 22 September 2010 02:22 |
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Well, we are back from another great adventure, tired, broke, and wishing we could have gone faster....... we had a smooth trip out, lunch at Mi Rancheta, the bike gets TONS of attention, especially the aluminum bellypan, even the oldtimers get creamy when they see that. Conditions were fantastic, hard salt and little wind, I promptly bribed the course workers and officials with olives and pepperoni and after the drivers meeting got in line to start making runs. Now that the bike has a full fairing, it is a much bigger handful to deal with, Steve was plenty busy with the careful loading and unloading before and after every run. Our first run felt pretty fast but the tach wasn't picking up in fifth the way I had hoped it would, it was a huge luxury to be able to watch where I was going through the windshield though, result, a mere 140 mph, last year we would have been jumping up and down to have gone that fast, now it's, "pah, what's the matter with this thing?" The answer is nothing, it is just geared too tall, we're running the stock 8/35 gearset as I wasn't able to come up with anything lower [for free anyway]. I made some more runs, eventually switching to the megaphones as they have better midrange, resulting in a best run of over 142mph, during that run I discovered that if I tucked my head deeper into the fairing [where I couldn't see ahead so well], I went quite a bit faster, so much for forward vision. So that's all for this year, next year we will be back with proper gearing, a different paddock stand, and better areo, Evan has some good ideas on how to make it more slippery. We left the salt mid-day on friday after distributing the last of the olives and pepperoni, listening to the track announcements on AM1610 for over 30 miles as we headed west, spent the night in Ferneley, NV and attended the Reno Air Races saturday morning, a huge event, lots of really fast expensive planes flown by people who really know how. All in all, it is way more fun to go fast yourself, we will be back!!! A huge thanks to all my sponsors, superwife Liz, Evan Wilcox, and all the folks who pitched in at the last minute to get this show on the road. Have fun, Tom |
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Bonneville Bumble Bee Update |
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Sunday, 13 June 2010 04:38 |
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It is not without some sadness that I announce that Trumpy has left the building, sold to the lovely Maura Cronin of San Francisco. Ever since the Miata wiggled its way into the garage, at the same time ravaging the Pepperoni Bros. operating budget, it has been kind of a crowd around here. Now things are back on track, flush with cash, I paid off the Miata, put $1000. into the rotten wood window replacement fund, sent in my entry for the World of Speed, and the rest went into Pepperoni Bros. Not one to gather moss when properly financed, I found a used electric Handy lift on craigslist in the bay area and before you can say "I'll give you a case of beer if you'll help me unload this truck" it was sitting in the shop with the Bonneville Bee strapped to it. Now Steve and I can get the fairing fitted without lying on the floor, this is the way to go! After Bonneville, I will be gathering bits to turn this into my double-duty streetbike, a project that I am looking forward to. This has been quite a week, meeting new people, selling, buying,moving forward, see you out on the hiway! Tom |
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