I'm shooting video at MRA's race weekends at HPR.
If all goes well, I'll race at HPR later in the season. Then that bike retires in the living room, and I get rolling in the shop on the next racer...
The next racer is still in the phase before "Connect the Dots" that I like to call "Collect the Dots". While working on some of the design headaches involving a belt drive primary connecting the KX500 engine to the 999 transmission, I wondered if there was a remote chance that a 999 primary drive gear system would fit, since the KX500 primary gearing is terrible for roadracing. The KX500 stroke is a lot higher, so I assumed it wouldn't fit. With the help of a few parts on hand and a few more cheap parts from eBay, the answer became obvious:
The drive side of the crank, 999 primary gear, and KX500 primary gear were promptly boxed up and shipped off to a gear making specialist in England, where a few hybrid 999/KX500 primary gears will be made. Longer connecting rods will also have to be made (The original rod/stroke ratio is not optimal for a higher revving roadracing engine). A longer crank pin will be required for my counterbalancer/inlet valve/supercharger design. Patterns and castings will have to be made for the engine cases. Then those case castings have to be machined. It'll be a lot of work, but the results should be a lot of fun.
While there are certainly lots of excellent engines available, none of them fit my next chassis design very well and/or produce an interesting amount of power. Once the engine is "Finished" (Development work on a racer is never finished, it is only interrupted when it goes through tech before the race weekend starts) then work will proceed on the rolling chassis. I'm really excited about the performance potential of the "Finished" combination of the next engine and chassis - lap times will answer the question if it was worth it.
I think I'll know the answer the first time it exits Pit Out, rolls into T3, then goes wide open after the apex...
